Could You Train Yourself To Enjoy...

[glassjester]

I get your analogy with positive/negative associations. If you were dumped on a date in the greatest restaurant on Earth it would be understandable if you didn't want to set foot in the place again, but it wouldn't have anything to do with you choosing to enjoy or not enjoy the food, which is kind of the principle in play here isn't it?


Once, accidentally when I spilled a cup of the stuff over my plate. It did not taste good and I'm pretty sure if you're honest that you know it wouldn't be better for you either. What do you generally order when you go out for a meal, because I'm laying odds that it isn't Tex Mex in chocolate sauce...

Yes. You know taste aversion is a real phenomenon.
I could have literally come to dislike the taste of the food I was eating while I got dumped.

I hated the taste of peppermint patties (which I previously loved) after getting a concussion, as a kid.
Positive and negative associations can change our very perception of things.

Another taste aversion example: My brother and I were out in the mountains for 3 days during a very arduous hike. During the last leg of our journey, we were completely out of water. It was burning hot, on the bald side of a mountain in California - in August. No streams, ponds, nothing.

We tried eating some Cliff Bars at one point, and didn't even have the saliva to chew and swallow.

Guess what happened? I hated the taste of cliff bars after that.
Up until that day, I'd always loved the taste of them.

But my own stupid actions led to my present-day hatred of cliff bars.

You know what tasted great, though?
Every single food I ate, once we'd made it off the mountain and got some water in us.
I have many times since then, referred to the bland pasta salad I had later that night as the best meal of my life. And I don't just feel that way because of positive associations with it - it really tasted better than anything I'd ever eaten before. My perception of it was changed.

It's obvious. It's because our palettes and taste buds are generally hardwired to put certain foodstuffs with others. Salt in savoury and sugar in sweet. That's a basic rule sure but you don't 'choose' to find the taste of a food savoury or sweet do you? Or anything else, bitter etc.

No, but I choose whether I mostly eat savory or sweet foods.
I go long periods of time without dessert type foods.
I started doing that years ago. And I've found that I like sugary foods less and less, the more time I spend away from them.

In fact, I now only eat foods with any added sugar at all during specific times of year.
Each time my "dessert season" rolls around, I enjoy it less.

Why? Because I've chosen not to eat the stuff.

Sure, you probably can get accustomed to food from other cultures, heck, I enjoy a lot of spicy food and here's something you might appreciate. I was out with a good friend a coupla years ago in a local pub and it was 'curry club night', so essentially it was a curry of choice with a pint for a lot less than it would normally cost. I was fed up of this friend saying how much he enjoyed the smell of the stuff but wouldn't order one but this time I convinced him to give one a go. Turned out he'd had a prank played on him by his brother who'd made him one that practically set his mouth on fire and it turned him off curry for years. when I explained that the milder ones taste as how you'd expect from the aroma he had a Tikka Massala and loved it.

So, negative associations with the prank sure. He might have easily still not enjoyed it on choosing to give it a go as well however. His choice was to do just that, not to enjoy the food itself.

No disagreement here.
I haven't once argued that initial reactions to a food/song are a matter of choice.
Only that you condition yourself, including via deliberate choices, to prefer certain types of things.

Well, again, why do you suppose that is? Restaurants and food outlets are in the business of providing a market, not determining the tastes of that market itself.

Popularity of a thing just means lots of people prefer it. It doesn't mean they innately prefer it.

Well, no, they didn't. I could have played 'The Rite' and been bored by it, found it to be a cacophony or some such. I didn't, nor did I 'choose' to enjoy it. The only choice I made that day was to try a tape that my dad hired from the local library and give it a go without knowing anything about it. Sure, as I've already said I made choices to search out more of Stravinsky, other contemporaries and searched for music that was more likely to hit that 'musical spot' through all sorts of different genres. Some I liked, a lot of it I didn't but I've never shut out anything that hits the ear. I know through continual exposure to commercial music that it's few and far between where something does that but if I enjoy it I enjoy it. It has to be something that isn't by the numbers and formulaic though.

So you think you had some latent, innate preference for that particular piece, that was simply awakened upon hearing it?

Are you ever enjoyed while bored? If something is interesting then has to be something enjoyable about it at least.

All apples are fruits. Not all fruits are apples.

If somethings completely lacks any enjoyment then there's nothing there to actually increase. The closest I got to anything resembling was the repartee as to how crap the local radio station was...

Alright, but have you ever done anything to try to increase your enjoyment of a thing?

Probably, except that's not how things work. If I could have chosen to enjoy Salmonella food poisoning for a fortnight as a kid then you can bet your last cent I'd have done it. Not an option though...

I don't know about that.
Is that really the type of thing you wish you enjoyed?
That would make you a real weirdo.

But shouldn't you be insistent that everyone can train themselves to enjoy Ligeti's music, to be consistent?

