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BAD_TASTE

                                             March 20, 2009


   I think there's a problem
   with the idea of "taste":

     It's all just a matter of
     taste, and you like whatever
     you happen to like, and                    MUSICAL_DAMAGE
     there's no call for getting
     all snobby and looking down
     on someone just because they
     like something different than
     from what you do.

   Esthetic relativity is an attractive
   doctrine, it simplifies a lot of things...

   But I don't think that it quite works
   (though if that thought is not to
   your taste, I don't know I can change
   your mind).

   Esthethic relativity fails
   in much the same way that     And I suspect that this
   ethical relativity fails      happens because the two are
                                 more tightly linked than is
                                 usually acknowledged.


      Scratch a relativist hard enough
      and you'll eventually uncover a
      case where they balk.                       For me, one of
                                                  those cases is
         Somewhere out there is                   "Afternoon
         an example of badness                    Delight" from
         so bad that you can't                    the dreaded 1976.
         regard an acceptance
         of it as anything but                        "Sky rockets in flight...
         a sign of deep sickness.                     Afternoon delight!"

                And further: many of those               It's like a parody
                cases are not just extreme               of bad haiku --
                examples with only a few
                adherents.                               (No one fires off
                                                         sky rockets in the
                Many of them have a large,               *afternoon*.)
                unaccountable, following.





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