Language, Ideas, Oysters
A former language professor of mine was frustrated that her class work was stuffed to the bottom of her students’ academic pile, while the business and science work was given precedent, even being worked on while she lectured. It wasn’t that students didn’t care; it was just that the language assignments were not a priority in an educational environment that determined the more reason-driven material to be social differentiators. From the teacher’s perspective, this was painful, because she “saw the world through language.” Her work, the art of words, should have been a priority. Without language, what else was there?
Malcolm Gladwell has recently taken aim at Chris Anderson’s “free.” His argument is that not everything, even information, will be pushed to an economic cost of zero. Citing examples from medical research and nuclear energy, he points to say that beyond just the digital goods being raped of cost, not all information wants to be free, even in this supposed idea economy. His closing thought, and one that I agree with, is that “the digital age has so transformed the ways in which things are made and sold that there are no iron laws.” And Malcolm, of course “views the world though ideas.” More importantly, his ideas.
Anthony Bourdain, in his sex and drugs fueled account Kitchen Confidential, describes a vivid moment in his young days of wandering around Paris that blossomed his love for all things food. While on a picnic boat ride with his family, he encountered his first experience with a raw oyster, still dripping and nearly alive. Showing off, Bourdain tilted the shell towards his mouth, swallowed deeply and remarked that it “tasted of seawater…of brine and flesh..and somehow…of the future.” Bourdain had just eaten an oyster out his cupped hands, but somehow captured his own, driving purpose. His craft allows him to “view the world through adventures in the culinary underbelly,” which was sparked by the consumption of one slimy mollusk.
When you tear down the material aspects of the stories above, really what we’re observing is pure individual perspective. An accepted cognitive bias. A meaning found through sometimes even superficial means where passionate educators, storytellers, chefs–or really anyone with a message to spread–identifies their purpose as a derivative of how the gears of the world run in their eyes.
Rather than argue about the statistics, economics or preferences in any of the above cases, I am simply presenting the means by which these individuals see the world. We each see the various levels of humanity and communication through the eyes of our own work. It’s less “what” we’re doing, but more so “how” we got there. Without that–aside from that silly thing called being “wrong”–there’s not much else.
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