How to raise a child with taste in eighteenth-century Britain

https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/do-not-suffer-him-become-bigot

by apollinaire • 3 years ago

79 56 3 years ago

fsckboy• 3 years ago

bigot (noun) : a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices

The notion that bigot is primarily synonymous with "racist" is a modern change; traditionally it was just concerned with intolerance of conflicting ideas. I think it was over the political debate about segregation that the idea bigotry transferred to racial attitudes.

(obsolete) One who is overly pious in matters of religion, often hypocritically or else superstitiously so.

the eighteenth century probably dates back to the more obsolete sense of the word

1820 Charles Robert Maturin "Donna Clara was a woman of a cold and grave temper, with all the solemnity of a Spaniard, and all the austerity of a bigot."

Etheryte• 3 years ago

Frame challenge, I wouldn't say it's common to consider bigot synonymous or nearly synonymous with racist, or at least that has never been my experience. What makes you feel like this is the case?

dmurray• 3 years ago

Racist might be wrong but it's definitely now used for people who are intolerant of other people, usually for identity-politics reasons.

These days you can be bigoted against black or Muslim or gay or transgender people, but not really about Greek statuary or rap music or electric cars or PHP, no matter how strong your opinions on those.

Waterluvian4• 3 years ago

From my context: I’ve often heard it used to mean things other than racist, but it always carries a very strong, intentionally hurtful connotation.

OJFord• 3 years ago

I agree: 'racist bigot', 'racial bigotry' might be common uses, but also clearly show it's not specifically about racism on its own.

I couldn't have managed a definition, but on its own I'd take it to mean something like the supposedly 'obsolete' meaning above.

infecto• 3 years ago

Weird takes down this thread. Personally I have never heard/seen bigot being used to describe as defined here. I have always heard it used in the context of intolerance to some group of people. Would never have guessed it’s history.

_a_a_a_• 3 years ago

The notion that bigot is primarily synonymous with "racist" is a modern change

Not to me. Bigot is a wider term that encompasses racism, but isn't just about it.

layer8• 3 years ago

The notion that bigot is primarily synonymous with "racist" is a modern change;

And primarily a US-American one, it seems to me. I wasn’t aware of his change, and the definition marked as “obsolete” above is actually what I think of as the word’s literal, non-metaphorical meaning.

pjc502• 3 years ago

The general principle that governs taste is the association of ideas, and this, fortunately, can be most easily illustrated: “I like such a person because her voice puts me in mind of my mother’s. I like this walk because I was very happy the last time I was here with my sister. I think green is the prettiest of all colors; my father’s room is painted green, and it is very cheerful, and I have been very happy in that room, and besides, the grass is green in spring.”

This feels like an extraordinarily Modern view, in that it's not suffering from the idea of an ideal standard of divine beauty embedded in the universe, but rather that it is discovered by the viewer and their emotional associations.

It's also very pluralist, this advice to expose your child to the best examples of art from a variety of cultures.

shakow2• 3 years ago

in that it's not suffering from the idea of an ideal standard of divine beauty embedded in the universe

Frankly, it's your take that feels extraordinarily modern. Do you really believe that people living at this time, being familiar with centuries of style movements (from Greco-Roman antiquity to Italian Renaissance through Baroque and Bronze age Egypt) that were all considered to be beautiful, would cling to an ideal standard of beauty?

Why do modern humans believe that for some reason, they discovered thinking very recently and that all their forefathers were obscure brutes?

pjc502• 3 years ago

You can find people today arguing for a single absolute standard of beauty. Usually they mean "neoclassical architecture".

And indeed it's what the original author from that time was arguing against, the "bigotry" mentioned. So it was clearly an attitude held by some people at the time.

finite_depth2• 3 years ago

As a person very much raised with heavy upper-class British influence (one side of my family comes from nobility, and while I'm American, I maintain very strong cultural, philosophical, and even linguistic ties to Britain), I'm gonna take this top comment spot to hang on a caution: this way of thinking can be really really bad for you in sufficient quantities.

It turns experiences into thoughts. It separates you from your emotions by changing your priority from experiencing, processing, and accepting your feelings to trying to analyze them. And if you, like me, are prone to mental illness, this can be devastating - because emotions often do not have a reason, especially if your brain has strong natural tendencies.

