As You Like It

As one of the five senses, taste provides flavour.

As an attraction, bent or preference, a taste is often a badge, answering the call of the tribe. How else are tastes motivated? What sense did it make for our parents to say that we could or would or should enjoy this or like that? Tastes change; one can learn to like almost anything. Learning to like something might involve finding out just what it is, something of its history, what can be done with it, what other things typically come with it, how to get more of it, the differences between its varieties many or few, who else likes it and why. Altering, refining or expanding one’s tastes alters, refines, or expands one’s capacity to experience, compare, describe, enjoy, sympathize, and understand. Locking in tastes shuts out this altered, refined or expanded world.

There is a taste for the exotic, for science fiction, jazz, classical architecture, functional clothing, exquisite detail, solitude. Once the morsel is swallowed, all of these developed and learned tastes, aftertastes as it were, are metaphorical expressions of appreciation, requiring knowledge and skill. Good taste and poor taste are appreciations judged, or the capacity for so judging. This brings us back to badges.

If openness is among your aftertastes, if liberal or expansive is the sort of person you want to be, you will try many things, learning to like at least some of them, and judging the tastes you do not share very carefully indeed.