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Freddie deBoer has a new article out in which he argues that our society has become overly permissive (without ever actually using the phrase "the permissive society"). He uses a few recent articles to set the scene (an increasingly defeatist sense among the laptop class that there's no option but to be extremely online; a qualified defense in the New Yorker and New York magazine of the notion of being an iPad parent), before getting into the meat of his argument. Where before our society expected people to behave in a certain way most of the time, increasingly there's a broad sense that all lifestyles are equally valid; that there's nothing wrong with following the path of least resistance (in terms of effort expended), at all times in every sphere of your life; and that people who do hold people to higher standards of behaviour than the bare minimum are being toxic in some way. Where before the expectation was to dress formally in the office, now "smart casual" rules the day (if that); where before it was only profoundly autistic and unemployable men still playing with Lego and cosplaying as Star Wars characters in their thirties, now such behaviour has become entirely normalised among the gainfully employed. The boilerplate celebrity interview question "What book are you currently reading?" was retired years ago: no one is reading books anymore, or if they are, it's the same YA slop their teenage children, nieces and nephews are reading. If modern Anglophone society has a telos, it's "umm, let people enjoy things??"
Freddie's point is well-taken and I agree with most of it: Disney and Marvel adults are contemptible, as are adults taking out second mortgages so they can follow Taylor Swift on tour. Grown adults who don't know how to cook proper meals and eat fast/convenience food for every meal should feel ashamed, even if they don't. Some examples of the trend are conspicuous by their absence: it's interesting that Freddie brings up "adult men who proudly eat nothing but chicken nuggets and Kraft macaroni and cheese" and women wearing snuggies in public without once alluding to the body positivity/health at every size movement, even though it's a perfect example of the relaxing of standards across the board. (I mean, these people spent years complaining about the "toxic and unrealistic beauty standards" promulgated by the fashion industry and social media, and apparently succeeded in replacing them with - nothing, no standards at all.) But one of the specific examples he cites seems oddly in tension with the others:
I agree with him that, in the modern Western world, there's no longer much of an expectation for people to live and present themselves "authentically": among sufficiently online women, using Instagram filters on your selfies is the rule rather than the exception; cosmetic surgery (in both sexes) is more common than ever; the less said about LinkedIn, the better.
But it occurred to me: for all of the other examples of the trend towards relaxation of standards, isn't this precisely how the people engaging in these lifestyle choices would defend them? "I didn't feel comfortable in my own skin wearing a tie to the office - wearing a hoodie and sweatpants makes me feel more like myself." "I used to read boring grown-up books because that's what was expected of me and people would make fun of me for reading Harry Potter on the tube - I like that now I can read Harry Potter without shame." And so on.
What do you think?
Division of labor and specialization.
Maybe this isn't quite the same because I actually know how to cook quite a few dishes well, but I've chosen to do so less and less over the years as my net worth has increased. The value I place upon my leisure time has been increasingly, highly non-zero. After spending a large part of my day/week wagecucking, or at least salarycucking, the last thing I want to do in my spare time is more work.
Cooking is rather time intensive—not just the act of cooking itself, but moreso the cleaning afterward. Just like you pay a Person of Hookery not for the sex, but rather to go away.
I could spend hundreds of USD a year having my slop delivered to me, or picking it up, and it's barely a drop in the bucket compared to the impact of a typical day's market movement on my portfolio. When I do have my slop delivered, it's multiple entrees (saving the rest for later days) so I at least get some economies of scale relative to the relatively fixed costs of delivery fees and tipping.
Thus, I don't feel ashamed at all. The situation might be different if I were the stereotypical urban young person making low six figures (the first digit closer to being a 9 than a 2) in a VHCOL area with little saved/invested, having my avocado toast or whatever delivered to me one meal at a time for 30 USD a pop.
I don’t think you shouldn’t feel ashamed. My first digit (at least in USD) is closer to a 9 than a 2 and I still enjoy cooking. The relationship between your food and you should be healthy. Call it spiritual garbage, but so is much of our relationship with human civilization.
To cook feels to me fundamentally healthy. It is satisfying. And I find that - Michelin starred restaurants aside - I can do better in thirty minutes in my own kitchen than pretty much anyone available on the apps.
I'm not in a position to have food delivered, but I find that almost any pre-prepared Costco meal is better than one I cooked (they keep up with the trends; they have birria now). We still cook from raw meat and root vegetables about half the time, but unless it's a taco or something, there's a marinade, some kind of eggs and crumbs or else cooked in a pan and deglazed, then some kind of roasting for one to six hours. The tacos are not bad, but also not better than from a food truck, and with less variety. I absolutely cannot cook proper beans, but I think it takes 8 hours and a piece of pork fat. We can't bring ourselves to eat enough beans to justify that.
Beans take longer than that.
More evidence I should stick with takeout beans.
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