What the Lobster (as Food) tells Us about Ourselves.

"Absolutes." Definition:

A value or principle which is regarded as universally valid or which may be viewed without relation to other things.

I’m not sure that thirst or hunger are “values” in the truest sense but let’s just say they are for the sake of making a point. Both hunger and thirst are always going to be highly important to any human borne in any era (caveman or present day). Those values are built into our DNA like few other things. For this reason they are “absolutes” as per the above definition.

There have to be some “absolutes”, right? There just have to be things that we (as humans) would perceive as of high value no matter what century, country, culture, ethnicity, etc., we were born in. How about “goodness”, “love”, “empathy", chocolate? So far I don’t think that any of those are “absolutes”. I know the title says "lobsters" but while writing about “absolutes” it came to me that not only is the appreciation for the taste of lobster not one of them but it appears to me that the only “absolutes” are sex, greed, and self preservation (my opinions). I would reach out to say that mothers have an internal sense/directive to nurture their children but that is only my guess. Just watch a grizzly bear mother when she feels her cubs are threatened. That appears to me to be an "absolute". You could be born in any place in the world at any time in man's history on earth and a mother (in general) would still have these "absolute" values and desires.

I have often wondered that, if I were born in, say 1927, would I like “Stairway to Heaven", or Pink Floyd?

It pains me to say that the answer is almost certainly “no”. Instead, I would probably defend the brilliance of Big Band music, or Mozart. But, what about chocolate, ice cream, a ripe peach, Filet Mignon,….or lobster. Lobster: the quintessential food of kings--Everyone’s favorite, well, not really…. there are sections of the population who don’t like, or who don’t permit themselves to enjoy lobster but, for most Americans, lobster is the penthouse of foods…or very close. Just look at the cost of Lobster on any menu. It usually says “Market Price” because it’s price is in flux the way the price of an ounce of gold is in flux. That is another thing that is not an "absolute" but maybe we can talk about gold later. Broiled lobster piping warm coming at you with all it’s red and white glory….with a melted cup of butter on the plate is one of the great images we, as humans, have in this country. It’s meat but it’s better than meat…yes, it’s the most coveted thing on any menu if that means anything…but, don’t tell that to people a hundred and fifty years ago…

I bet you didn’t know that lobster 150 years ago meant something very different than it does today. No, the flavor of lobster hasn’t changed in the last 150 years but our attitude about it has changed incredibly. In the mid 1800’s lobster was so plentiful that it piled up on the shores of Massachusetts. They were considered too unsightly and undesirable and they were used to feed prisoners and as fertilizer for livestock, or as fish bait. Imagine….lobster as fertilizer! The upper crust of society wanted nothing to do with the lobster. It was "poor man's" food, believe it or not. It’s hard to make sense of that. Apparently our love for lobster is all in our heads. (Our love for anything is all in our heads). It’s based not on it’s inherent flavor but on our, often capricious, attitudes (about it) and many things that are hard to qualify. It must be an attitude, one born from cultural forces, that determines whether we will like, or not like something. It is (not) an absolute. People living the “good life” could have eaten lobster tails every day for dinner and yet they chose not to because the word around town was that lobster was not good food, apparently. But (we) know that it (is) good food. It is the food of choice for most everyone who can afford a choice.

Fashion fits into this category in a way except that fashion is impossible to evaluate objectively. The taste of food should be easier to categorize as “good”, “great”, serviceable, or “bad”. After all, our taste buds can’t be fooled, right? Truth is...they can but it’s complicated. How we address fashion must have context. There is absolutely no absolute with fashion. I don’t think it’s possible to judge fashion, hairstyles, fashion accessories, shoes, etc., without direct context to our surroundings (and the standards of that moment in time). The same dad I had who dressed rather dorky in the 1950’s (complying with the skinny black ties and dark suits) decided to start dressing totally differently in the 1970’s (thicker, more colorful ties, longer hair, sideburns, etc.,) only because everyone else was doing it. He didn’t’ wake up one day and say, on his own, that he thought he would look better if his hair had less Vaseline (or brylcreaam) in it. He didn’t come up with the idea that he wanted sideburns when no one else was growing them. He just grabbed the tail of the elephant in front of him and followed the trends. Trend setters are very rare, almost like unicorns. Fashions change (slowly) and people just conform (women wore corsets every day). The vast majority of us don’t even ask questions... we just subconsciously start complying. A few of us (just a few) stay attached to the old fashions (suspenders or bow ties, etc..) but those stalwarts are very rare. No one is wearing bell bottoms anymore because they are not in fashion. Bell bottoms didn't change—only our attitude about them changed. Tattoos are so common now that grandmas feel compelled to get them. No one but sailors and convicts had tattoos 30 years ago. A tattoo would get you stereotyped. Now, they are ubiquitous.

People decide if they like, or believe, in something based on whether their peers like or believe in it. How else can we explain why some cultures can eat things that other cultures find totally repulsive. Who would be the first person to eat an egg without first watching someone else eat one with approval. Some cultures eat cow's snouts and ears. Who would eat a hot dog if we weren't properly brainwashed to just accept that a tube shaped packaging of animal by products (completely non discernible) would be something good. We need people to sanctify stuff before we do it….food, religion, and everything else. We will do almost anything if we feel that other people are doing it a lot. We will watch people play poker on T.V., or watch the Kardashian’s eat lunch. How else do we get slavery, public executions, genocide, mass suicides, arranged marriages, headgear, Chinese foot binding, the burqa, circumcision, the top hat, the worship of fraudulent prophets, etc.. It takes a village.

