As if I didn't have enough unqualified and overappreciated nonsense to deal with.

 

I was recently reminded of one of the most infuriating and degrading experiences of my life. Beginning, of course, with someone asking for my help. What they wanted was for me to acclimatize a friend of theirs to what might be experienced as everyday food in Japan. Apparently the subject was considering a trip. 

Then I found out who it was.

I'd introduced this same person to a variety of new foods in the previous months when they would drop by to visit my current housemates and dinner happened to be near. I was never told about incoming guests, of course, but an extra plate is nothing- there are always leftovers when cooking for a full house.

Now, when I say 'new foods', I'm not talking nonwestern exotics like Jollof Rice or Lamb Vindaloo.

I'm not talking Euro classics like a simple risotto or a baked Brie en croute.

We're talking things like... Oven-baked fish, topped with parsley and breadcrumbs.

Broccoli, gently roasted, with a pat of butter.

Corn. 

Corn.

The difference between dino nuggets and karaage was apparently already too much.

I gave it due consideration, and then flat out refused.

You couldn't possibly pay me enough to make it easier to inflict such a culinarily-crippled menace on Japan. For starters, Japan is in general... less than kind to individualists. "The nail that sticks out gets hammered back down" was a common turn of phrase in my East Asian Studies undergrad classes.  There is nothing about this person that could possibly thrive there. Something personal- it's a place I've been trying to go for literal decades, and have had the opportunity ruined for me many times over. I will absolutely not help someone enjoy a luxury they're not even capable of qualifying for when someone like me keeps getting snubbed and sloughed off.

The hazardous someone in question is an adult. Somewhere in their mid to late twenties, and that grew up here in the US- in the midwest, no less. Though "grew up" is one hell of a reach in a case like this. 

The approach and experience is infantile, and the timing decades out of date. How does one near thirty without awareness and comfort of basic fundamentals of a western diet? Stuff you see in the canned goods aisle and the freezer case all year round? Or that you see in most TV dinners?

That, and more, was what comes to mind when I saw this.

A new cookbook: "COLOR TASTE TEXTURE: Recipes for Picky Eaters, Those with Food Aversion, and Anyone Who's Ever Cringed at Food".

In some ways, to some people, it might be seen as a step in the right direction. Not to me. 

You're not supposed to make things easier for difficult people. You're supposed to make better people.

Why You Must Lead With "Yes"

"No." is one of the most aggressively abused words and concepts in any language.

Refusing something is a nebulously acceptable notion, but it's one that has requirements.

"Yes" is the only acceptable default. "No" requires valid justification. You can't say no to something just because you want to, nor can you say it because your beliefs don't align with something provable.

It's tiring to see the meteoric rise in preventable disease because "people" who are uppity about vaccines think they deserve the luxury of refusing them. I have to qualify the word usage simply because that designation is, to my mind, forfeit. Upon making the choice to actively sabotage a cooperative sociocultural environment and endanger the lives of their betters, they're worse than people, even than animals.

"Oh, this prevents the spread of a disease? No, I don't care about that." Well, off to the proverbial leper colony with you. No access to any public services ever again, because you've proven that you'd poison the well if you wanted to badly enough.

Shunning the willfully ignorant, the contrarian, the reckless, the ego-driven... it's all simply good practice. Lots of actual people with knowledge, experience, and skill do incredible amounts of actual research, experimentation, and verification to make the lives of others visibly better. 

Not every person can follow the minutiae behind most of it, and that's okay- that's why expertise as a concept exists. But thinking it's acceptable to dismiss those experts' efforts due to an inability to understand them?

No, that's definitely not. The aggressively politically motivated countercultural movement towards blatant distrust of the scientific method and disregard of validated expertise in the name of profiteering and personal preference is easily the greatest danger the U.S. (are they really though?) has faced in at least the last hundred years.

And it's spreading.