Baked in the Cake

Butchers butcher, candlestick makers make, and bakers bake. Do they do so out of artistic passion, out of a strong desire to create, or are they engaged in a straight-up bourgeois practice of selling a product? And does it make a difference?

For me, the question answers itself. Although we can critically appraise a work of art along categories of artistic merit v. commercial appeal, human beings generally exist and act in both categories simultaneously. To the extent there is any kind of tension between the two, that is a fundamental tension within a person struggling to be authentic in his work.

And this is true in non-artistic endeavors too. We all know  the common distinction between so called 9-to-5 workers and those committed to doing the best job they can. Clock watchers are chronic problems, doing only the minimal amount to get by until they can get home to what they really want to be doing. The committed worker, however, is bringing his whole self to a job, investing it with his own integrity. In this, the person is trying to be as authentic as the artist, to make his work a vocation instead of a mere job.

It is this qualitative aspect of work that provides the key to our national Cake controversy. In all that we human beings do, there are aspects of the mundane, the ordinary, and then there are aspects more fundamental, that relate to us essentially as persons. Which brings us to bakers who happily bake and sell their cakes, except when they are asked to bake in celebration of a gay wedding.

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