Getting Weird Again: Aversion, Culture, Philosophy and Dancing in the Grocery Store

One of the most interesting things to me is playing with the flexible parts of aesthetic preference.

To borrow a few words from my favorite behavior theory textbook, the term aversive stimulus refers to any sensation that an organism will avoid. The term appetitive stimulus refers to any sensation that an organism will seek out. To borrow a little bit more, some sensations are intrinsically (from birth, without prior experience) aversive and appetitive and some have to be conditioned, taught.

The majority of cultural preferences are conditioned, and fashion particularly so. I’m not sure that what I’m thinking about this morning counts as fashion, though. I’m thinking about dancing in the grocery store.

I was raised by one of the most charismatic, rebellious people I can conceive of. Although I can’t approve of every decision my father has ever made and I certainly don’t agree with all of his politics, I am grateful for the sparkling, revolutionary brilliance in his personal philosophy. My dad is captivating. The fastest way to describe him is to say that although my dad looks and sounds like George Carlin, he behaves like a general amalgam of Bill Murray characters should such a meta-Murray be a lax survivalist, a one-time, sometime chef, a recovering New York Irish Catholic, a dedicated, freshly minted recreational sailboat captain and the doting father of two eccentric, young adult daughters. (My nearly retired and reasonably healthy father earned his captain’s license a few weeks ago and looks forward to finally getting to be Captain Ron when he grows up.)

That last paragraph might have been a small digression, but I want you to be able to really picture my dad when I explain to you that I was raised to dance in the grocery store. My father is very much of his generation. There is an important, neglected wisdom in the Summer of Love insistence that people think critically about the traditions and taboos they were raised with. More fulfilling, healthier lives can be mindfully created when we reject the unnecessary chains (the counterproductive culturally conditioned aversions and preferences) that weigh us down.

For example, the taboo against dancing in the grocery store should come to a swift end. It is a taboo that serves no positive function whatsoever. By replacing innocent whimsy with unnecessary shame, it reduces our capacity for true human connection. Shame isolates. Whimsy connects. Sharing joy and through it, unconditional acceptance on a regular basis is necessary for real love, strong families and lush and functional communities. I have tasted this life and know it to be true.

My sister and I make a point to dance in the grocery store when shopping together. Nothing fancy, nothing too appealing, but if nobody’s looking we may break into The Twist. I even bob from side to side musically when shopping by myself. Were a family a country, my fierce dedication to perpetuating light-as-a-cloud whimsy could be called patriotism.

On this anxious and incomplete Saturday morning, I sit and worry about my legacy. I am female, in my late 20s and I do not have children. I have a currently uncomfortable, opposites-attract marriage that is still sorting itself out. I am currently living too far away from my parents, sister and handful of supportive, resolutely bizarre friends to feel like I have the proper neighborhood or in-home community necessary to raise a child.

My biological clock is telling me to build a community based on my father’s best principles of whimsy. I want a tribe. I want a real home. I feel nostalgic and sad for the culture that I grew up in, because I don't find much of it in the big outside world. I feel like a salmon. Because I am in the late-middle of my short reproductive window, my body is telling me to "get back to where I once belonged."

It is a strange thing to be a 28-year-old woman and crave the constant presence of likeminded adults instead of just craving an infant.