The Better Coffee: On Friendship

I’m reading Too Late to Awaken: What Lies Ahead When There Is No Future?, published by Allen Lane in 2023. Slavoj Žižek analyzes the state of contemporary geopolitics and human relations: the twilight of capitalism, the emptiness of liberalism, and the confrontational stance Russia, China, and the United States take in international politics to defend their positions. There’s a lot about Russia’s war against Ukraine and about Putin—sometimes, I feel, too much. But who’s going to stop Žižek? His book is an excellent litmus test for the current state of the capitalist, liberal, and democratic paradigm. More tangible than “abstract” climate change, right?

I recommend it. It’s a deeply enriching read, and another explanation of why The Better Coffee is necessary.

One thing that strikes me, among many others, is Žižek’s critique of the woke movement as a new form of racism: dividing people into “us” and “Others.” Sometimes I feel that this way of thinking can find its way into The Better Coffee Endeavour, too. We, the enlightened coffee people, follow the 20 Core Values, while those others let specialty coffee exploit them. We catch ourselves assigning “all the evil” in the coffee market to those rich white men in corporations that exploit coffee people relentlessly and serve “decaf lattes” to the masses of consumers. And to those white, obscenely wealthy politicians and oligarchs.

As if their actions were the only problem, while our own conduct… was always noble.

Žižek recalls a saying developed collectively by Aboriginal activists in Queensland in the 1970s, often associated with Lilla Watson. Its message is that coming to help someone is a waste of time if you don’t recognize that your own liberation is bound up with theirs; the invitation is to work together. Do we need a more precise definition of The Places or The Trainers?

Friendship doesn’t require you to love the Other. You may not even like them, or feel any desire to respect their needs. But you should want to understand the Other’s situation: to see why and how coffee people suffer. Understand where you stand and have compassion for yourself; try to understand the other person’s position, too, and have compassion for them. Become friends so you can act together, so each of you can live and work without having to worry about a friend, knowing that your friend is doing well and is safe.

Can you choose not to care about other coffee people? Of course not. You can either fight them or befriend them.

In The Soul of Man under Socialism, Oscar Wilde argues that well-intentioned charity can prolong the conditions it tries to address, and that charitable virtues can obstruct the deeper work of rebuilding society so poverty becomes impossible. He also calls it immoral to use private property to alleviate the harms produced by the institution of private property.