Your Taste Is Not a Moral High Ground
Liking beautiful things does not make you better than the people who like different ones
TAKE A CLOSER LOOK
AGAIN
The wine is wrong. The song is obvious. The sofa is terrible. Somehow an opinion about upholstery has become a verdict on a human being.
A very expensive little pedestal
Taste can be a source of delight: the plate you found in a market, the record that changes the evening, a room arranged until it finally feels like yours.
It can also become a sorting machine. People begin to recognise one another by brands, references and the correct kind of indifference. Then a preference stops being a pleasure and becomes an entrance requirement.
We learn what we know
Exposure matters. So do money, geography, family, time and access. Knowing the difference between two kinds of porcelain may reflect curiosity and study. It may also reflect having grown up around both.
There is nothing shameful about expertise. There is something wearying about using expertise to make a person regret asking a question. A useful expert opens a door. A snob checks whether you already own the key.
Criticism can be generous
A film can be badly made. A meal can disappoint. A design can fail at the job it was meant to do. Thoughtful criticism explains how and why, leaving room for disagreement.
“Only an idiot would like this” offers no such explanation. It replaces an encounter with an object with a hierarchy of people. You may dislike a song without diagnosing the intelligence of everybody dancing to it.
The mixed table is often better
A handmade mug beside inherited china. A familiar pop song after a difficult piece of music. A paperback you loved enough to crease. An expensive coat worn with shoes that have seen a great deal of life.
Consistency is not a moral requirement. A person can care about craftsmanship and still order the ordinary thing. They can know a lot about art and enjoy something sentimental without presenting a defence to the room.
Take the pleasure home
Tell us what you love and what you notice. Show us the detail we might have missed. Share your enthusiasm without making us pass a test first.
Your taste belongs to you. It can be informed, eccentric, luxurious, simple or wonderfully contradictory. The minute it requires an inferior audience to feel satisfying, perhaps the most interesting object to examine is the pedestal itself.
Photography throughout this story is AI-generated editorial illustration, including imagined settings and symbolic objects.