How your taste affects your Life

It might not make sense in the beginning. You might think taste is something very personal and irrational. At least that's what I thought until now.

What do I mean by taste? Taste, the way I understand, is basically a choice a person would make time and again. Yes the choices of a person do change from time to time and so does taste. But then so does the person's life. One can not even fathom the amount of tastes that can exist in this world, and therefore, there was once a time when I was of the opinion that having judging a person by their taste is very judgemental and unfair. Taste is something very personal and doesnt / can not prove to be the grounds for creating judgements about a person.

So then comes the question, what is the thing that decides the character of a person? Old me would easily answer this one with one word: "actions"! Actions of a person totally and visibly and therefore comprehensively provides strong grounds on judging the character of a person. This is the norm accepted in almost all of the societies in the world. And this is also the reason the entire Law and Order is built on top of actions of a person. A person isnt declared as a criminal by the judge and the jury just because he was thinking about a crime. And don't get me wrong, I am not criticising or arguing about the judiciary systems. Judiciary systems MUST pass on judgements on characters based only and only on their actions. Because the consequence of that judgement is a very real punishment equivalent to the seriousness of crime committed.

But there is one more court house that exists in any given society, one that is completely invisible, but also has real consequences on lives of the people. This is the court house of minds of the people / society. Unlike the real court where a person is judged only when there are two parties at dispute, Here one is judged constantly irrespective of any case / disputes / criminal actions. And the consequence is categorization. Once categorized, your every life choice is viewed from that category's lense and that lense alone.

Let me illustrate with a simple example of politics: Say there is party A and party B. Party A is ruling party and party B is the opposition. If you like the thoughts of major leaders from Party A, you might be called as "blind follower" by the followers of party B. And if you agree with thoughts of Party B, you might be called as "anti-national" since you are mentally joining hands with opposition party and not the ruling party.

Now you might say what has "taste" to do with all of this? And how does it even affect life? -> In this context to think that "This (thoughts of XYZ party) is logical and therefore I agree" is like liking the fact presented in those thoughts more, than liking the other facts. But one major logical flaw pops up here is: what about the people who agree with some of the points from Party A and some of the points in Party B, and what about the people who neither like Party A nor Party B? Well these people are considered as outcast of the society since their "taste of genuinely getting to the deeper levels on both parties thoughts and then deciding to form their opinions / or choosing to stay out of it because there is too much chaos that the mind simply cant ingest to formulate an opinion" is sometimes considered as poor taste in politics. I think the reason might be that by nature, human beings are programmed to look for threats and its easier to identify a threat by categorising and labeling things / people.

And to think about this natural way of thinking and notice its flaws is called meta-cognition. There are only a handful of people on this earth where people even know about meta-cognition. This is mainly because it is extremely difficult for you to separate yourself from your thoughts and observe and analyze your thoughts. But once this meta-cognition becomes a habit, these are the people that can pass on perfect judgements about anyone, because there thoughts are almost self correcting because of there self-awareness. So their "taste" of becoming self-aware about your own thoughts bring them to the top creamy layer of the society. These are the people that are able to question their own believes and therefore are able to see the two sides of the coin clearly without any biases, just like an exemplary king looking calmly to solve the issues of his subjects. This mindset does then certainly help bring peace to their minds and only a peaceful mind can think of brilliant things, and the one who is capable of thinking brilliantly like the top 1%, also keeps the potential to lead an if not exemplary but at least a very decent life. Although these people are usually categorised / labelled / judged "differently" by the societies.

In summary one can say: having the "taste" / "choice" of being open minded enough to question your own believes and observe and analyze your thoughts does indeed changes your life.