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In many ways omnivorism is the only possible taste left. A singular notion of good taste is unjustifiable in a cosmopolitan world. The scholar Kwame Anthony Appiah defines “cosmopolitanism” as “a recognition and celebration of the fact that our fellow world citizens, in their different places, with their different languages, cultures, and traditions, merit not just our moral concern but also our interest and curiosity.” Cosmopolitanism is not just a superficial embrace of cultural diversity but a conscious rejection of the is-ought fallacy. Our enthusiasm for other communities’ conventions supports our effort to overcome conventionality itself. For the early-twentieth-century philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, “Other nations of different habits are not enemies: they are godsends.”
By collectively reaching this stage of meta-knowledge, we come to understand the arbitrariness of our own preferences, tastes, and culture. To proclaim superiority of preferred styles over others is accordingly an arrogant and bigoted act. A harpsichord concerto can’t be judged to be “better” than an Indian rāga. The cultural studies scholar Fred Inglis explains, “To declare difference as a value is to refuse, according to liberalism’s first protocol, to tell others how to live.” Omnivore taste is also a precursor to ultraindividualism: for everyone to follow their hearts, all idiosyncratic choices must be tolerated.
this is good
With the Revenge of the Head in a long-tail world, cultural literacy for the last few decades requires reading a few serious books every year but also consuming products from the largest conglomerates: Marvel superhero movies (Walt Disney), Beyoncé (Columbia/Sony), Keeping Up with the Kardashians (Ryan Seacrest Productions backed by iHeartMedia, Inc., the new corporate name for the widely loathed Clear Channel). Poptimism means that elites should commune with these works, as they’re “what the people want.” But money can always fake the veneer of popularity. The cultural industry will always have the means and might to dominate our mind-space, and a major point of “indie snobbery” was to provide counterbalance. The music producer and writer Nick Sylvester worries, “By embracing the project of pop music, we might be complicit in letting our underground ecosystems dry up and making pop become the only game in town.” By denying taste as a tool and hesitating to criticize popular works, outsider groups and critics have surrendered their primary way of pushing back. We now risk living in the world that essayist George W. S. Trow predicted in the 1980s: “Nothing was judged—only counted.”
At some point our expectations will adjust to these structural realities, but at the moment, we suffer from what Pierre Bourdieu calls hysteresis—the lingering values of a previous age continuing to guide our judgments. Take our feelings toward fame. In the past we assigned high status to anyone who could achieve celebrity. To be broadcasted required being on television, which was limited to very few. Today anyone with a smartphone and an internet connection can be broadcasted. Yet the sheer act of mediation still manages to make individuals seem more charismatic. But why should we still be enamored with fame at all when fame is so cheap? Maybe soon we won’t be. And there are many other values we’re likely to abandon as the internet age becomes the only age we know: historical value, artistic legacy, authenticity.
cool
These are hardly heartwarming conclusions. Moreover, the deep influence of status on our individual choices challenges our very sense of free will. The sociologist Pitirim Sorokin writes, “When we ourselves determine something, we feel ourselves free; and especially when this self-determination flows spontaneously from us as something quite natural to us and emanating from our very nature.” The regularity of mechanisms behind aesthetics, choice, taste, and identity all question where to draw the line between “our very nature” and our position within a particular hierarchy. Annoyed with Thorstein Veblen’s theories, the famed American critic H. L. Mencken wrote, “Do I admire Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony because it is incomprehensible to Congressmen and Methodists—or because I genuinely love music? Do I prefer terrapin à la Maryland to fried liver because plow-hands must put up with the liver—or because the terrapin is intrinsically a more charming dose?” Mencken correctly notes that status value isn’t the only aspect of cultural value, but he’s too confident that he can separate the effects of status from his “pure” contemplation of beauty and pleasure. Over the course of history, humans repeatedly and regularly changed their cultural preferences—almost always in the direction of status. Our desire to adopt the norms of elites can seemingly override biological instinct, economic rationality, and personal psychology. Status concerns nudged the Beatles to trade their proud rock ’n’ roll pompadours for arty moptops and forced William Finnegan to abandon his beloved longboard.