Sooner or later you probably learn that the expectation of others is the key factor driving people to start smoking or to quit smoking or drive an electric car or avoid walking through town in just their underwear.
Back in my college days, before before tofu, before color TV, before wine bars, dashboard hula girls and 8-track tape cartridges, the only people on campus who didn’t wear socks with their Weejuns were girls. Then, almost imperceptibly, guys started going sockless in their loafers, too. I was too retro to get it. I kept wearing socks with my shoes. Not just any old socks, mind you, but white socks. So I was doubly damned fashionwise and have been agreeably snubbed ever since.
People are serious about fashion and make rules to govern it and then enforce those rules by holding the rule-breakers in infamy. A Willow Flycatcher looks exactly like an Alder Flycatcher from 10 feet away but not to each other. Each considers the other to be a barn swallow despite their differences being virtually invisible. This is why humans wear images of penguins and alligators on their knit shirts and divide humanity into those who wear Sperry Topsiders and those who don’t.
I have a shirt that is nine years old and I love it as much now as when I first put it on. It has a frayed collar. Two buttons are missing. It steeps me in comfort. It’s a beautiful shirt but I am told it’s ugly by those who don’t know any better.
There are high fashions in food, too. Winter Black Truffles will set you back $768.00 a pound. Sardines come in at around a buck-fifty a can and taste pretty good with some cheddar cheese and a beer. In fact they taste tolerably better than Beluga caviar, if you ask me, and Beluga caviar is running a little over $2,500 a pound, not counting the champagne you have to buy to wash it down with.
Alternatively, you could buy 1,600 cans of sardines with that much money and have enough left over for five cases of beer and a couple of pounds of cheese. Why blow all that dough for a plate of fish eggs?
Tribal behavior is truly fascinating because the glue that binds a tribe together is the way its members see each other and thereby shape each other’s behavior. In the close-knit society of a tribe (or a club or a political party etc.) there isn’t much you can do to avoid being seen and judged by your peers. So if you want to avoid beluga caviar and eat sardines or wear white socks and drink beer instead of champagne believe me, people will take notice. Best to go along to get along as in “uniform of the day” in the military or “when in Rome, do as the Romans do!”
There is a great book about tribal envy and how we modern-day humans still have it in our genes. The title is “Envy, A Theory of Social Behavior” by Helmut Schoeck and to my knowledge it’s the only book exclusively about the subject of envy available anywhere.
By the way, envy, as Schoeck points out, is never wanting what somebody else possesses but rather wanting them not to have it! It is an important distinction. Prohibition ranks as one of the greatest examples of applied envy in American history. You want a beer? Well, too bad, you can’t have it. The 18th Amendment was envy made into law. However, it never was sustainable so we quit that experiment and went back to Bourbon on the rocks. Envy hates any form of freedom that others see as being good. Or, for that matter, anything good at all, especially individualism.
Schoeck writes that envy is a coin with two faces —- in this case the other side of the coin is appeasement or the attempt to avoid envy by licking the boots of your enemy. Those huge giveaways to charity by well-known billionaires are made very publicly to avoid the envy of those who can’t afford caviar. It’s just their way of boot-licking what they imagine to be envious masses.
If you’re like me you won’t eat caviar even if you can afford it. However, if you like fish as much as I do I might have a good plan for you. It uses tilapia, an inexpensive freshwater fish which is available as boneless filets in most supermarkets and has a sweet and mild taste.
Super Crispy Fish
You Can do This
(You need 4 to 6 tilapia filets patted dry and seasoned)
In a bowl whisk together 1 cup of flour, 2 tablespoons baking powder and salt & pepper to taste. Mix evenly.
To the bowl, add a half-cup of milk and a half-cup of water and whisk until smooth.
Heat about a half-inch of peanut oil or light olive oil in a frying pan set to medium heat.
Dip the coated tilapia into the oil one at a time (don’t overcrowd the pan).
After about 90 seconds, turn each filet over to brown the other side.
Remove the filets with tongs or a slotted spoon and drain on paper towels.
(Optional) Open a cold beer and serve.
Fried fish is maybe a bit more fashionable than peanuts in a Coca Cola but it taste better than that. It also tastes better than a couple’a hundred bucks worth of Beluga Caviar. But then that’s just me.
So if you prefer function over form and substance over style you’ll probably prefer crispy filets over most high-fashion foods. Again, that’s just me.