The value of the banal

Lately, someone asked me whether I like big cities. When I said that I preferred little towns and the countryside, he replied that metropolises and big cities are interesting and multinational and that they attract many tourists, implying that little towns and the countryside are boring; even more, that they are something to look down upon. I don’t agree and I opposed that the countryside is often underestimated and that you can find there beautiful things that would certainly would deserve a place in a museum, if you wished to have it there. Although what I said is certainly true, I think that in some way I missed the point.
Before going on, I want to say that I certainly see the value and the interesting points of big cities. I have been in many big cities and national and regional cultural centres that have that function. I wrote in my last blog that recently yet I have been in Lille, France. I often come in Amsterdam and through the years I have visited the mayor metropolises and capitals of Europe, like London, Paris, Moscow, Berlin or Helsinki to mention a few, and I have been in Tokyo as well. It was nice to be there, although, it’s true, I preferred to stay there not too long. These cities have something that you don’t find in the countryside. And it is just for this, what these cities “have”, that people go there: their museums, their atmosphere, their internationality, their masses of people with many backgrounds; and so on. But does this mean that the countryside is not as valuable, and not as much worth to visit? People do go there, indeed, but even then people often go there for the special. For that special little museum, for that special splendid view from the mountains, or for the folklore, the local yearly festivities. The rest is banal, or so they think. I think, however, that little towns and the countryside are also worth to visit for the non-special; for what they are.
Now it is so that you can value the special only if you can value the banal, even if it is in a negative way. But is the banal really banal? If you think so, in fact, you misunderstand the value of normality; so the stream of life in which much is routine and continuously flowing. But by saying it this way, I make a mistake, for it seems to imply that you find the simple, “normal” life in the countryside and the exciting special life that is actually worth to live in the city. This is a false contrast, a false opposition. For it is not the city versus the countryside but the special against the normal, or the banal, if you want to call it that way, and you find as much normality or banality in the city as in the countryside. In fact, most city life is normal or banal. People wake up, go to work, school or whatever they do, and in the evening they go to bed. If they do something special, it can only be an escape from the normal, a deviation from the routine, for the normal is the base. Even for the celebrated painter, whose work hangs in a famous museum, for the member of the parliament, or for the successful businessman, most of life is routine. He or she brushes his/her teeth, parks his car, goes to a food shop and also most of their work is routine. But it is just these normal things that make life possible. Without eating, so going to a shop, for example, life is not possible. In this sense just the normal is the most special and in this way more valuable than the special.
However, this is not all. Montaigne tells us somewhere in his essay “Of Experience” (Essays Book III-13) “In my infancy, what they had most to correct in me was the refusal of things that children commonly best love, as sugar, sweetmeats, and march-panes. My tutor contended with this aversion to delicate things, as a kind of over-nicety”. In other words, Montaigne wants to say, the normal, in this way the ordinary and common food, is not only the base of life, it has also value as such. It is not vulgar, as apparently Montaigne’s tutor thought and as many people tend to think. See how Montaigne continues his text: “Indeed ’tis nothing else but a difficulty of taste, in anything it applies itself to. Whoever cures a child of an obstinate liking for brown bread, bacon, or garlic, cures him also of pampering his palate. There are some who affect temperance and plainness by wishing for beef and ham amongst the partridges; ’tis all very fine; this is the delicacy of the delicate; ’tis the taste of an effeminate fortune that disrelishes [dislikes] ordinary and accustomed things” (my italics).
Indeed, how often doesn’t it happen that people highly value a refined taste and look down upon those who don’t or who even prefer the kitschy. They make a distinction between High Culture and low culture, as if there isn’t simply only culture (or Culture, if you like). Taste is a matter of taste, but even if there is a refined taste, we can only value it if we know the normal taste. The special rests on the normal. And what is actually against appreciating the normal, for not only does it constitute life, it constitutes the special as well.