Our attitude about lobsters changed as the canning business developed and lobster was canned and sent to people who had never eaten them before and..... they loved them. Fresh lobsters then became popular with tourists. It happened that fast. Then, tourists came to the Massachusetts coast and tried them and they, too, loved them. The wealthy and privileged took a new (look) at lobster. Lobsters, like hairstyles and fashion, were rebranded. No, food is not an “absolute”. It’s hard for me to imagine being born in any other century or place and not liking Coca Cola and pastrami but it seems, now, pretty easy to accept that I could abhor those things in a different context. I usually feel kinda immune to the power of persuasion but I’m sure my resistance has it’s limitations (as sad as that sounds). There is nothing in my 5 plus decades that has compelled me to grow any facial hair or to get any tattoos in the face of tremendous (approval) by society. I’m attached to the standards that I have attached to myself (my identity) about 50 years ago and I have stuck with them to some degree. I don’t think, though, that my musical tastes of today would have withstood having been borne 33 years earlier than I was, as sad as that sounds. Jimmy Page’s guitar and John Paul Jones mandolins would have fallen on deaf ears. I’d have been wearing powdered wigs and knee high stockings if I were born 250 years ago….just like the rest of you, I guess.

Our tastes are very tied to the culture we are living in. Abraham Lincoln would never have worn a lime green “Leisure suit” or Crocs or a T-shirt that said “Don’t Hassle me I’m Local” except, of course, if he had been born in the late 50’s or 60’s. Almost every man in America wore the Bowler hat in the 1920’s. It was almost mandatory. If you were a man and you didn’t wear a Bowler you were judged harshly. Some time in the 1920’s some people had introduced the straw hat in New York City and this created such a stir in society that there were riots “Straw Hat riots of 1922” that broke out due to the public’s intense disapproval of straw hats. https://www.buniquemillinery.com/pages/the-straw-hat-riot-of-1922. People were beaten and the straw hats were ripped of the heads of thousands and destroyed. Riots! There were riots to oppose the wearing of a certain type of hat. Who would choose a cowboy hat in a vacuum? Really? A cowboy hat stays alive only because of what we associate with it, not for any intrinsic value in it’s (very impractical) design. Only a top hat is more impractical (my opinions).

People, for the most part, like to think and act similarly to other groups of individuals.

Take Harley Davidson bikers: they all get together and wear the exact same, arbitrary, biker uniform and drive around town together in a pack with very similarly built motorcycles. They wear the same boots, goggles, vests, etc.. People like positive reinforcement. I think history will record that very few people like to stand out in a crowd.

I have often said that coffee and soccer would not pass the “blind taste test”. Those are just my fanciful opinions, of course. What I mean by that is that if aliens came from outer space and we showed them all of the sports we played without any favoritism or ranking and asked them to pick which one they felt was the most compelling and interesting that they would put soccer at the very bottom, near Curling. After all, no arms or hands, only legs and skulls…scores of 1- 0. I think the cultures that love soccer (unquestionably the most popular sport in the world) do so because it has so much cultural gravity; it transcends sport. It hasn’t caught on big in the U.S. and I doubt it will for that same reason. Coffee, similarly, seems like the most unlikely most popular beverage in the world. I think “Aliens” would pick this bitter brown water near the bottom as well. We like coffee, most of us, because it is such a dominant part of our culture (my opinions, again). It is ubiquitous and associated with so many things, ritual being one of them. Think of how hard it must have been to promote putting a stick of tobacco wrapped in paper in our mouths and lighting the end on fire and then breathing in the smoke deeply into our lungs. That habit needed a lot of priming, and association with things that we (think) we like. Smoking caught on across the globe like very few things ever have.

Imagine how self assured (and independent) you had to be in the 1860’s to support the Underground Railroad. The discreet mechanism whereby slaves could find a way to freedom. It came at incredible risk to anyone who helped slaves. Imagine, though, what it must have been like to be a white person in the year 1860 who fervently opposed slavery; someone willing to risk their own life to help free slaves. There was no one there to condemn you if you were a slave owner. In fact, it was totally expected of you to just do nothing and support slavery. You weren’t expected to stand by blacks who were trying to sit at a "Whites only” lunch counter back in 1956 in Mobile Alabama.

My dad was a good man and father but he had no peers who were protesting Jim Crow when he was growing up, or even when he was an adult and witnessing Martin Luther King fight for Civil Rights and Voting Rights legislation. No one around him was holding any signs to protest segregation. Therefore, he didn’t either.

If we can’t feel confident that our mouth’s would "water" for lobster in any time in man’s history on this planet then what hope do we have that we could define “absolute” morality and human decency. We can’t define any of these things without context. We are pack animals to be sure. We are very disinclined to act independently on behalf of anything. We are extremely easy to herd.

No, it’s not ice cream or pastrami, or empathy that are “absolutes”. If you gave a caveman a bowl of Italy’s finest gelato he might throw it on the ground. I still think the only “absolutes” that I can think of--things that are going to always be popular to all of us no matter what culture or time period we live in.....are sex, self preservation, and greed (looking out for number one). Let me know if you can think of any others. Of course, thirst and hunger qualify but that might go without saying. Everything else is negotiable and dependent on others, standards, cultural norms and practices, etc.. One man’s surf and turf is another man’s fertilizer. It’s true!

Food for thought…..

(My opinions)