:think:

Yes. I think everyone probably could.

 

[glassjester]

It does nothing for me frankly, as does a lot of 'contemporary' modern work, especially in art. I think there's a fair case for your 'emperor's new clothes' argument in that regard and there's been a constant 'battle' in that area for years. I'm no fan of a lot of 'conceptual' art in that regard as some of it reeks of pretentiousness so that's a fair counter GJ.

Not so much where it comes to the verifiable skill and mastery of those who've written, composed undisputed masterpieces in the field of the arts, even up to the present.

Else do you seriously think that Beethoven, Dali, Shakespeare are overhyped quacks and their critical and public acclaim are borne out of nothing but subjective enjoyment?

There's some sub-grouping going on here.
A bit of a "no true masterpiece" fallacy.

Yes, it does all come down to subjective enjoyment.
And no, that doesn't mean Shakespeare's an "overhyped quack."

Here's an easy way to resolve this part of the discussion: Can you point to an "undisputed masterpiece" that no one enjoys?

 

[glassjester]

Shakespeare's work's reputation as "masterpiece" is not undisputed - he's had his detractors over the ages


if your argument is that his work is objectively genius, then provide me with objective measures that define it as genius


the following resonates with me - can you tell me, objectively what makes it a great speech?

Fair question, I think.

 

[glassjester]

No, else any given pop song could be described as such. No serious scholar or anyone informed would deny that Beethoven's fifth or 'The Rite' aren't musical masterpieces even if they didn't personally care for either work. TH has addressed this in detail already so I suggest you re-read his responses as I don't really care to regurgitate essentially the same lines?

Ok. But if no one at all cared for them, they wouldn't be considered masterpieces by anyone.
Heck, we wouldn't even know about them.

As above. There's reasons why Shakespeare will still be venerated in another hundred years and why the authors of Mills & Boon novels won't be, or really, ever have been. C'mon GJ, you can do the math here.

I guess someone being read for hundreds of years would probably have many more people enjoying his work...

Nobody's arguing that you should enjoy a critically acclaimed and established piece in the arts anyway. I sure don't enjoy everything that's venerated as a masterwork but that's besides the point.

No, enjoyment is not beside the point. It is the point - of this thread anyway. Let's not lose sight of that.

Someone who didn't enjoy it and lacked any musical understanding as to why it's a masterpiece might though.

Lacked musical understanding?
So... educating themselves about music (a deliberate action) might increase their enjoyment of it?

 

[Town Heretic]

Fair question, I think.

Shakespeare's greatness wasn't really disputed, not even in his lifetime, when the second best writer of the age tipped his hat to Will. The impact of WS on our language is profound. His insight into human nature, his ability to examine and relate that nature through art is largely unparalleled. His imprint on poetry, plays and the language he used to shape both the canvas and the tool is singular. He stands apart even in the rare climes of genius. Though time has made some of that language less accessible to people who don't acquire the tools to appreciate it, as eloquent and expressive as he was, the largely uneducated public both understood and clamored for his work.

Imagine the talent it requires to originate language and some form, lay bare the complexity of the human heart with novelty, humor and insightful spectacle and to do it all in such a way that the finest and best educated minds of his day and the fellow peddling fish encompassed it and were enlivened by it. Astonishing really.

He coined around 2,000 words and phrases and his plays were instrumental in the formation of formal rules of grammar for our language.

Said Ben Johnson, a lion of the literary day, "[Shakespeare] was not of an age, but for all time". An opinion shared by other genius of later repute, “He breathed upon dead bodies and brought them into life. Nor sequent centuries could hit Orbit and sum of Shakespeare’s wit.” Emerson

Dryden put it, “He was the man who of all modern, and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul.But Shakespeare’s magic could not copied be; Within that circle none durst walk but he.
He was naturally learned; he needed not the spectacles of books to read nature. He looked inwards, and found her there.”

Though I think Dawson summed it best. "It is sometimes suspected that the enthusiasm for Shakespeare's works shown by some students is a fiction or a fashion. It is not so. The justification of that enthusiastic admiration is in the fact that every increase of knowledge and deepening of wisdom in the critic or the student do but show still greater knowledge and deeper wisdom in the great poet. When, too, it is found that his judgment is equal to his genius, and that his industry is on a par with his inspiration, it becomes impossible to wonder or to admire too much."

Popularity comes in with an inhalation and as often goes out with the following breath. The laurel of a moment is ground into the dust of the next. Greatness endures, because it transcends the momentary, speaking to truths that are rooted in our being and not in the things we wrap it in.

 

[Arthur Brain]

Yes. You know taste aversion is a real phenomenon.
I could have literally come to dislike the taste of the food I was eating while I got dumped.

