The things which I have seen I now can see no more - Wordsworth

I remember being an outsider at a certain social gathering one night. A group of people were talking about their love for a certain kind of music which I happen to not like. My immediate reaction was to call them - in my head - a group of snobs who think any type of music they don't like to be inferior. But this doesn't follow at all. In fact, to the people inside the group, snobbery isn't even on their minds. Snobbery seems to be something that the outsider calls those who are 'in the know', those for whom the notion of snobbery is furthest from their mind. Thus, to the music lovers, the notion of 'loving the right music' wasn't even on their mind - they were just loving the music they happened to naturally love. The question of whether or not the music fit a certain category or genre comes - if at all - as an after-thought.

It's the same with religion. Religion, as we know, is a category we use to label a certain set of behaviors, beliefs, and rituals. But to those 'inside' the religion, the word 'religion' isn't even on their minds. Their minds are too preoccupied thinking about God. The outsider calls the religious man 'religious' as an outsider. If the outsider were to ask the religious man whether he was engaging in religious behavior, the religious man himself would have to become an outside inspector of his own prior behavior. Thus, to those within a category, the category is forgotten; but to the outsider, he has nothing but the category. But an interesting thing happens if I, as an outsider, ask the music snob to explain whether or not their preferred music is actually good and beautiful. There's something about the very study that sops what was before a pure, virginal, thoughtless enjoyment of the kind of music it was most natural for him to love. We're now in the position of the outsider, conjuring up criteria, categories, and requirements: lyrical complexity, genre, voice inflection. All of these elements, which were before rightly ignored (not even consciously ignored, but, by the very nature of what's going on, being blithely ignorant of), are now classified. But do you see what's happened? The classifier now has a before and after with their enjoyment: before the classification and after. Before the classification, the enjoyer's whole psychological framework was more honest in its enjoyment: now, he is almost the object under his own microscope - and how can his previous enjoyment be dublicated in these conditions?

When I am enjoying a great movie or a great book or a great song, I am not at all thinking about whether my taste in these art forms is acceptable, mainstream, or cool. In fact, it's only after I've thought about these distractions that my previoius enjoyment is somewhat tarnished. When I read about the maddening resolve of Captain Ahab in Moby Dick, why cloud my enjoyment or engrossment with petty considerations about genre, acceptability, classifications, writing style, being up to date or mainstream? The child, avoiding his mother in the closet, with a candle, face close up against a ragged copy of Treasure Island, is closer to sincere and unclouded enjoyment of art than the most sophisticated literary critic. The child isn't thinking about 'the right books' or even about books at all; to bring up the subject would be an impertinence. The child is too busy attending to the story; and the story becomes, without the child consciously noticing it, the lense through which the world is interpreted and understood.

These principles seem to me to unlock a mystery I've been trying to figure out for a long time. I'm talking about the habit we all have of trying to get our friends to enjoy the kinds of art we love. If we introduce our friend to this art for any reason, or on any ground, we are bound to become that objective classifier of systems that is so dangerous for the recovery of that old frame of mind that is so necessary for what it means to genuinely enjoy a work of art. It is so much more natural for our friend to be drawn into the music without any kind of prior justification, no excuses for parts of the art the friend might find objectionable, no pressure on the friend to feel as you did at certain times. In doing this, we build a framework though which we invite our friend to experience the art. But it was through the absence of any kind of framework that we came to love the art at all. What we build up for our friend was abscent for us. How can we expect the friend to feel as we felt if the conditions in which the friend experiences the art are one way for him, and another for us? Enjoying a song, a movie, or a book is as simple and mysterious as falling in love. It can't be forced, as if to treat it as a magic potion that, if digested, works an identical effect in any person. It is more like our taste in food. When I'm tasting the steak, I'm thinking less of the steak and more about the taste, my enjoyment resting less with the steak and more with the taste that the steak occasioned. If I find afterwards that it is fashionable to eat steak, then, if I really love the taste, this will no more diminish my love for steak than if I discovered it was socially frowned upon. But if your love adjusts to the up and and downs of social acceptance, you'll know your love was a sham.