I think that one of the biggest metaphysical problems plaguing our society is a modern version of solipsism.
If you're unfamiliar with solipsism, it's the philosophical belief that nothing outside of the self exists, or that we can't be sure that anything outside of the self exists. In its extreme forms it posits that there is no true external reality, that there are no other real actors in the universe. After all, how can I be sure about anything other than my own feelings, my individual perceptions, my own experience?
This is the first portion of "I think, therefore I am," the Cartesian doctrine. The primary thing that we can be assured of, no matter what, is that we are inside of our own experience. This is something that cannot be doubted. Even if all that we see and feel is an illusion, supplied to our consciousness by a "malicious demon"—or by an omnipotent computer simulation—we are sure that there is an "I" who is being deceived. Solipsism says that this is all that we can be assured of.
In a way, this makes a good amount of sense. How can I know anything other than what's going on in my own sphere of experience? A group of friends gather in a room. I'm not sure what it's like to be any of them. What if they're all just phantoms of my own imagining? After all, all I have to go on are the data I've gathered about them myself, using my own senses. Different conversations, memories, and sensations. . . all parsed by the sieve of my own consciousness. Philosophy asks (in more scenarios than just this), which is more fundamental: the sensory experience of the viewer, or the objects represented therein? Which is "real?"
It's pretty clear that this is a problematic way of looking at the world. It feels egotistical. The solipsist gets to be the only real person in the universe. They must be pretty important! Also, if no one else is real, it gives you a pretty good excuse to do harm to other people. They're only NPCs (non-playable characters), after all; their suffering isn't real, isn't important. The solipsistic framework engenders a narcissistic version of the world. And it's only getting worse as technology inserts itself deeper into our lives.
This viewpoint of painting people as NPCs, "soulless chuds," and mere cattle to be taken advantage of has massive consequences in our society. Bad people are (currently!) running rampant, prioritizing their own success without considering the feelings of others. They are encouraged by their own echo chambers, bubbles of technology and similarly-minded people that give them the green light to fuck people over.
I think that young people are especially likely to fall into this trap—the trap of not taking anyone seriously other than themselves. Think about it: we adults are already being cooked by social media and constant screentime. Our sleep is messed up, our stress hormones are out of control, and our brain chemistry and self-image have been (permanently?) altered by digital stimulation. To make matters worse, the whole thing shows no signs of slowing down. The wealthy elite are constantly manufacturing new technology to capture our attention, addict us, market to us and surveil us, and we lack the power to say no.
Now imagine all this, except you don't have a fully formed frontal cortex. You're fifteen, and you have to go to SCHOOL. School is the villain. It's the worst thing ever. It's practically jail. It only follows that the ceaseless stream of personalized media content in your pocket will become your respite from it all, your utopia. It is the always-running feedback loop of virtual images that only you can see. Why would you want to pay attention to anything else?
If there's something that's going to get in the way of how young adults relate to the external world, that might cause them to shove their own emotions down or discredit the validity of others people's existence, it will be smart technology.
But there's some good news. The counterpart to all this modern disassociation is literally all around us. It's focused attention and mindfulness. It's our basic human existence—that's the philosophical, ontological thing that we all share. All of us can see, think, breathe and feel, go watch the clouds outside, eat a tasty meal, or drink a cup of coffee.
You all knew it was coming!
My thesis is that the mechanisms behind tasting coffee bring us closer together as members of a singular species and as valuable individuals. It is a way to chase away the mistrust and doubt inherent in our techno-centric society. Tasting and analyzing coffee grounds you to your reality and helps you joyfully connect with other people. This is what I love most about it.
We can break down the process of tasting into two main parts. There's the objective experience—which is the chemistry of something—and the subjective, individual experience—the philosophical part that asks us how we relate to ourselves and understand our own perceptions. When we perceive an obvious flavor, there are big, objective things we can all agree on. Burnt food tastes bad. It's bad because it reminds us of fire and smoke. Fire and smoke is immediately dangerous to our continued existence. Food that's gone bad turns sour and rotten. We hate these flavors. We react strongly to them so we don't ingest pathogens and die. It's a survival mechanism. At some point, we have to nail down a platform for objective perception, something to pin it on. And I don't think there's a better starting point than basic human biology.
