has all the moral (and aesthetic) depth

of a mid 18^th-century southern US erotic cotton-underwear fancier’s

sneering assessment

of erotic synthetic-cotton underwear

from an abolitionist manufacturer.

My (shamefully late) moral awakening has made me unable to read most of what I used to consider our classical literature. The flagrant and unquestioned abuse of animals is everywhere. 

I feel the same way about the historical and biological past of human (gustatory) taste. In broad strokes, I know the story, but the details are not titillating. 

In fact I think that in a much broader sense I have renounced most “taste” of  all sorts, both gustatory and aesthetic/cultural. It’s so imbued with pleasure at the expense of the suffering of others, human and animal.

Of course there’s no rejecting Darwinian facts – but there’s no pleasure in rehearsing, replicating or revering them.

tasteYes, this does superficially resemble some sort of ascetic, killjoy puritanical cult. But although it would take a while to explain it, I don’t think it’s that at all — and in some fundamental ways the opposite: the enemy is not pleasure itself, but pleasure at the expense of the suffering of others.