A Defense of Bias
The wine from each press has a certain flavor. Is it not all the better once you’ve heard the story of how those old masters of a thousand years ago crushed the blood and bones of a king in that press? And they’ve been making wine in it ever since, until the press is as clean as can be.
But does not that horrible legacy lend the wine a certain flavor? A certain extra savor to be savored; the barest flush of kingly Grace? The sharp beauty of his overflowing power? Or the warm justice of power overthrown?
So as I sip my wine on the hillside, beneath the gentle rays of the setting sun and the wind rustles the silvered spears of the olive trees, I dream of that mysterious tragedy—either of power or justice—and drift away on a sliver of thought to a gentle smile. And is all this not crushed into the flavor of the wine itself? Regardless of my setting?
Suppose instead that the blood was of another nature. That I might drift from eccentric to cruel and back to eccentric again. Might it be the blood of a hundred slaves, cruelly executed at the end of a bitter life? Would the wine retain its exotic sweetness? Only now it is of cruelty not justice. But my feeling may alter again when I consider that I drink from spirits descendant of kings, heroes, brought low but not brought down. The crushed were glorious too, and so their blood begets fine things; as surely as the glory of the tree is alive and well in the house.
So now I dream another dream, of cruel horror and noble beginnings, and a new complexity blossoms in my mouth.
Tell me, would you object to such abstract legends giving flavor and body to the things you enjoy? Do not fear, they are near at hand. The press may not have been baptized in blood, but its parts were fashioned from material secured by great violence. The same is true of the planting, the labor, and the land. This pattern sweeps across all of life.
All the things you enjoy are horrible; and are better for it. The legacy of horror is flavor. At times bitter and repulsive flavor, but it gets well with age! Over a thousand years shock and repulsion merely become a fine bouquet.
But it does not take a thousand years for a rich and complex flavor to develop! If you are willing to taste a less complete fermentation, look no further than your own biases. The Narrative says that my biases are evil, a source of pain for others; that I must look beyond them with a magical fortitude to be just.
And yes, bias is sometimes a ball of iron spikes that I hurl at my unsuspecting fellow people with a brutal force. But it also makes such a lovely digestif! A finishing touch! A spice! Ah I lose myself.
What I mean to say is that my bias gives flavor to things that are otherwise good. A history of horror truly livens up the things we love. An unbiased world is a bland one. It is for that reason I will not remit my claim to horrible things.
I chase justice, but I will not abandon history in the process. It is that dark past that has brought about even the brightest parts of my present, and truly I have no choice but to appreciate it all at once.
For is not the wine better when it has a legacy of blood, the intercultural friendship better when we are truly different and at odds, the interracial or intersexual coupling better with just that tiny bit of tension that remains from a historic domination? Do not the pages of a book bathed in a light orientalist flavor or a nationalist romanticism turn just a little bit faster? Is it not true that when I love my home, my people, our practices, that my partiality makes that love all the better; moreover makes it possible?
These sweet drops of iron we call bias, are they not also the root of culture? And of all the goods that come with it? I interrogate myself overmuch; you know this is what I think. So I will not cast out every iron-spiked sphere, and will instead relish what there is to relish; once I first take a moment to fulfill my own consideration of justice.
For it is in my heart that I treasure that pure light of justice and feel it pull me from the paths of darkness. To wash my world and my skin in the white paint of justice, that would be as much an affront to the senses and the soul as to turn wine to water.
