May 31 2021

The Theory of Maximum Taste

David Brookes, opinion columnist for the New York Times, wrote a university graduation speech for students unable to attend their graduation.

He is worried about the future of your maximum taste. Is it true “that 70 percent of the people you know are more boring at 30 than they were at 20?”

At University we are assigned hard things to do and challenging ways to think.

“After college, most of us resolve to keep doing this kind of thing, but we’re busy and our brains are tired at the end of the day. Months and years go by. We get caught up in stuff, settle for consuming Twitter and, frankly, journalism. Our maximum taste shrinks.”

David is fine with us watching Tiger King and Love is Blind, but he says we also need to extend the higher end of out thinking.

“The theory of maximum taste says that each person’s mind is defined by its upper limit—the best that it habitually consumes and is capable of consuming.””

“Because we don’t continue to put enough really excellent stuff into our brain, our reading-comprehension ability declines after college, and our ability to play with ideas. The upper limit of our mind becomes lower than it used to be.

“The “theory of maximum taste” is based on the idea that exposure to genius has the power to expand your consciousness. If you spend a lot of time with genius, your mind will end up bigger and broader than if you spend your time only with run-of-the-mill stuff.

We need to have a mixed mental diet.