Note: This couldn’t have been written without the might of coffee. 

Cue 18th century Europe, industrialisation sprung in. Top cats with bad hats are devising ways to increase labour and profits. They observe, to their detriment, that every labourer has a certain sustainable amount that can contributed. Human bodies certainly can’t toil over a longer amount of time.

It didn’t mean that labour was indispensable. Upon breaking waves, new waves crashed in. But the spectacle is clearly unavoidable. Industrialists didn’t value the health of their employees. Several humanists clearly despise this wastage of humanity to capitalism. Marx and Engels say that the system in fact responsible for this wastage by creating the class-based conflict, in which the working class works to its own physical and mental detriment.

In the early 20th century, Pinkertons and the general protection class form to protect the class interests. It had felt way too lucrative to suffer the consequences of expanding social welfare. After 2 world wars and a cold war, the clash between two major system, i.e., Capitalism and Communism, came to a halt in 1990s with US as its default victor. Francis Fukuyama coins this specific time as the “end of history”, having reach the end of progress. It would be more accurate to say, “End of liberal history”.

Objects came to rule the world in a hyperreality (a thin skin of over-defined images). Things rule in contradiction, with a certain ambiguity and specificity. One sees the value in a “Supreme” block as arbitrary, yet valuable, in an ironic sense. Human beings work hard to earn the status of objects, easily designed and captured. A wealthy person has this car, this shirt, this mobile. Only when the worship of brands were starting to heat up in US and the rest of the world, something on the horizon had been keeping the seat warm. A certain jolly devil, whose work at illusions knows no bounds.

Behold the almighty Coffee. Coffee, along with its cousin Tea, is the only drug (close to alcohol, tobacco) that is classified as harmless and actually beneficial. It powers the machine that is emaciated and overworked. An ascetic, ‘with a single whiff of this substance’ dances at the joy it brings.

The older bottleneck of bodies suffering from overwork could never serve as an excuse. “You lack sleep, or feel sloth. You have coffee.” is a silent message from the employers. “Now you can do anything.”

One cannot be further from the truth. Within this excitement and toil, there lies a deeper anxiety. This anxiety leaves no stones unturned. In the impatience it entails, things travel through portals. Even TV shows, conversation topics leave as they come. Nothing registers completely. It keeps everything active, so that no object can leave behind its trace. As the excitation continues, other aspects to human experience like “the quiet”(as described by David Foster Wallace) take a role of repression.

This Gnostic deity draws a magical spell, creating a mirage of positivities. It is an excitation that needs no origin. This certain glint in reality is created using a loop of past images, cultures, only to distract us from the real skin. Our world is cybertopia (or a dystopia according to the perspective), ruled by computers and phones, rather than general human sentiments. It should resemble more the world of Blade Runner and Ghost in the Shell rather than the old government buildings.

All praise the almighty Coffee!

Our true skin