One man's trash

Maggie's Farm linked this charming article, originally published in the NYT, a periodical that still apparently manages to put out things worth reading despite its best efforts to ruin itself. Molly Young gives us a thoughtful and stimulating look at the work of Paul Rozin, who analyzes disgust reactions. I realized long ago that my disgust reactions are anomalous. It's one of the things that define my identity, which is founded on a willingness to question rules and conclusions rather than assume that the majority view is by definition correct. Our differences are the basis of a valueable exchange system, in which all the riches available to us can be sorted through a complex social market in which we each apply our own measures of cost and benefit. Around our house, for instance, I automatically take on jobs that I know would distress my husband but have a negligible impact on me, if any, like cleaning up poop. In return, my husband assumes responsibility for things that would drive me nuts but place little burden on him. Voila, an economy! Few things make me happier than to find that what I prize is so undervalued by others that I can pick it up for a song. It's exactly the opposite of wanting what's in vogue. It's what makes me at heart a contrarian. Society needs contrarians, as long as we're not too difficult to get along with. Someone should always be hanging around demanding that we reconsider some basic assumptions, just in case. The syndrome does come with a large dose of alienation. In my seventh decade of life I'm only just now beginning to get a handle on how to deal with that. We contrarian introverts do need communion with other human souls, we just can't get it in the most usual ways.

2 comments:

Assistant Village Idiot said...

The NYT does still do science well most of the time, unless something comes down the pike they just can't abide politically.

Grim said...

A strange omission, given the source, is Martha Nussbaum's work on disgust and shame. She leveraged a similar argument to convince the swing voter on the SCOTUS that all opposition to homosexuality and its practices was merely irrational disgust; and, further, that all such forms of legislation on matters of moral disgust should be held improper and inconsistent with human dignity.

Weirdly, I noted when reading the book, her argument approvingly quoted another guy who remarked that such impositions on human dignity (as they understood it) "would be hideous!" Perhaps it is hard to distinguish morality from disgust, even for august professors of philosophy.