Somebody started a gigantic Twitter thread where people explain where they live by referencing the area’s weird foods. The very first comment in the thread was this:

St Louisans are everywhere. He forgot gooey butter cake, though. That’s the only somewhat eatable thing on the list.

In what concerns our argument of who can develop the capacity deeply to enjoy art, psychoanalysis has an explanation that is neither genetic nor self-managed.

Here’s the great Donald Winnicott on the subject:

Very little children live in a world where unicorns, princesses, and magic are completely real. And the child herself is the source of the magic. When Klara was 3, for instance, she believed that she could make traffic lights turn green when I drove up to an intersection or that she could heal my “boo-boos” by touching them with her magic unicorn horn. This is a way for a child to avoid the anxiety of an encounter with a complicated, uncontrollable, threatening world. “What if mommy disappears, gets sick, dies? Ah, it’s OK, I’ll cure her with my magic.” This is called “infant omnipotence.” Gradually, we all figure out that we can’t control reality with our magical horns but when it happens we are ready to accept it.

Now, people who aren’t allowed to go through this process slowly and at their own pace don’t learn to perceive the symbolic order as a wonderful place. Art doesn’t bring them to the childhood place of joy and comfort because they weren’t allowed to experience it.

Moreover, children who grow up in abusive homes can’t afford to enjoy mermaids and unicorns. They have to be very attentive to reality to avoid danger. So they never develop the capacity to enjoy the symbolic order. To the contrary, they perceive it as dangerous.

This means that there is a genetic component to all of this, and I was wrong to dismiss it. A more intelligent mother is less likely to accuse a small child of being a liar when she says that mermaids spilled the water or he slayed a huge dragon outside. There’s also less likely to be a chaotic environment if the parents aren’t drug addicts or drunks. Less likely, of course, isn’t a guarantee. N. grew up in a family of poetry-loving PhDs who chased each other with meat cleavers.

The psychoanalytic theory of the good life in very simple terms:

The goal of growing up is to figure out what constitutes your authentic self and then live in a way that’s true to it. But if you aren’t loved enough, it won’t happen. You’ll hide who you really are in order to be accepted. Over time, this fakery will take a huge toll, and you’ll need to seek a specialist to redo the “loved enough” process retroactively.