Wednesday, April 14, 2004


regional coffee culture, part xxiv

"dating is an all-new game in the caffeine holes in india’s silicon valley as polls have overtaken passion at the tables ringed by young professionals."

what has coffee wrought? what's interesting is that throughout history, and all over the globe, it's always the same: fast cultural liberalism, and then political and market reform.

from the times of the ottoman empire, to the enlightenment, to the american revolution (which basically started in boston's green dragon coffeehouse) -- it all begins and foments in the coffeehouses.

the next thing you know, people are creating free markets, à la merchant's and tontine's coffeehouses (known nowadays as the new york stock exchange) and lloyd's coffeehouse (now known as lloyds of london)!

and today here in bangalore we see the same thing. not only is dating still somewhat unusual in india, where in middle-class families arranged marriages remain common, but open talk of electoral reform is also somewhat unusual still, esp. between men and women.

my charming co-workers from south india were a little surprised when i showed them this article. . . but then again, after a moment's thought, they said they actually shouldn't have been.

i really need to track some people down and think about the historical links between coffee drinking and human rights. java is a positive, progressive social force that enlarges human potential in every culture it touches.

the question is: why? and how can we harnass that today for the benefit of the coffee farmer?

and perhaps most urgently in our contemporary world, why hasn't this potent force fully worked its magic in the middle-east?

posted by fortune | 10:43 AM | top | link to this | email this: | | | 0 comments