Wits, coffee, and the Internet10 min read
The appearance of coffeehouses during the Enlightenment, their role in the evolution of free speech and freedom of thought, and today’s conspiracy culture.
Rise of the coffeehouses
The power coffee seems to have over many of us is undeniable. Its exact origins and how humans came to roast, ground, and brew coffee seeds is still a mystery. Most historians regard as apocryphal the ancient legends and myths surrounding coffee. What the historical evidence does show is that coffee was already circling the Arabian Peninsula during the 15th century. And, by the 16th century, it had already made its way into Europe.
Coffee drinkers immediately noticed it kept them awake, and all sorts of “coffee cures” became popular everywhere it was introduced. Coffee was a recommended treatment for many common ailments of the time, including scurvy, the flux (dysentery), consumption (tuberculosis), melancholia and other “humour imbalances,” scrumpox (impetigo), smallpox, and gout. It also became the recommended treatment to cure many of the “fevers,” such as winter fever (pneumonia), green fever (anemia), jail or ship fever (typhus), and barrel fever (alcoholism). However, its ability to keep drinkers sharp and quick-witted made it popular among thinkers and scholars.
The philosophers and experimentalists that gathered to debate and share ideas during the latter part of the Renaissance and the beginning of modern philosophy were avid coffee drinkers. This gave way to a “coffeehouse culture,” and the establishments became “penny universities.” For the price of a penny, people could go in and have access to the discussions carried out by the thinkers of the time. There were even “runners” that would go from one place to another carrying around the news and conversations taking place inside the coffeehouses.
Coffeehouses became places to share ideas, to debate, not just among scholars but also with the general public. They spread all over Europe, and subsequently to the European colonies, and fueled a new Age of Reason, an era of Enlightenment. There was access to both highly intellectual debates as well as pure gossip, but perhaps that was part of the success of the Enlightenment. Coffeehouses allowed both scholars and “common folk” to exchange ideas. Granted, back then only men could enter the coffeehouses, but the discussions and conversations made it outside these establishments and drove monumental changes in the world.
Reason, experimentation, and observation with skepticism came to replace dogma, tradition, and superstition. Many of the institutions we take for granted today, such as constitutional governments, and ideals such as the American “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” or the French “liberté, égalité, fraternité (liberty, equality, fraternity) would not have been possible without the Enlightenment. And, may I say, they would not have been possible without coffee either.
Coffee wits
In a way, coffeehouses were the Internet of the Enlightenment. Yes, there were serious discussions about science and philosophy, but also gossip and small talk. Like the comments section under a post, people critiqued, analyzed, interpreted, and dissected whatever was discussed. And just like in today’s Internet, you could find experimentalists presenting their hypotheses and observations, newsmongers carrying around both the actual news and fake news, and witty people just absorbing it all to regurgitate it as amusing tales at a later time.
Originally, coffee wits were mainly regarded as the entertaining, know-it-all, coffee addicts that would not leave the coffeehouses. However, they quickly became notorious, not just for joking around and making light of things, but also for fabricating tales and hoaxes in order to amuse. In a way, they were the trolls that wanted to stir controversy. They were the commentators full of deceptive humor, full of irony, satire, and sarcasm. They were the smart-assess inserting Snopes links under your posts.
The freedom of speech that permeated coffeehouses opened the door for these coffee wits that considered nothing as sacred or untouchable and regarded everything as subject to scrutiny and criticism. As Dr. Brian Cowan noted in The Social Life of Coffee: The Emergence of the British Coffeehouse (p. 234), “The critical discourse of the coffeehouses in particular was thought to promote the spread of atheist thinking. Coffeehouses were forums for talk and debate as much as they were simple drinking houses, and this emphasis on free speech was feared to be the first step on the road to free thought.”
One could debate whether the bad reputation coffeehouse wits developed was deserved, imposed, or a combination of the two. Indeed, these wits were quite knowledgeable and great debaters, but their wittiness became more of a literary device than objective discussion. As Dr. Kate Loveman pointed out in Reading Fictions, 1660-1740: Deception in English Literary and Political Culture (p. 10), wit was regarded as irreligious, frivolous, and immoral, which in turn led individuals towards skepticism and atheism. For instance, William Blackmore, a poet and physician of the time, harshly criticized the witticism that came out of the coffeehouses. As a pious poet, he constantly condemned wit and its perceived immorality in the prefaces of his books.
In some regards, wittiness came to be a wedge between religious dogma and scientific thought. While the devout and virtuous regarded wit as a threat to doctrine and the sacred, intellectuals and thinkers viewed it with distrust. In fact, the Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University only licensed coffeehouses that that agreed to allow students inside the establishment if accompanied by their tutors. For many intellectuals and thinkers, wit had deteriorated the coffeehouse culture with sophistry and pedantry. As Dr. Cowen remarked, “Much to the lament of scholars like Wood, North, and Tenison, the character of the coffeehouse would adapt to the times, and it would become much more so a venue for fashionable wit than a center for serious scholarly study” (p. 93).
Wits, charlatans, and the Internet
Just like the English coffeehouses and the printing press gave way to an era of Enlightenment, scientific thought, and religious reformation, the Internet has revolutionized our relationship with information, free speech, and critical thinking. The Internet became a place where anyone can obtain and exchange information and ideas. However, this also means anyone can share and divulge false information, conspiracies, and pseudoscientific advice.
