I am having thoughts on the history of mild intoxicants (http://www.amazon.com/Tastes-Paradise-History-Stimulants-Intoxicants/dp/067974438X) and they're continually returning to a certain recurring motif: did certain mild intoxicants, coffee and tobacco, fundamentally drive humans as they developed capitalism and the Protestant work ethic, and therefore give rise to the Western society as we know it today? The question is definitely pertinent. The answer, however, is not as cut-and-dry as a yes or no. The development of human thought and action was a multidimensional process; therefore no one thing deserves credit. However, I am going to argue that these substances proved the perfect compliment, thereby enabling a shift in possibilities, a shift that did indeed become crucial to the process.
I want to use this post to argue tobacco’s role in the process. I will mention coffee where pertinent, but it will not be a focal point.
Europe received tobacco with open arms. An export from America, tobacco was as novel as a product could be at the time. Its unorthodox mode of consumption left people at a loss for words as to how to appropriately describe the act of consuming tobacco. This 1627 quote from Johann Joachim von Rusdorff does a decent job of expressing the sentiment of the day, “I cannot help but devote a few words to criticizing that new, astonishing fashion that came to our Europe some years ago from America, and which might be called a fog-drinking bout which outdoes all other passions for indulgence in drink, old or new.” Fog-drinking was, finally, aptly deemed smoking later in the 17th century. The novelty that was smoking naturally gave rapid rise to commercialization of the product. Smoking a pipe quickly became a past time focused on easing the mind and calming oneself; it was the perfect combination of motoricity, psychology, and pharmacology. This is the first important role tobacco played in the westernization process. Like coffee, tobacco allowed the individual to refocus, and then move forward efficiently, ideally now able to do more work than was previously possible without the drug. Tobacco’s differences from coffee in this respect should also be noted. Caffeine acted to stimulate the mind and provide the individual with renewed energy to complete the task-at-hand; nicotine, on the other hand, calmed and collected the individual’s wits, putting them into a level-headed state of mind, also making it easier to move forward with the task at hand. They both achieved similar ends, yet worked in different ways.
Championed as an idyllic drug for students, tobacco provided means to achieving a contemplative mind. The popularity of the drugs denoted a shift in emphasis from the work of the physical world to the labors of the mind. Coffee shops and smoking parlors were academic gathering places. With the ever increasing speed of everyday life, coffee and tobacco became seen as drugs that not only allowed people to keep up, but enabled them to set the pace. The Protestant work ethic developed hand-in-hand with these substances. People could now work harder and longer than they previously thought possible, all the while remaining unintoxicated (obviously only if they weren’t drinking), and in the case of smoking, less burdened with erotic passions and desires, according to the times. Weakened sexual passion was seen by Protestants as a very positive side effect of smoking tobacco. The medicine of the times also viewed tobacco very favorably; it got rid of excess mucus, “[made] you lean,” and kept you level-headed.
The progressive development of tobacco as a smoking vehicle, as well as the female smoking movement, both mirror the westernized sentiment well. An increase in the speed of everyday life also saw a correlative decrease in the size of, and therefore smoking time, associated with smoking vehicles. Once upon a time it took an hour to properly smoke a pipe. Then came the cigar. Seen as light and nimble at its introduction into the market, the cigar could be smoked in thirty minutes or less and required no packing. Just cut and light. Naturally, the cigarette showed up. Now we had a product that could be fully consumed in a matter of minutes and came packaged in boxes containing multiples. People initially exchanged the cigarettes from the commercial box to a more personal case. However, this soon became passé, and people smoked them straight from the box. The cigarette helped facilitate the movement for women to smoke. The small, thin appearance of a cigarette seemed feminine, and after a surge with some initial pushback, became appropriate and commonplace for women to smoke.
The ability to work harder and longer, the decrease in sexual passion, the focused mind, the vast commercialization quickly spreading worldwide, and the progressive female smoking movement all serve as evidence that tobacco quickly became the perfect complement to the human temperament in the development of the western identity and establishment of the Protestant work ethic.
No comments:
Post a Comment