Jakub Grygiel is a professor of politics at the Catholic University of America, a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution and a senior adviser at the Marathon Initiative.
The atomization of society begins with your morning coffee.
According to the National Coffee Association, last year 46 percent of Americans had some “specialty” coffee (42 percent, sensibly, still had a regular one) in the past day. Simultaneously, 54 percent of U.S. adults feel isolated and half of them feel bereft of companionship “often or some of the time,” according to the American Psychological Association.
As specialty coffee consumption has surged (84 percent since 2011), so has the loneliness epidemic. Just a correlation? Consider what your coffee order reveals.
The salted caramel mocha latte, the iced brown sugar soy milk shaken espresso, the white chocolate macadamia cream cold brew are the triumph of hyper-individualization over communal norms. When you order a dirty spiced chai with oat milk, you are not only wasting the time of other customers in line but also are signaling that your personal appetites demand an elaborate, customized response. You are asserting your primacy, unique in the complexity of your desires, and stand apart from your nation’s simple rituals. No wonder you’re alone.
This slide toward caffeinated fussiness began long ago, of course. Perhaps it started here on the Starbucks timeline: “1995: Begins serving Frappuccino® blended beverages.” But the accelerating consumption of “signature coffee drinks” is inarguable to anyone who has felt the minutes slipping away, waiting to hear the magic words: “Next customer.” Yes, the time-honored practice of the marketplace happily accommodating demand has brought many blessings upon the world. This is not one of them. Economists call it “segment of one” marketing, the indulging of those desperately searching for meaning with the absurd customization of their daily beverage. At what societal cost?
Edmund Burke would have thought, correctly, that liberty is put at risk by the consumption of that vanilla sweet cream nitro cold brew. People “are qualified for civil liberty,” he wrote in a letter, “in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites … in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption … in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good.”
The moment we let our appetites rule us, devising ever more intricate beverages, we knock one more chunk from society’s foundation. In fact, Burke continued, “society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without.”
Modernity, for all its thrilling innovations, brought us not just the bloody French Revolution but also individually tailored goods, celebrating every stupid idea that crosses our minds or every absurd appetite that we think we crave, in open disregard for the wisdom of the ages and in loud disdain for the importance of cultural unity. Customization presented as a feast of creativity instead produced just a cacophony of coffee drink orders and growing loneliness.
Americans’ infatuation with specialized coffees is all the more jarring when one visits Italy, where the simple espresso is still king. Starbucks wisely didn’t venture to open an Italian outpost until 2018, in Milan, and hasn’t managed to put a dent in the country’s approximately 150,000 “bars.” Those are the seemingly ubiquitous small coffee shops commonly offering just a simple menu of espressos or cappuccinos (the latter only before noon). Even the fancy variations aren’t particularly fancy — maybe add some sambuca to make a caffè corretto or a dollop of steamed milk for a macchiato.
The priority in Italy is having a quick drink and chat with friends or strangers, not sitting alone in the corner, AirPods in place, sucking through a straw a pink soy coffee drink with whipped cream on top.
Maybe there is a gap in the U.S. marketplace for some enterprising coffee aficionado who sees the wisdom of making coffee simple again. Limit the menu. Speed the line. Preserve the ritual. Eliminate the theatrical, one-person show of ordering bespoke drinks showcasing rarefied taste buds. Forbid the toasted vanilla oat milk shaken espresso with an extra pump of caramel. Declare this a no-matcha zone. It just might save society.
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