The beauty of restaurants

The beauty of restaurants is that people pay good money to entertain each other. Think about it.

When you go to a restaurant, you are paying a lot more for the same food than you would pay to make it yourself at home. Ostensibly, the difference is that people are making it for you and serving it to you.

But I don’t think that’s quite it. The real appeal of a restaurant is that you are surrounded by other diners. You never meet them, but you call catch the excitement from each other of being someplace special.

Essentially, a restaurant plays to our instinct to get out of the cave and be in the presence of the larger tribe. When you see it this way, you realize that the diners at the different tables are collectively providing entertainment for each other.

In fact, if you really listen to the conversation in a crowded restaurant, you quickly realize that snatches of conversation at one table are soon repeated and incorporated into what is spoken at the next table over. People don’t consciously realize they are doing this, yet they do it nonetheless, and they do it a lot.

The effect of all this is that when we hang out at a restaurant, we feel smarter, wittier, more alive. Words flow with the wine, and everybody sparkles just a little bit more brightly than they do at home.

The beauty of restaurants is that people pay good money to entertain each other. Think about it.

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