Coffee Enlightenment? – Does drinking my morning coffee lead to enlightenment?

Okay… so if frequently visiting my neighborhood Starbucks coffee shop or filling up the brew basket of my Cuisinart coffee maker with Stumptown or Bulletproof coffee would inch one closer to enlightenment… we’d have a very different planet by now. That being said, author Steven Johnson has some very interesting views on the role coffee played in the Age of Enlightenment.

Coffee Houses and the Spread of Enlightenment

The coffee houses were the great hub of Enlightenment era culture. People would come into the coffee house, they would hang out, they would share ideas, they would come from different disciplines… a whole number of crucial events in the enlightenment culture have a coffee house in them one way or another. The other important part of the coffee house was the coffee. Because until coffee and tea became kind of mainstream beverages in the 18th century, the daytime beverage of choice for both the mass and the elites in British society was alcohol… It’s not an accident that the Age of Reason accompanies the rise of caffeinated beverages. Because think about what your life would be like if you switched from drinking two pints of beer in the morning to drinking two cups of coffee…

Steven Johnson

What is Enlightenment?

“Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-incurred immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one’s own understanding without the guidance of another. This immaturity is self-incurred if its cause is not lack of understanding, but lack of resolution and courage to use it without the guidance of another. The motto of enlightenment is therefore: Sapere aude! Have courage to use your own understanding!“

Immanuel Kant, 1784

Enlightenment means different things to different people, but fundamentally it is generally thought of as a spiritual awakening. A shift in awareness and a realization that we are the creators of our own reality. A change in mindset like this can fundamentally change a person’s direction in life.

So as you sip that cup of coffee in contemplation… ask yourself, “How can I know myself?” because, as Lao Tzu said, “Knowing others is wisdom and knowing yourself is enlightenment.”

Cafes – Center of Enlightenment culture

Coffee cafes are alive. They live many lives at different hours of every day. The ambiance shifts from calm and calculated in the early hours of the day to hectic, collecting a tinge of excitement as the day passes. The café’s character goes up a notch with more movement and a sense of wakefulness as the sun rises. The last hours cater to tranquility not found in many diners or bars.

The many lives of a coffee house depict the inhabitants’ different moods throughout the day. And they sure are very diverse compared to other eateries, especially when paired up with the refreshing smell of freshly brewed coffee beans, which some of us may take for granted. There is a lot that happens over a cup of coffee. Different lives intersect at the barista, over the lounge sofas, and sit-up stools. These third places are assembly sites where ideas are created and neutral grounds are met. It is easy to appreciate how a cup of coffee intrigues the creative nerve and kindles a sense of enlightenment if you know how the dark-colored beans replaced the boozy beverages of the Dark Ages.

Coffee, the ‘wine of Araby,’ was known to the Arabian Peninsula even before the 15th century. By the 16th century, it was introduced into the ‘qahveh khaneh’ of Persia, Syria, Turkey, and Egypt. Besides a luxurious accessory to these cafes of old times, which served as social meet-up points, coffee roused the minds of the philosophers, scientists, politicians, artisans, and others. The somber yet comfortable ambiance of the coffee houses was esteemed enough to grab the label of ‘schools of wise’ in those medieval times.

The introduction of coffee to Europe was tagged with controversy. The skepticism around the drink that was called the ‘bitter invention of Satan’ was so much so that Pope Clement VIII had to intervene. After his enthusiastic approval of the bitter drink, the beverage made its place into the breakfast menus around Europe. Those who started their day with coffees showed better performance at work, and thus coffee became the replacement of fermented beer and wine.

The mid-17th century saw a surge in the coffee business, with London housing over 300 coffee houses at one time. The trend attracted like-minded clienteles, and many businesses grew out of these coffee cafes. A remarkable example of this is the Lloyd’s of London, born at Edward Lloyd’s Coffee House.

Coffee comes to America

Coffee made its entrance into America in the mid-1600. The British brought coffee to present-day New York called New Amsterdam at that time. In fact, much effort was put to ban these active hotspots of discussion throughout the 18th century. Coffee houses were the hub of the French and the American revolutions. The French revolutionaries gathered at Café Procope while their American counterparts assembled at Green Dragon. The Americans changed their drinking preferences from tea to coffee in 1773 after the Boston Tea Party at Green Dragon. This revolution took place due to the imposition of heavy taxes on tea by King George III.

The late 1800s welcomed coffee and coffeehouses as symbols of freedom, progress, and equality. We see the offcuts of this revolution on the present-day beverage trends evident by the 18 billion dollar U.S. coffee market.

