Icarus Ick
The Blessedness and Beastliness of Man's Infinite Capacity to Appreciate and Enjoy Excellence
In Augustine’s account of the beatific vision, we continue to grow in our knowledge and appreciation of the excellence of our summum bonum—the trinitarian God—for all of eternity. This requires something of human nature that is certainly tremendously improved in glory, but which must be present to some degree now for it to be improved upon then: an ability to appreciate excellence and take pleasure in it, that can be cultivated and increased, and which cannot be exhausted merely by an infinite extension of time.[1] While there is great joy to be derived from this realization, I want to argue that it has serious implications for how we now live.
Let me begin by giving an example with which we are all familiar: grapes. Children enjoy grapes and, perhaps much more, the juice that may be made from them. Beyond this, there is the world of wine, full of debate, envy, fraud, pretension, fortunes, and refinement. Whatever you might think of a particular wine and its price, no one can deny that wines are different from one another, pair better or worse with foods, palettes, and constitutions. There is a better wine for a given situation even if we can’t know which is best because of our limited ability to know ourselves and the infeasibility of comparing all possible alternatives.
I think that market capitalism and existentialist coping mechanisms have jaded us to real differences in quality between things, leading to absurd statements about value being entirely a matter of the market or meaning being entirely a matter of one’s own making. No, drinking wine is objectively better than drinking piss and well-aged, fine wines are generally better than new, cheap wine. There is a reason to avoid all this mess and enjoy what’s on sale at Publix rather than chasing the august cellars of the world, but it isn’t because good wine is a fraud, farce, or felony against decency.[2]
The reason is that we are made to most enjoy the ever-deepening pursuit of quality and, this side of glory, that pursuit inevitably exhausts our finitude and leaves us disillusioned, despondent, jaded, skeptical, complacent, numb, or a host of ennui that typify Icarus and all his kin of soul. Refinement without measure anesthetizes one to the simple pleasures of the commonly available and forces one to pursue ever increasing qualities of specimen. If one is poor, one may maintain such a drive the way that the lash continues to bring forth blood with each stripe, permitting healing for just so long as staves off death and then returning to the torment. If one is rich, one may quickly exhaust the world’s supply of the thing[3] and find a gaping abyss at the end.
In both such cases, the person has failed to grasp that their finitude makes the pursuit of excellence and enjoyment of it into the same kind of lesson in balance that must govern all earthy endeavors. The monks ora et labora, the saints fast and feast, and even da Vinci had to defecate and pay his taxes. When we seek to maximize any part of our lives, we are logically driven to wonder whether what we are seeking to maximize is maximal. When we amputate every organ of our body except our digestive tract, maximizing its pleasure leads to destruction of those organs which, contrary to our fantasy, are still very much attached.
If you don’t have money, don’t eat rich food. The best outcome is that you can’t appreciate what differentiates it from less costly food and waste money. The worst outcome is that you open Pandora’s box and are haunted by foie gras every time you attempt to enjoy the day-old bread on which you subsist. Nor is this just a matter of solving poverty. Do we really want to die on the hill of all people eating foie gras? No, because it is both unsustainable and, what is far more grave, serves only to raise the baseline expectation of the parties so provisioned. We must accept that some people are[4] in a state of poverty wherein cultivating this human capacity actively—or at least to the same degree—is imprudent, which is a conceit we admit reasonable in all manner of other situations in human society.
Notice that wealthy people are not happier with ten pools than the child who never sees more water than runs in the sink is with none. A pool may be a good thing and ten pools may make Gatsby’s parties more™, but the poolless child does not spend his life wondering about things he has never heard, seen, or conceived. If he has seen a friend’s pool, his life has only been made “better” if his access to this remains uninhibited. Even then, his baseline level of happiness will recalibrate and now the primary thing that can happen is that he loses access and is made worse off than he was not knowing of this thing called “pool”.
Does this mean that we should pursue no good? No, just that we should measure our refinement to what is sustainable and recognize that there is risk inherent to cultivating our ability to appreciate excellence and attempting to enjoy it. The person who enjoys their local Chinese takeout, Greek diner, and Italian restaurant is better off than the person who goes to NYC and runs the gambit of Michelin elevations of these archetypes and then can never enjoy a meal out in their hometown. Why not just cook? Well, I have a friend who does that so well that he can only enjoy eating out at Michelin level establishments. Is he happier? No, because most people who want to go out to eat with friends have no intention of dropping hundreds of dollars each time.
The golden mean, in this case, is to appreciate everything for what it is and to cultivate this magnanimity of valuation by exposing oneself to and practicing enjoyment of what is both above and below one as one has opportunity. If you cannot see the good in a diner, you are an ingrate and a snob. If you cannot see the refinement in Michelin, you are an ignoramus and a hick. If you can only ever eat at Applebee’s®, Chili’s®, Outback Steakhouse®, or Olive Garden®, then you are likely better able to function than the other two sick people, but you should branch out and grow in your capacity to encounter difference without offence or a failure to enjoy what is enjoyable.
The lie that we all have a limited capacity to enjoy and should be accommodated in our paucity of soul is foolish. The lie that refinement is always preferable is equally so. The measured, prudent pursuit of growth as part of a carefully balanced life is within reach of most people at some point in their lives and is an education in itself. It is the single best way I know to improve one’s ability to be all things to all people without making them feel small or to be tormented by narrowness encountering difference with displeasure. It doesn’t need to be your whole personality or make you wear the clothing of other cultures like a social fig leaf. It is just that one does not need to choose between happiness and the appreciation and enjoyment of excellence if one is cognizant of the limitations[5] and engages in a sustainable way balanced with the rest of life.
[1] The degradation of this faculty in old age is part of our mortal decay that foreshadows the curse of death, not a result of the passing of time, per se.
[2] The triumph of California wines over French wines at a blind taste testing in France is hilarious precisely because the concept of better and worse wines and value for the spend are rooted in qualities of the wines and human palettes that aren’t entirely contrived.
[3] As an experience, at least; possession is a king’s vice.
[4] An “is” doesn’t make an “ought”, but neither does denying the reality bring about the ideal thereby.
[5] These are not dissimilar to the limitations of learning a language or travelling to a foreign country. It reminds me of the “Romano Tours” skit from SNL: