Defiance

What is it about telling people what they can't do? I can think of no better argument for the theory of evolution than our species' streak of defiance, even against our own interests. The second you ban something, the louder the clamor is for it. The prime example of this, of course, is prohibition, the spectacularly failed attempt to ban alcohol in this country that allowed the mafia to gain a monopoly on bootlegging, establishing a toehold in America. The mafia in Italy, for example, is so defiant it's the country's largest industry, accounting for 7% of GDP. At least, prohibition was banning something like booze that is worth fighting for, people are so loathe to have things taken away from them that in 1925, when Turkey banned fez hats, there were riots, a quickly formed smuggling trade and executions. For hats.

My friend Lou McDonald is a tireless coffee drinker. I say he's "tireless" because it's possible that he never sleeps on account of how much caffeine he consumes. There is more caffeine in a cup of coffee than in a cup of tea, but only because it takes fewer tea leaves, individually more caffeinated than coffee beans, to brew a cup of tea than a cup of coffee requires beans. Coffee also contains more caffeine than a can of Coke, though, it should be noted, so does milk chocolate. Hold a second, did I say "coffee beans" earlier? I shouldn't have said that. Coffee comes from seeds, botanically speaking, not beans, as coffee is a fruit.  

80% of the population caffeinates itself somehow through coffee, tea, pop or otherwise and many of them do so obsessively, none more than Lou. Should you even hint the slightest interest he will tell you which Brazilian blends are best for which kinds of drinks, which roasters are ideal for a good cup of coffee (and how much they cost), and which companies are currently leading the way as far as coffee production. He is an obsessive. Beethoven, every time he made a cup of coffee, counted out exactly 60 beans to ensure he drank coffee at the same strength every day and he would think Lou should branch out his interests a little. I mention all this because if Lou McDonald lived in the Ottoman Empire in the 1600s, he would be in danger of having his head cut off.

Sultan Murad IV so hated the stuff that he banned coffee by penalty of death, a punishment he regularly doled out himself without a jury, walking the streets of Istanbul in disguise with a giant sword and lobbing off the heads of offenders mid-sip. The history of autocrats is rich with silly banishments and other indulgences but usually their punishments are not so severe, or punished by the king's own hand. In 1367, King Charles V of France banned shoes shaped like penises, a severe blow to the mid-14th century French bachelorette party industry. Vietnam banned pet hamsters in 2008, incidentally the year that toasters became unbanned in Havana. Tsar Peter III had strict rules on who could play with his toy soldiers, loved so much by him that he put off consummating his marriage to Catherine the Great for months to spend more time playing with them, he even court-martialed a rat that gnawed on one. Chinese Emperor Kangxi was so indulged that he regularly spent state funds making his court create dramatic sets of the outside world in his temple, erecting huge re-creation of the city market where the emperor could shop and pretend he was just regular guy, except that he beat anyone who didn't act like they were having a great time playing make-believe with an adult. Luckily, we live in a democric republic, which would never create a leader of such childish immaturity. 

Murad IV was hardly the only anti-coffee tyrant known to history. His successor, while not as stringent as Murad (and who could be, really?) still punished coffee drinkers with beatings on the first offense. Second offense? Sewn into a leather bag and thrown in the river which, frankly, sounds worse than having your head cut off. I don't drink coffee so giving it up would be easy, easier still of the penalty for starting was horrible death. Yet, people in the Ottoman Empire continued to drink it. When it was banned in France, the French did the same. King Charles II of England found similar bad luck rooting out the stuff, and he was helped by a group called "The Womens Petition Against Coffee," which alleged the drink was robbing English men of their virility. Charles' concern, like Murad's and the French before him, was that coffee made men too vigorous, that drinking it cleared the mind for revolution. Coffeehouses were considered the gardens where sedition was sowed. I think that anti-government feelings were probably better stoked by autocrats who would kill their subjects for enjoying their favorite drinks but that's just me. Wherever coffee went, these kings, shahs and sultans thought, uprisings were sure to follow. 

Nevertheless, coffee drinkers persisted. Is this an argument for the noble fight being waged by those who would tell us that masks and social distancing are bans on their freedom? I think readers of this newsletter can reasonably assume it's not. Humanity, for all its individual defiance, is a remarkably self-sacrificing when it comes to group efforts. Blackouts in World War II were hugely successful for making it difficult for the enemy to bomb at night. Britain was fantastic at keeping their homes dark (and, it must be said, Japan was even better), even the United States, hardly in much danger of night raids ran drills from coast to coast. New Orleans, in that Southern hot bead of individual defiance, passed their tests with 99% compliance. I have no doubt, given similar circumstances, even today we would find a way to rally together, if asked, to temporarily give up our constitutional right to light. During the Spanish Flu, most people happily wore masks to avoid infection but even then there were dissenters, including San Francisco's "Anti-Mask League." Most adults can distinguish the just from the unjust depending on what's being banned and why. Many U.S. prisons have smoking bans which have proved successful public health initiatives. In fact, the biggest day-to-day change on the prisoners lives have been on what to use for currency (most prisoners use canned mackerel). No, refusing to wear a mask in a global pandemic has less to do with the unstoppable force of coffee drinkers in years past then with the first recorded of air rage, where a first class passenger got so upset they were banned from getting another drink, they pooped on the food trolley.