If you agree with me, but using language I don't at all identify with, you will convince me I'm wrong. As I read Silliman's blog each morning, I come to distrust more and more my own propensity to invest in rankings and hierarchies. [It's not so much that I disagree with Ron's invididual judgments, but that they are often stated as applications of a categorical rule. (His suspicion that memorizing poetry takes one out of the Buddhist here-and-now is an oversimplification, at best. An attempt to make a categorical statement based on his own propensities. {For me, the memorization of poetry is an involuntary act, for example, you teach a poem and at the end of the class period, you find you have it memorized. Music when soft voices die vibrates in the memory. I wouldn't want to disparage non-memorizers of poetry based on my own feeling that memory is essential to the entire process of understanding poetry.})]

On the other hand, I reject what I perceive as the easy way out, simply saying "de gustibus non est disputandum." Debates about "taste" are the only debates worth having here at Bemsha Swing. That's the whole reason Bemsha Swing exists. Individual taste should only be invoked as a last resort, not as a way to forestall discussion. It is a kind of strategic withdrawal from debate, necessary at times, but not a good starting point.