I hated the taste of peppermint patties (which I previously loved) after getting a concussion, as a kid.
Positive and negative associations can change our very perception of things.

Again, not denying that these things can happen and negative emotions can affect the appetite altogether. If I'd been dumped while eating a particularly good Sunday roast then I can well imagine that Sundays could well have turned into pasta meals...my dad once got really ill a few hours after one of my mom's home cooked meals, nothing to do with the food itself I hasten to add but he ended up dry retching for days and all he could taste was sickly treacle sponge, so with negative association we didn't have treacle sponge for the following year, which I was gutted by to be quite honest. Once he'd gotten over all that the more positive aspects of the desert came back into play and he could enjoy it again.

Another taste aversion example: My brother and I were out in the mountains for 3 days during a very arduous hike. During the last leg of our journey, we were completely out of water. It was burning hot, on the bald side of a mountain in California - in August. No streams, ponds, nothing.

We tried eating some Cliff Bars at one point, and didn't even have the saliva to chew and swallow.

Guess what happened? I hated the taste of cliff bars after that.
Up until that day, I'd always loved the taste of them.

But my own stupid actions led to my present-day hatred of cliff bars.

Again, understandable, but do you reckon you could enjoy one now? After all, it wasn't the taste of the stuff itself that you stopped enjoying was it?

You know what tasted great, though?
Every single food I ate, once we'd made it off the mountain and got some water in us.
I have many times since then, referred to the bland pasta salad I had later that night as the best meal of my life. And I don't just feel that way because of positive associations with it - it really tasted better than anything I'd ever eaten before. My perception of it was changed.

If you're that starved of food then I can well imagine. I've heard stories and read articles of where hunger itself overrides anything else if your body physically requires it to survive that were worse than any bland pasta meal.

No, but I choose whether I mostly eat savory or sweet foods.
I go long periods of time without dessert type foods.
I started doing that years ago. And I've found that I like sugary foods less and less, the more time I spend away from them.

In fact, I now only eat foods with any added sugar at all during specific times of year.
Each time my "dessert season" rolls around, I enjoy it less.

Why? Because I've chosen not to eat the stuff.

I used to eat a lot of sweets as a kid but as an adult my palette developed into the more savoury. I rarely eat sweets nowadays but that's hardly anything uncommon from what I've gathered. The point remains, you don't have a choice in your palette where it comes to savoury or sweet do you? What foods you choose to eat is something else altogether. There are times where I have a craving for a certain food that is completely out of my control as well, which is especially frustrating when I don't have it in the house...

No disagreement here.
I haven't once argued that initial reactions to a food/song are a matter of choice.
Only that you condition yourself, including via deliberate choices, to prefer certain types of things.

Well, again, no. I've never 'chosen' to enjoy or prefer a piece of music over another. If it hits it hits regardless of genre.

Popularity of a thing just means lots of people prefer it. It doesn't mean they innately prefer it.

A bit like saying that most people 'prefer' to have both legs instead of cutting one of them off with a hacksaw...lain:

So you think you had some latent, innate preference for that particular piece, that was simply awakened upon hearing it?

I didn't choose to be blown away by the thing GJ. I'd heard nothing of the like before and it was just amazing. Don't know what else to tell you by now.

All apples are fruits. Not all fruits are apples.

Um, thanks for stating the obvious?

:idunno:

Alright, but have you ever done anything to try to increase your enjoyment of a thing?

Yes, turn the volume up or down depending...

I don't know about that.
Is that really the type of thing you wish you enjoyed?
That would make you a real weirdo.

Why? Wanting to enjoy some crap pop song seems pretty weird on the face of it and I think you got my point there anyway.

Yes. I think everyone probably could.

Okaaaaay then....

 

[Arthur Brain]

Oops. Give me a minute and I'll edit this with a response. The painting in question is a Rothko. TBC. Rothko is a bit like baseball, you need to be there. I love a lot of his work. It's powerful in person. He went through a number or styles and explorations before finding that particular voice.

A couple of things from earlier in his artistic life:

View attachment 25124 View attachment 25125 View attachment 25126

That last example looks like Mondrian rather than Rothko...

 

[Ktoyou]

Could never train myself to like the colour orange.

but I do like oranges to squeeze into orange juice

 

[Arthur Brain]

There's some sub-grouping going on here.
A bit of a "no true masterpiece" fallacy.

Yes, it does all come down to subjective enjoyment.
And no, that doesn't mean Shakespeare's an "overhyped quack."

Here's an easy way to resolve this part of the discussion: Can you point to an "undisputed masterpiece" that no one enjoys?

Well that's a bit of a fallacy in itself. There's no way to prove that there's any given thing that nobody enjoys let alone an 'undisputed masterpiece'.

There are reasons why Shakespeare will continue to be taught in schools and why Barbara Cartland won't be...

