Music theorists and food critics

 So apparently music theory is racist because music theory presumes that valid music follows music theoretic paradigms. Here it is... great watch. Let's define: As Westerners, "music" here encompasses things that deal with melody, rhythm, harmony and other things that extend our set of examples, at least to the extent that we're comfortable with still calling them "music". 

Music theory engenders a certain attitude that even when we include certain non-Western sounds under the banner of "music", we only do so to invalidate it under Western music theory, as perhaps incomplete, or just "bad". The simple yet popular example being Ben Shapiro invalidating rap music because it is missing melody, harmony. 

When we reject this standpoint as inherently racist something interesting happens. We are forced to ask: what then is music, and what does "music theory" have to do with anything? 

We expand: what then is food, and what is "good food"? 

Well, now we are thoroughly confused, and perhaps that's a good thing. Confusion arises from trying, as in trying to fit something that just is into some known mental framework when it never asked to be fit... trying to fit an abstract and infinitely detailed jello peg into a two dimensional hole, if you will. 

And perhaps we should stop trying. Just eat the abstract infinitely detailed jello peg already. Take things for what they are: "Food" is definitely a word, "music" is definitely a word, and we try to associate experiences and things to them, for sure. And so these different "foods" and "musics" inspire all sorts of feelings in us, some pleasant, some not so pleasant. We'd like to assign "good" and "bad" to these things, but it's really not just about being pleasant, is it? Somehow there are all these other variables, like how "special" they feel, maybe the "complexity" of feelings they give you, all that. We're not really sure why we're assigning "good" and "bad" to things, but it seems really instinctive and useful, like understanding which mushrooms are tasty and nutritious and which mushrooms will give you diarrhea and a really bad trip when you're a hunter-gatherer in the wild. It's like a tagging system of sorts.

And we seem to take "good" and "bad" as some context-free indicator of general goodness and badness, as in "things to look for" and "things to avoid", as in "things that will generally improve my life experience" and "things that won't". This, in itself, is actually bad. I mean, at some point I'm sure the classification into "good" and "bad" is useful. I'm sure in some contexts it's meaningful and it's actually a good indicator of goodness and badness. But I fear those contexts are actually "Western music" and "French cuisine" respectively.