There is a plethora of scientific information available online. And there are also legions of people that lack critical thinking skills trying to consume that information and twist it into their own worldviews. Contrary to the coffeehouse culture in its beginnings, where intellectuals and the “common folk” had discussions and debates, the Internet, for all its freedom and openness, remains a highly segregated space.
Most scientific papers remain behind paywalls that not even most scholars can access. And the elitism of academics and intellectuals, which might have started around the time scholars started to separate themselves from the “common folk” that frequented the coffeehouses, makes it difficult to encourage a healthy exchange of information and ideas. This includes both the contempt and ridicule involved in criticizing laypersons that try to engage in scientific discussions as well as the cryptic, convoluted, and difficult-to-understand language used in academic writing (which in my opinion makes most academics terrible writers). And it is not just the mockery and confusing language.
There are many factors that come into play when trying to understand why people distrust experts so much. Corporations and government officials have at times used science as a tool to justify human suffering over profits. For example, tobacco companies had doctors telling people for decades smoking was good for you, and governments have used unsuspecting people as guinea pigs in unethical experiments. The Nazi regime was particularly cruel and sadistic in their human experiments. Doctors at the Ravensbrück concentration camp removed from female prisoners chunks of bones, muscles, and nerves without anesthesia to study bone infections and tissue regeneration.
In the United States, one of the most infamous instances was the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male. Researchers deceived Afro-American men and allowed them to suffer from the disease for decades just to see what happens without treatment. Even when there was no need for such research since penicillin became the treatment of choice during the 1940s, the men remained untreated until a whistleblower came out in the early 1970s.
On top of the mockery and mistrust, there are armies of Internet trolls that, contrary to the smartassery and artful deception of the wits that sought to entertain, merely seek to sow even more discord and distrust in online discussions. And perhaps, one of the gravest consequences of the segregation of the Internet is that it has created digital bubbles where “alternative facts” exist, and fears and conspiracies are amplified. So, the immediate problem we have now is that those pockets of alternate realities, where facts are mixed with misguided beliefs, are expanding and exploding into the real world. Antivaxxers, flat-earthers, chemtrails, 9/11, false flag operations, FEMA concentration camps, aliens, the Illuminati, fluoridation, white genocides, Sandy Hook, persecution of Evangelicals in the United States, George Soros, Pizzagate… The ripple effect of those exploding bubbles is affecting the world in substantial and destructive ways.
A wary mom might have overheard some chitchat about vaccines being dangerous, but the overworked pediatrician caring for her kids within a health system that is about to collapse might not have enough time to sit down, listen to her concerns, and appropriately explain why vaccines are safe and will keep her kids healthy and alive. So, she goes online and googles about vaccine dangers.
She is already suspect, her only concern is the wellbeing of her kids, and the doctor seemed to give her the runaround. So, she finds a supportive group of other wary moms, and together they further amplify their fears. They seek studies and information about vaccine side effects but do not know how to differentiate credible sources from the charlatans profiteering from their fears to sell them snake oil. Thinking they are erring on the side of caution, their kids go unvaccinated for years. And, before you know it, there are measles outbreaks everywhere and children dying of preventable diseases.
We must deal with this sad reality, this terrible phenomenon that is throwing us back into darker times. The Internet has brought humanity to a crossroads between the principles of the Age of Enlightenment and the superstition of the Dark Ages. Religious dogma and fundamentalism are challenging the capacity of human logic and reason. Continued discrimination and inequality are blocking the recognition of human rights. Conspiracies pushed by charlatans are threatening human progress and scientific innovation. Fear and distrust are replacing healthy skepticism. Social justice zealots and their digital inquisitions are displacing open dialogue and compassion.
I am still hopeful that humanity can continue the project of the Enlightenment that began centuries ago and somehow got derailed during the Industrial Revolution and the excesses of Postmodernism. It might be possible to rein back the current conspiratorial Internet culture full of trolls, charlatans, and their victims.
I certainly do not think passing legislation to curtail online freedom of speech will do anything to prevent further damage to our knowledge and information society. On the contrary, we should promote the freedoms that permeated the coffeehouses in their early days, where both experts and lay people were able to start a dialogue and have open discussions.
We need to desegregate the Internet and integrate those fringes back into a common reality. And we should do it while embracing humanist values in their secular form by encouraging critical thinking and our shared responsibility to lead ethical lives that promote societal and environmental good. I can only hope that, by starting this site, I might be able to contribute to a healthy online dialogue in a rational and humanist manner, even if just a little.
I must admit I have been guilty at times (more often that I would like to admit) of the mockery and contempt that tends to push people to the fringes, mostly out of frustration. Sometimes the amount of false information available online drives me to the brink of insanity. What brings me back to reality is our human capacity to have empathy and compassion. When properly channeled, those traits push us to be better persons, contribute in positive ways, and promote change for the common good, even if just a bit. After all, I’m just a heavy coffee drinker that swears like a sailor and tries to combat extremism and pseudoscience, one cup of coffee at a time.
Featured image based on photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels
