Is there such a thing as good taste?

I was wondering if anyone would bring Christopher Alexander up in this thread, because his work has been a long attempt to answer this question. His claims about the objectivity of beauty, order, and so on, are counterintuitive to contemporary assumptions. But he has certainly gone deeply into the question—like a deep sea diver, or like someone drilling for water in a desert.

My thought as well. He seems to be delving into the metaphysics of quality.

I replied to another comment related, but the anti- version of modernism is of course post-modernism, where nothing is real and everything is mainly its symbolic value. The conceit of that argument is that aesthetics are somehow trivial because anyone can appreciate them but very few can produce them - whereas you take anything post-modern and everyone can produce them but almost nobody can appreciate them sincerely.

The unspoken but founding lie of post-modernity is that criticism is equivalent to competence, and that critics are the equals of performers, but there's just all this false consciousness standing in the way that we can solve by indoctrinating people into narrative anyway. The whole enterprise is predicated on this original deception, and once you have accepted that, you can accept anything, which is why I think they teach it to undergrads.

The authenticity of "primitive" art as being a reaction to the skill and western artifice remains controversial, as if the art does not express the skill of the artist, what does it represent? Not everything has to represent something, but art is purely representation, so if it's not representing skill, there isn't a lot left.

There is certainly an anti-competence movement borne out of critical theories that need for competence to be isolated, as competence and risk are sources of truth themselves* and this physical truth competes with critical narrative, so on this, I don't know that it's a bridgable gulf.

This may be the most important part:

I think po-mo thinkers exist in a simulation founded on that base deception, and they try to convince others that their story (made of language!) is the substrate of our reality, but every time someone gets on a motorcycle, skis down a mountain, prevails over an MMA opponent, hunts food, rides a horse, jumps out of a plane, has sex for pleasure, or has some other peak human experience, the simulation disappears. All the neuroticism that forms the hall of mirrors of false equivalencies, evaporates, and what remains is gravity and time, the physical and the real, and our aesthetic experience of it.

That era has not ended, I'd argue criticism is just telling stories in a very shallow tide pool of history.

There is definitely such a thing as good taste.

I used to work in ultra-high end restaurants (think World's 50 Best). All the cooks are incredibly skilled. But only a small amount of them make good chefs, usually the ones who travel and eat out lots themselves. Many simply had no idea what ingredient combinations are good or bad, even if they could execute a recipe extremely well. I did make it as a chef, ish, got some awards, but the economics are tough, I took a few breaks to travel and go back to school. Working on a few other things. I still do consulting for restaurateurs I know just because I can.

When you look at the top of the top chefs, the difference comes down to taste. They all have the same skills. The best simply make better combinations.

This always bothers me specifically about music. I don't claim to have some universal say on what is good and bad music, there is tons of music out there which I think is tasteful but I simply don't like.

But like 10% of music let's say is absolute garbage, mostly top 40 stuff made from cosntructed bands with some models as front men, written by a team constructed by a label to create the most generically likeable music possible, edited to the point where it doesn't matter that the models are bad singers.

This music seems to account for about 90% of global music consumption as far as I can tell. I've been traveling around the world for many years and it get's depressing when you are in some remote jungle somewhere that feels like your finally off the beaten path and you get to some little shack restaurant / bar and they have One Direction on the radio. You can't fucking escape it. I've had times where I was on 3 continents on 3 months and you here the exact same garbage music regardless of location. It's crazy how ubiquitous it is.

And there is so much good music out there. If anything we are in a golden age in terms of volume of quality independent music being produced. And yet a vast majority of people seem to have no problem listening to the bottom of the barrel junk for a majority of the music they listen to.