 

[Arthur Brain]

Ok. But if no one at all cared for them, they wouldn't be considered masterpieces by anyone.
Heck, we wouldn't even know about them.

What an interesting world that wouldn't be...

I guess someone being read for hundreds of years would probably have many more people enjoying his work...

Consider the reasons why he is.

No, enjoyment is not beside the point. It is the point - of this thread anyway. Let's not lose sight of that.

There is if that's your yardstick for what constituting a masterpiece should have as personal consideration.

Lacked musical understanding?
So... educating themselves about music (a deliberate action) might increase their enjoyment of it?

Not necessarily but it would at least stop the ignorance over something they simply didn't like in itself.

 

[Ktoyou]

Very much like Polonius!

 

[Town Heretic]

That last example looks like Mondrian rather than Rothko...

Didn't recognize it, but it was in the catalog. I've seen the later Rothko works in person, at any rate. And I was aware of the earlier bits because a long time ago I thought it was important to see if the people who were working beyond the tangential relationship of traditional forms could pull them off.

 

[ok doser]

Shakespeare's greatness wasn't really disputed....

google - it means you never have to say stupid things again, town

1. Voltaire called Shakespeare's works an "enormous dunghill." 2. Tolstoy was equally unimpressed, calling Will's writing "Crude, immoral, vulgar and senseless." 3. George Bernard Shaw really waxed poetic about how much he hated Shakespeare. "There is no eminent writer, not even Sir Walter Scott, whom I despise so entirely as I despise Shakespeare," he said. "It would be positively a relief to me to dig him up and throw stones at him." But there was a writer he hated more - Homer. 4. British poet Walter Savage Landor had no love lost for the prolific writer either, and apparently would have been a great fit at Saveur or Bon Appetit: "The sonnets are hot and pothery, there is much condensation, little delicacy, like raspberry jam without cream, without crust, without bread." 5. Charles Darwin may just have been too evolved for Shakespeare: "I have tried lately to read Shakespeare and found it so intolerably dull that is nauseated me." 6. English playwright Robert Greene dismissed Shakespeare as a mere amateur who has been romanticized over the years, calling him "An upstart now beautified with our feathers." 7. J.R.R. Tolkien, in speaking of his days at King Edward's School, said that he "disliked cordially" the Shakespeare section of his English literature studies. 8. Dr. Samuel Johnson, a well-known English writer and scholar in the 1700s, had his red pencil out while reading Bill. "Shakespeare never had six lines together without a fault," he once said. "Perhaps you may find seven, but this does not refute my general assertion." 9. Samuel Pepys spent an evening watching A Midsummer Night's Dream, then recorded in his diary that [he] "had never seen before, nor shall ever again, for it is the most insipid ridiculous play that ever I saw in my life." 10. King George III was maybe not so firm in his hatred, but more disapproving of the melancholy turn many of Shakespeare's works took. "Is this not sad stuff, what what?" http://mentalfloss.com/article/22551/quick-10-10-people-who-hate-shakespeare

 

[ok doser]

Could never train myself to like the colour orange.

but I do like oranges to squeeze into orange juice

i like 'em for juggling practice - just the right size, texture and weight

 

[glassjester]

Rothko is a bit like baseball, you need to be there.

Well that's a bit of a fallacy in itself.

Objectively speaking, is that Rothko painting a great work of art, or not?

 

[Town Heretic]

Objectively speaking, is that Rothko painting a great work of art, or not?

You still owe me a response to my bit on Shakespeare. I think it will be easier with that or with music than painting, because so much of modern painting is visceral. I haven't seen that particular piece in the flesh and I don't subscribe to the view that everything a great artist does is necessarily on par with everything else.

 

[glassjester]

You still owe me a response to my bit on Shakespeare. I think it will be easier with that or with music than painting, because so much of modern painting is visceral. I haven't seen that particular piece in the flesh and I don't subscribe to the view that everything a great artist does is necessarily on par with everything else.

"Owe" is a strong word.

Anyway, when I wrote that Doser's post was a "fair question," I wasn't referring to his comment on people not liking Shakespeare (which seems to be what you responded to).

I was referring, more specifically, to this:

the following resonates with me - can you tell me, objectively what makes it a great speech?

Which you did not respond to.

So two queries, now.
What makes either Rothko's painting or Shakespeare's speech objectively great?

Feel free to address both.
Or one.
Or neither.

 

[ok doser]

"Owe" is a strong word.

like artie demanding that you engage in a "debate, on points!" :darwinsm:

 

[ok doser]

... so much of modern painting is visceral.

aka "subjective"

 

[ok doser]

...do you seriously think that Beethoven, Dali, Shakespeare are overhyped quacks and their critical and public acclaim are borne out of nothing but subjective enjoyment?

still waiting for you to list the objective measurable qualities that makes their work "masterpieces"