Now, other tastes are a lot finer, and bring personal preference into play. From the evolutionary point of view, these aren't as big of a deal. As such, they're also a little harder to agree on. Cilantro tastes soapy to a lot of people. Others love it. I don't like dark roast that much. Many people do. My wife can't stand the smell of the handsoap we have in our kitchen, but it doesn't bother me at all. These finer differences in taste are subjective and dependent on someone's individual perceptions. Usually, these differences won't kill us. It's just that we like some things more than others. And lots of gourmet culinary experiences—food, wine, spirits, coffee—hinge on maximizing the flavors and individual sensory experiences we enjoy most.
Things get interesting when the objective (chemical) and subjective (empirical) facets of tasting intersect. Because they've trained their palate, some people are actually able to taste things that others aren't. They're able to detect smaller concentrations of flavor compounds in a given substance. The bridge that they've constructed between objective and subjective is wider than most. This process is the underpinning for food science, which provides the language, the lexicon, we use to thoroughly relate to the phenomenon of taste.
Food scientists are able to isolate flavor compounds in a lab. Vanillin is found in vanilla beans, and that's also what they put into Vanilla Coke as a "natural flavor" additive. In every coffee bean, too, there is an objective chemistry that gives it a certain flavor profile. Cellulose, chlorogenic and caffeic acids, lipids, proteins, sugars, etc. A slew of volatile organic compounds make up a coffee's aromatic profile, which is different depending on genetics, terroir, and preparation. These chemical compounds all help build the real template from which we can derive "flavor."
Our ability to perceive everything going on in a cup of coffee, as human tasters, is a lot less reliable than the laboratory equipment that does chemical analysis. We simply can't perform like the machines can. So we break down the steaming cup of coffee sitting in front of us using our normal mechanisms of experience and perception. Often, we start with "good" or "bad," basic overall impressions. If you're a saucy coffee drinker, you might say then that it tastes "light" or "dark," referring to the roast level. This could be something you like or dislike. Or you might hone in on the aroma, and say that is smells like citrus, or marzipan, or that it tastes a little sour in your mouth, that it has a heavy, syrupy mouthfeel, or that the aftertaste is clean, or that it's no good. These categories and judgments are all innately linked to our past experiences, because that's the way we live as humans: we analyze what's happened to us and use it to build models of the present and the future. We are normally subjective in the way that we apprehend external objects—a good taster is able to be himself and relate his experience to objective chemistry.
Additionally, in order to have a shared conversation about the coffee on the table, I have to be able to relay my ideas about it to the person standing next to me. This is easier said than done, because our individual analyses are so different. The very way we reference reality is different. And, for all we know, both of us might actually be the only real person in the universe!
Let's take a peach as another example. A peach has inside of it a tons of sweet sugars, tangy acids, and fragrant esters and lactones. It's the same peach sitting in front of you and me. My platonic idea of a peach, though, is going to be totally different from yours. When friend #3 says "peaches," the abstract peach I conjure up in my head is different than the one you envision. When you bite into the peach on the table between us and perceive its characteristic lactones, you might be whisked away back to your great-aunt Gena's peach farm. You might remember overripe peaches sitting in barrels in the barn, or tart, firm peaches waiting to be plucked from the tree. No one else on earth is going to have the same philosophical concept of "peach" as you do, because they don't share your exact experiences. If I'm from the inner city, my idea of "peach" might be related mainly to candy. I didn't grow up on a peach farm. And when I bite into a juicy peach or perceive a peachy aroma in a cup of coffee, I could remember the experience of "peach rings" more than anything else. Our different referents to flavors are a product of memory, and they can actually influence what we perceive as we taste.
These differences in flavor maps grow when we talk about different geological locations, different socioeconomic classes, and different cultures. And this is why it is so cool to share a cup of coffee with someone, take a sip, and ask them, "What do you taste?"
You are defeating solipsism and modern malaise one moment at a time!
Not only are you analyzing yourself, focused on your own perceptions, maybe sharpening them to align yourself better with objective reality, but you are also exhibiting tons of empathy, consciously bridging the gap between you another person. You are overcoming the walls that naturally grow between us in modern society. You're learning about someone who is completely different than you, with a different body, different thoughts, a different past, and different preferences. Someone who is real!
When you say "What does this remind you of?", you are asking them about their nervous system, their memories, their favorite things, and the things they choose to be intentional about. You are relating to their internal state; the thing that—apparently— nobody else can see. You are sharing the experience of being human with another thinking, feeling individual.
And this is why I think specialty coffee is one small answer to modern-day solipsism.