When you're depressed or anxious, sadness or anxiety form of their own accord. You can feel terrible even when things around you are good, or scared even when there is no danger. And it is very easy to get into the habit of trying to justify these feelings after the fact. When you feel sad and the world around you provides you no reason to, the justification you can give - if you're trying to rationalize your emotions - is that the problem is you, and that is an abyss you can easily find yourself trapped in.

Worse, this habit leads to you being "on the side of" those tendencies. When someone tries to help you to understand that your view of the world is skewed, your habit of justifying and rationalizing makes that feel like an attack on your reason or intelligence. You're not depressed, see, because there's this logical reason you came up with for why you feel bad. And there is always a reason you can give, a justification for why you feel bad, because life always has problems that can be invoked to explain emotions that exist in their own right. But they're not why you're miserable, they're just the reasons you give for why being miserable is rational and right. Healing from that kind of illness requires recognizing your reason and your feelings are different things with different roles, and that to try to rationalize emotion is to make a category error.

Introspection can be good, but introspection must pair with experience, not replace it. You may like such a person because her voice puts you in mind of your mother's, but that origin or association is usually not what is important - the fact that you like them is. You may like the walk because you had a lovely day on it once, but what matters is that the walk brings you joy. The analysis is useful largely when your emotions misguide you ("I keep getting into bad relationships because they draw from X emotional weakness", for example), but even then, you want to feel your feelings even if you do not let them guide your beliefs. When I'm in a depressive episode, I can't not feel bad, but what I can do is recognize that my negative feelings are not truths about the world, so that they do not poison me into a factual belief that things can never improve. When I'm anxious, I can't not feel the fear, but I can recognize that it's not a sign of real danger and that I may need to endure it to make some personal progress. These things aren't about rational understanding of my emotions, they're about a recognition that I do not and cannot control them, only how I respond to them.

I tend to think this sort of thing is a pretty big "original sin" of Anglo-American (or perhaps more generally Protestant?) culture. It arises in a kind of guilt-based virtue ethics, one that I think was originally religious, that tells us that our moral value comes from our impulses and drives, not from what we choose to do with them. It told me, in particular, that my inability to force myself to be more motivated or calm was a personal failing, not a piece of me fundamentally separate from my reason or my virtue. It tells us, as a culture, not to listen to ourselves, not to accept half of what we are, in favor of suppression and repression and self-judgement, and it leaves us as half-people as a result.

msteffen• 3 years ago

I find your comment fascinating and also I don’t understand it at all.

You may like such a person because her voice puts you in mind of your mother’s, but that origin or association is usually not what is important—the fact that you like them is.

Are feelings a black box? That seems like a sensible way to see anxiety and depression, which are bad feelings that happen for no (good) reason. But then how should we analyze art, which is what TFA is about, IIUC? Should we stop analyzing art because our enjoyment of it is as inscrutable as depression? That doesn’t seem right (to me) either.

Maybe art can only be understood in the context of groups of people, whose cerebral machinery and personal experiences will vary, but whose cultural context won’t? Maybe your personal feelings about art can only say a tiny amount about the art, but can say a lot about you, to yourself. I guess, if nothing else, knowing that you like a particular kind of art is good in that it gives you a way to make yourself happier.

I’m very curious for your thoughts if you happen to come back to this thread! Thanks!!

hoseja2• 3 years ago

Also, on topic of green rooms in Britain, they were most likely toxic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scheele%27s_Green

randunel• 3 years ago

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vonnik6• 3 years ago

I love this, and it strikes me that one of the main differences between then and now is that we are awash in cheap objects. Isolation from trash in the service of taste seems almost impossible.

Secondly, I can’t think of a contemporary national authority I would defer to.

lotsofpulp• 3 years ago

Secondly, I can’t think of a contemporary national authority I would defer to.

I imagine people living in the developed world defer to many national authorities all the time. Being able to eat almost anything sold and drink tap water with near zero risk of getting sick, being able to trust doctors and medicine, safely flying from one place to another, minimal risk of being in a fire, having all these wireless communications devices work without interference, not worrying about electronic money and securities account balances suddenly disappearing, etc.

vonnik6• 3 years ago

I should have clarified:

This piece is about matters of taste. So a national authority regarding aesthetics.