Some may not consider coffee as the only factor in the great enlightenment of Western Europe. And that would be true, of course, yet coffee played a vital role in nurturing free and uncensored discussions. It led to awakening the communities from their age-old beer inertness and filled their cerebral void with revolutionary thought. In its real sense, coffee’s arrival was enlightening to the human race.

Besides the taste and aroma, coffee delivers energizing effects to the drinker. Bringing the population out of the Dark Ages quasi-alcoholic state, a penny-worth cup of coffee gave birth to ‘penny universities’ where intellectuals indulged in coffee-derived conversations on all kinds of topics. Many research pieces have highlighted the memory-boosting and focus enhancing effects of coffee in addition to placing the drinker in a more optimistic mode. So where coffee brewed, ideas and philosophies stirred, and the population crossed over the threshold into a new era of enlightenment.

Coffee Enlightenment – Do these words belong together?

Enlightenment has many fronts in our lives. What started as an enlightenment movement has turned up as intriguing sociological and philosophical models of the current millennium. The thing that has not changed is penny-a-cup coffee. There are good reasons why the dark bitter coffee with that gorgeous smell awakens our senses like no other beverage. Let us see what science has to say about it. Since we are talking over enlightenment to increase the productivity of human attributes, let us pursue in the same direction.

Some of us grab their coffees because they have had a fete weekend with a bit too much to drink. In contrast, others are simply a coffee enthusiast at heart. The morning coffee protocol does not change for many of us. Coffee holds power over our productivity in one way or the other. Besides the taste, coffee contains stimulants like caffeine that help us keep active and full of zip.

The contemporary worker of today drinks at least three cups of coffee per day. That is enough to keep our focus sharp. Caffeine in coffee helps enhance our memories. That is true not only for our short-term memories but also holds for warding off chronic disease states as Parkinson’s, diabetes, and colon cancer. According to the National Institute of Health, persons who consume three or more cups of coffee per day have a 10% lower risk of death than those who are not an avid coffee drinker.

Apart from keeping one alert, coffee improves productivity, as shown by a study done at MIT. According to their study report, employees who took coffee breaks together showed an overall boost to their work performance. Coffee, being a social tool, brings people together, and workers who drink coffee together are happier at their jobs than their counterparts. Every eight out of ten U.S. employees do a desk job, and they are more prone to develop neck and back pains. Another study conducted by the NIH showed that prescribing caffeine to such workers decreased the pain related to everyday work schedules.

And the deal about coffee does not end with its taste or its nutrient content. The mere aroma of coffee is enough to rejuvenate your senses. The aroma is the one thing about coffee houses not found at any other third-place avenues. There is a reason why the aroma has such profound effects on our alertness levels. A cup of nut-brown cuppa can reduce the stress levels associated with sleep deprivation. A study conducted at the Seoul National University studied the effects of coffee smell on specific proteins in rats’ brain cells. The ones exposed to the coffee aroma showed specific proteins in their brain with anti-oxidant properties. These proteins played an essential role in protecting brain cells from stress-related damage. The rats not exposed to the smell did not express such genetic proteins in their brains.

Hints of Coffee Enlightenment

Caffeine in the coffee is not a mere stimulant. Researchers have found some add-ons to its productivity-enhancing effects. Some of these include;

Increase in the availability of energy
Enhanced metabolism with an increase in total daily energy expenditure
Decreased physical and mental fatigue
Enhanced physical, motor, and cognitive performance by revving up cerebral endurance
Cuts back on the sense of effort being put in with a physical activity
Increases alertness and the overall feeling of rejuvenation
Shortens the reaction time and adds a touch of accuracy to one’s response to stimuli
Increases focus and attention span
Bolsters short-term memory
Increases the cognitive skills with enhanced reasoning and problem-solving ability

The link of coffee to the emergence of third places as coffee houses is intertwined with the era of enlightenment or the Age of Reason. It is not a mere coincidence. It was a time when the European thinkers were awakened from their beer-stupor and started questioning the traditional authorities. When the notion that humanity could benefit from rational change gained loud advocates over the penny-a-cup coffee, it was then that essays, laws, discoveries, and revolutions took shape. As the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, stated in his essay, “What is Enlightenment.”

“Dare to know! Have courage to use your own reason.”

Scientific evidence backs the link of coffee to a person’s enhanced ability to reason with oneself. So when it comes to the age of enlightenment and the coffee revolution, if we narrate both as a synonymic phenomenon, we won’t be wrong because our reasoning is calling the shots here.