How to stop being a "connoisseur"

General
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The last video felt almost like a personal attack. I’ve been thinking recently about how taste is not identity, and how, ultimately, you are measured by what you create rather than what you consume. This fixation on taste as a skill that defines you is a key component of the connoisseur mindset, and it’s definitely a trap I’ve fallen into.

What I can’t quite figure out is how to go back. I can let go of identifying as a connoisseur and make an effort to enjoy more things uncritically, but I can’t change my perception through sheer effort.

I’m never going to be able to listen to a 128 kbps MP3 on a bluetooth speaker and convince myself it’s comparable to hearing FLAC on HD600s or studio monitors. I can decide it doesn’t matter, and I can enjoy the music either way, but I will always fixate on audio quality because I’ve spent hundreds or thousands of hours comparing different headphones, tweaking EQ settings, and trying to dial in specific aspects of sound that I enjoy. I don’t know how to turn that off. On a more immediate, sensory level, I can’t change my mindset and suddenly believe that a $20 clone fragrance smells the same as Tom Ford Tobacco Vanille. I can appreciate it for what it is, but I’m always going to know the difference because I’ve experienced the “better” version. This carries over into everything else: fashion, art, food, all the usual bourgeois pursuits I would like to believe I’m immune to, but clearly am not. Framing it as being about connoisseurship rather than indulgence or status makes it easier to justify, but no less problematic.

I want to get over this way of thinking entirely, but I’m afraid it will remain in the background, continuing to limit both the range of things I can enjoy and the extent to which I enjoy anything at all, since even “good” things are experienced within a critical framework that compares them to what might be even better.

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Years ago, a film critic I used to read a lot wrote about the 4 levels of consuming art. I think about it a lot when it comes to this kind of stuff.

The 4 levels are:

  1. People who experience movies in a state of childlike naivety (they obviously don’t watch a movie and literally think it is real or anything, but they do have an easy sense of transference).
  2. People who have seen a lot of media and thus moved past the first group’s innate transference, but they still seek to recapture that childhood naivety.
  3. People who can transcend that desire for a purely childlike experience by contextualizing the emotional experience into a cerebrally coherent process.
  4. People who absolutely understand the craft of making media.

The point of the exploration of them wasn’t to rank them as a hierarchy – someone may reach the higher levels but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re better. And people can move them or decide to watch a film at, say, level 2 even if they’re able to watch one at level 4.

I think it applies to anything well enough. I appreciate fancy coffee (and have invested money in a good-enough machine and buy my beans from local roasters) but I can go down the chain to have a cheap pod cup if need be.

Viewing different modes of experience as levels to move between, I think it’s possible to keep the connoisseur POV where it thrives and make a choice to step down the rungs when appropriate. Helps stop it be an either/or thing.

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Maybe look for different ways of gauging better/worse? Simple, fresh, affordable, novel, bespoke, homemade, quality ingredients, carefully crafted … plenty of dimensions along which you can experience excellence … plenty of tradeoffs to make that can lead to not only a satisfying product, but satisfaction from knowing and understanding how it came about.

I eat a lot of pork chops for supper, fairly large, no sides, seasoned and popped into an air fryer for 12 minutes. Each one is just a pork chop, but each one is different – thickness, fattiness, bony-ness, distribution of seasoning – I enjoy the variations, and enjoy noticing the variations. I enjoy how little work they are to prepare. I enjoy the first fresh hot bites, and the changes as the meat cools. I enjoy the close-to-zero cleanup. I enjoy that I’m paying $2/lb for meat, less than $2 for my entire supper. I enjoy that I’ve become a person who is so easily satisfied, whose requirements are minimal.

If someone offered to buy me a fine expensive meal I’d probably accept – but to graciously accept a gift, or to enjoy their company, or for a change of pace, all things that would give me far more pleasure than excellent food. And if they offered me a gift certificate for the same, I’d probably say thanks but no thanks, I have food at home and it’s pretty good.

I don’t mean to harsh anyone’s mellow regarding the pursuit of excellence, in eating or anything else. But I’ve learned that opportunities to experience excellence surround me, provided I invest the time and effort to broaden my vistas, rethink my prejudices, pay closer attention, become discerning about previously overlooked things. I’ve learned not to seek out pleasure, but rather to take pleasure in whatever circumstance I find myself.