Smouch No Longer
How often do others’ biases cloud your perceptions of a place or person? Do you find that your preconceptions are more externally influenced or internally created?
It was a cloudy Sunday afternoon in Buenos Aires. I had spent a mute morning walking around the quiet streets of my little neighborhood in the sprawling Argentinian capital. The residents of this neighborhood are on the elderly side meaning this pocket of the capital finds coveted bits of silence on the weekend mornings. It was during that quiet walk that I felt an urge quite foreign to me: the urge to look at art.
Arbitrary street corner in Villa Crespo, Buenos Aires
I moved to a big city to act on foreign urges like these. It’s a chance to capitalize on potential new interests at the drop of a hat. 30 minutes later, I dismounted a moto-taxi in front of the world-class Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires.
Ambling through the MALBA art museum galleries that afternoon, I began to flit between its artwork in my typical fashion. Each work I approached singularly, pre-determined to devote my attention to the entirety of the museum’s collection that afternoon. However, instead of giving the work as much as a glance upon approach, I would look down at the placard alongside the painting to provide a title and description of what was before me. It was only once I read the placard that I would look up at the art before me.
Unsurprisingly, I saw precisely what the placard told me I would see.
Abaporu—one of MALBA’s most recognized pieces by Brazilian Tarsila do Amaral
It took until halfway through the MALBA’s collection for me to recognize the imprudence in my approach with a gasp of self-awareness. What a sorry strategy for viewing art. Wasn’t the point of being here to critically extract my own meaning from these works? How could I possibly do so by framing what I was to see in advance of seeing it?
Why not ask, “How different would this experience be if I didn’t let the title tell me what to expect?”
That question served as my compass from then on. I decided to test what it would be like to look at the work of art and make a guess first at what the title could be. Instead of using the title of the work to frame my perception, I would form my own opinion based on solely what I interpreted.
The experience was night and day. Figures appeared in the artwork that I would not have noticed prior. I stood in front of certain works for longer than ever before, trying to distinguish the story of its characters or why the artist chose to use certain materials to create the image. I invented stories about both the piece and the artist who painted it.
I could give you the name of this work, or you could figure it out yourself
I was witnessing the same works, yes. This time though, I was questioning them as they appeared to me, not reading how they should appear. My interpretation had priority.
Leaving the museum some hours later feeling rejuvenated, I realized this is not a practice relegated to the MALBA. This is a recipe for lifestyle design.
Why not ask, “How different would this experience be if I didn’t let others tell me what to expect?
The term “outsourcing” may seem reserved in most minds for the circles of overseas manufacturing, construction subcontractors, and obnoxious personalities on Finance Twitter taking advantage of cheap development in the Philippines. They save money at the expense of extorting the cheap labor of others.
While these groups have indeed commandeered the term, we’re all bound to outsource our opinion-making in some shape or form quite regularly. We save time at the expense of our lived experience.
In 1869, American essayist and notable humorist Mark Twain observed a similar propensity in his fellow tourists’ perceptions of their travels to the Holy Land and their reliance on outsourcing the personal experience abroad to guidebook descriptions:
“I can almost tell, in set phrase, what they will say when they see Nazareth, Jericho, and Jerusalem—because I have the books they will ‘smouch’ their ideas from. Guidebook authors write pictures and frame rhapsodies, and lesser men follow and see with the author’s eyes instead of their own, and speak with his tongue.”
We would all do well to never “smouch” anything in our lives.
We would equally do well to note that if the tendency of blindly adopting others’ beliefs as our own existed in the times of Huckleberry Finn, then it most certainly does now in throngs.
It’s called the sharing economy; not only are rides, apartments, and land shared but also group beliefs. Gone are the days when we used crowdsourced opinions and others’ former experiences for survival; now we let them influence even the most trivial decisions.
Evolutionarily, it made sense. Thousands of years ago, if you heard Caveman George ate the red berries one day and was found rolled over in a ditch the next, all signs would indicate that it’s best to stick with the blueberries.