Woshiwuja• 3 years ago

So the kid likes trash english food?

acolderentity• 3 years ago

This sounds like a bad anime title

yjftsjthsd-h• 3 years ago

An anime title, anyways.

vonnik6• 3 years ago

Since this piece is about inculcating a child with taste, I'd just like to say that in my own life, learning the basics of an analog art form like sketching or piano has been the most powerful way to appreciate the effects that the art can create, the power and potential and degrees of freedom. The gloss on Maria Edgeworth's writing doesn't mention this, but by becoming an amateur, it's a little easier to see how much a great artist must have mastered to express what they did. Standing on the foothills to see the peaks...

And I think that's possible with kids, first just by exposing them to the idea of making, that they can be a producer rather than a consumer of sounds and visuals. And then by modeling the behavior, giving them an example of an adult who sits down and makes something physical.

And finally by actually trying to teach them skills, one inch at a time. A lot of kids in America grow up without those things 1) the idea that they can create; 2) access to tools however basic; 3) the vision of someone actually doing it; 4) the support of someone who can put them on the gradual path of skill acquisition. Like most elements of culture and behavior, it starts at home, and it's hard to create effective institutional proxies.

PG gets into this a little when he talks about transcribing his younger son's oral stories. It's that kind of parental support that parts the waters so that a kid can see what's possible.

sharadov• 3 years ago

I disagree - art is emphasized a lot in the early years in US public schools.

My kids were constantly drawing and coloring till their 2nd grade.

And there is a lot of emphasis on making crafts.

My older one who is 11, has projects - where they are asked to research a topic, make a presentation and speak about that in class.

vonnik6• 3 years ago

I'm sure that's the case for a fair number of schools. And I also think that in many others, it doesn't happen. There's huge variation across schools and districts. But... I think parents can greatly augment those school activities if they have the skills that students are practicing, and when that's the case, and when students see adults making meaningful use of such skills, I suspect they learn faster!

esafak• 3 years ago

I think you need to reflect to develop taste, not just create art for fun as kids do, and this is something schools don't teach until high school. It also happens if you go deep on your own.

vjk800• 3 years ago

I don't know. My parents made me learn how to play piano as a child (well, they didn't force me, but let me understand that they really wanted it) and as a result I was completely uninterested in piano and classical music in general for a long time. Somehow the stuff you grow up with always becomes uninteresting until maybe later into the adulthood.

vonnik6• 3 years ago

I hear that. I also wasted several years of piano lessons that I had to attend as a boy, only to come back to the instrument much later. I'm very much on the "inspire kids to want to do something" side of education and skill development, which is why I think it's important for them to see adults having a lot of fun, or making something meaningful, so that they want to do it. That makes all the difference, and it's one reason why families of musicians tend to breed future musicians.

ghaff• 3 years ago

My parents--and probably mother in particular--were in retrospect very determined not to push me into (non-academic) activities that I didn't pro-actively express an interest in. (I think my mother had piano lessons that she didn't really like.)

I'm not saying this was good or bad but did result in me never having any real exposure to doing music or art.

And I never had much in the way of music or art in school.

wombat-man• 3 years ago

Same. I wonder if my parents had me try a few more things if I'd have found something I'm a little more interested in.

pazimzadeh2• 3 years ago

Same, for classical guitar. I hated it. But now I have perfect pitch, which apparently requires early exposure/training of the ear.

diamondap• 3 years ago

One of the great lines of 18th century theater comes from Richard Brinsley Sheridan's "The School for Scandal." Sir Peter, alarmed at his wife's extravagant spending, asks her why she buys such expensive things. She says, "Because I have taste." To which he replies, "You had no taste when you married me."

thunkshift1• 3 years ago

Visible images he will rapidly collect in his memory, but these must be selected, and his first associations must not be trusted to accident.

Welp, there goes a generation fed on mindless content on screens

ngai_aku• 3 years ago

If a child sees you look at the bottom of a print for the name of the artist before you venture to pronounce upon its merits, he will follow your example and judge by the authority of others and not by his own taste… He will not trouble himself to analyze his taste or discover why one proportion or design pleases him better than another.

I’ve noticed myself falling into this more and more regularly. I’m shifting responsibility a little, but I think the internet makes this more difficult because everyone’s opinion is so public. I find myself reading what others have to say about everything I consume, be it books, movies, music, etc, and I think it impacts my feelings about that thing more than it should. How does one battle that practically?

How to raise a child with taste in eighteenth-century Britain

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