Re: Delicious: The Evolution of Flavor and How It Made Us Human (R Dunn & M Sanchez)
My (shamefully late) moral awakening has made me unable to read most of what I used to consider our classical literature. The flagrant and unquestioned abuse of animals is everywhere.Ā
I feel the same way about the historical and biological past of human (gustatory) taste. In broad strokes, I know the story, but the details are not titillating.Ā
In fact I think that in a much broader sense I have renounced most ātasteā of all sorts, both gustatory and aesthetic/cultural. Itās so imbued with pleasure at the expense of the suffering of others, human and animal.
Of course thereās no rejecting Darwinian facts ā but thereās no pleasure in rehearsing, replicating or revering them.
tasteYes, this does superficially resemble some sort of ascetic, killjoy puritanical cult. But although it would take a while to explain it, I donāt think itās that at all — and in some fundamental ways the opposite: the enemy is not pleasure itself, but pleasure at the expense of the suffering of others.