Failure to learn from the past experiences of others was fatal in that age—but we don’t live in that age anymore.
We live in 2024, and the risk is much less grave, although we oddly still treat the decision between coffee shops with the same level of scrutiny.
The red berries have been replaced with a latté and Caveman George with some whiny hipster induced to lead a smear campaign on Yelp because the barista failed to address him by his preferred pronouns*.
*Let us not forget what defines a real problem.
Just like with the placard of artwork in the MALBA, an online review will only instruct us on one perspective to be had.
The evident, inherent flaw in using others’ opinions to frame your own is that preference is subjective.
Subjective preference shouldn’t be reason to ignore the advice of everyone. When it comes to taking feedback from close friends and family, we know them well enough to gauge how their personal bias may influence their opinions. Plenty of my inner circle share wildly different tastes than I do, and it is reflected in the types of experiences they enjoy.
We don’t tend to take feedback from our inner circles nearly as much as we do from the anarchical online forums like Google Maps, Yelp, “Top 7 Best ____!” blogs, or Tripadvisor.
Who’s to say that user @SourWatermelon39 has remotely the same preferences and taste as me? Or that they have any taste at all?
Comically, we continue to treat the @SourWatermelon39s of the world as if they were our closest confidant in most cases. The word of the Google and Yelp Reviews is gold, and we dare not defy it. Even if we do end up visiting that establishment later on, those negative opinions will influence how we experience the same place. The crowdsourced machine rolls on.
Modern culture values those who impose their ideas most effectively onto others more than it rewards those who internalize and pursue their own unique tastes. The more important figure has become how many others you can influence to adopt the same tastes as you (or falsely believe they do) rather than how dedicated you are to exploring your own tastes.
Here are some snippets of others trying to impose their perceptions onto mine lately:
“Oh, I wouldn’t go to that restaurant. It’s not in a cool area of town.”
What does that have to do with the quality of the meal?
“The northeast of Brazil is extremely dangerous, you’re better off skipping it.”
Pardon, is that your experience or another group thought you blindly smouched from the French backpacker on the bunk below you?
“She’s a bit weird; you probably won’t like going out with her.”
I’ve got news for you—weird is cool, baby.
If we continue to let the tastes of others determine which experiences to try, then we are succumbing to a one-dimensional reality limited by the bias of someone else, akin to allowing the title of artwork to restrict our creative interpretation of it. Continuing to take reviews, recommendations, and titles like these at face value will, at best, achieve a life of experiences that other folks would enjoy more than we would.
How boring.
What if, in place of pre-forming our opinions based on those of others, we questioned everything from zero, experienced it firsthand, and decided for ourselves?
Otherwise, we risk waking up one day with a worldview so influenced by other people that we can hardly form our own opinions without them.
There is a cafe in Buenos Aires called Café Rio. It’s old, has pink walls (peeling), and boasts a menu with scarcely more options than your grandmother’s kitchen. Patrons range from ages 60-70 years, and the whole joint smells like cigarette butts. The staff is dressed to the nines and cordial but equally take it personally if you dilly-dally when ordering. The cafe holds a firm 3.7 stars on Google Maps.
I adore Café Rio.
Most everyone else I bring there, contrarily, does not adore Café Rio.
Where I see classical, time-capsule charm of an establishment lost in history and laugh at the novelty of the no-nonsense waiter in a tuxedo, they see a dirty, outdated coffee shop and look alarmed when the waiter taps his foot as they scan the floppy, handwritten menu.
A charming afternoon at Café Rio
Café Rio is both of these realities, only individually dictated by the subjective tastes of each patron.
I would have been hard-pressed to find someone to recommend Café Rio to me. Does that mean that I wouldn’t enjoy it?
Of course not. Just as Mark Twain noted in the 19th century, the only way to discover a Café Rio is to experience one yourself.
So, whose eyes are you seeing with?
