Smell - The Underdog of the Senses (The Aroma of Righteousness)

 "Smell - The Underdog of the Senses"

By: Bridget Dresser

 

Helen Keller, no. 8

            Scent is often looked at as one of the lesser senses because it isn’t deemed a necessity to daily function. Especially in the modern day, scent hasn’t had to be a sense that gives us lifesaving information about our environment except on the off occasion that there’s a gas leak. While scent might not hold the survival importance it once held before the era of indoor plumbing, it still offers us a subtle layer of sensory input that enriches our lived experiences, especially spiritual and religious ones. As Deborah Green demonstrates in The Aroma of Righteousness, rabbis often “employed aromatic images to propagate their social, theological, and political claims.” Similar to Green, I argue that scent is far more influential in life than we acknowledge or are even aware of. As we discussed in A Natural History of the Senses by Diane Ackerman, scent has one of the most powerful connections to memory because of the direct nature of the input circuit and the natural replenishing nature of our scent neurons. This profound connection with memory also allows for scent to often encapsulate intense emotional experiences and associations, which is why scent is so often linked to nostalgia.

Joy by Dior

We are subject to scented propaganda everywhere we look, especially in advertisements. From edited steam put into food ads, perfume ads fetishizing body odor and musk as forbidden but irresistible “notes”, and almost every spiritual and religious practice utilizing classically “good” or positively associated smells to enhance the worship experience. At this point in time most popular perfume ads don't even describe the smell or the notes, they show you a rich and glamorous person being rich and glamorous and that sells millions of bottles. The description of smell can be so easily molded into whatever it needs to be because it is such a versatile and subjective experience. As Deborah states about rabbinic interpretations of the Song of Songs, the scent of a lover can be described to such an extent that it’s interpreted as godly or sacred, and yet those scents are shunned and looked down on in modern society because of the commercialization of unnatural scent. Even when a person thinks scent plays no roll in their day-to-day life, they are still affected. You smell all the time, one never stops smelling, your brain is just good at distinguishing things it wants to focus on. This is called habituation, and smell is something your brain never stops habituating smells in your environment unless one evokes a memory or emotional response.

Raindrops on the Roses

Many people choose to cover their natural scent every day, and even in that, the lack of a natural smell is still a statement in itself. While smell might not appear to be important, or necessary for interaction with the world, the reality couldn’t be further from the truth. Smell surrounds us every day and we often never take the time to consciously appreciate the depth it adds to our lives. I like to think that’s part of why we say “stop and smell the roses,” it’s good to be mindful about the way we experience or don’t experience the world around us.