A Second Enlightenment? I wish.

One article at Wired Drugs, Body Modifications May Create Second Enlightenment that talks about a "smart pill" bringing on a second "enlightenment", inspired me to look up more information on the connection between coffeehouses and the enlightenment in Europe, particularly London, in the 17th century. Even without reading anything, one could easily surmise that caffeine served up in coffeehouses produced more intelligent discourse than alcohol in ale houses which were the common meeting places in the middle ages.

Open discourse frightened authority types who preferred a more "mellow" (and drunken) populace. During the middle ages, Europeans (were pretty loaded and) didn't have access to the news of the day, but when coffeehouses appeared in England, people began to get caught up with reading the news and then sharing new ideas.

"Runners were sent round to the coffee-house to report major events of the day, such as victory in battle or political upheaval, and the newsletters and gazettes of the day were distributed chiefly in the coffee-house. Most of the establishments functioned as reading rooms, for the cost of newspapers and pamphlets was included in the admission charge...

Naturally, this dissemination of news led to the dissemination of ideas, and the coffee-house served as a forum for their discussion. As the eminent social historian G. M. Trevelyan observed: "The 'Universal liberty of speech of the English nation'...was the quintessence of Coffee House life." (English Coffee Houses.)

This enlightenment started in cities where people lived closer together. The internet today may be part of a "second enlightenment" which could be even larger and more widespread simply because our ideas are not confined to our locality.

You might even say that the anonymity of the internet today gives people a chance to engage without class distinction as it did in coffeehouses in the past. From The Fall of Public Man By Richard Sennett

"...the talk [in coffeehouses] was governed by a cardinal rule: in order for information to be as full as possible, distinctions of rank were temporarily suspended; anyone sitting in the coffeehouse had a right to talk to anyone else, to enter into any conversation, whether he knew the other people or not, whether he was bidden to speak or not. It was bad form even to touch on the social origins of other persons when talking to them in the coffeehouse, because the free flow of talk might then be impeded."

If I recall clearly the 60's and 70's, when I was sort of a hippie, there was no class distinction among my peers. It could have been that we were high, but then again, we weren't always high. I wasn't anyway. It could have been that we dressed like "freaks" and let our hair down literally so that you could tell who was like minded or open to chatting about important issues of the day (war). You really couldn't tell who came from money or who was the most well educated and you didn't really care. After a while though, many people just got too fucked up on drugs, lost interest in fighting the man after the war ended and the advent of mindless disco music led way to the Reagan years and the rest is history.

The wired article suggests that the smart pill may inspire people to go on the internet to disseminate ideas and information, but quite frankly, there are already a lot of smart and philosophical people out there from all walks of life... and I don't think that the brainwashed are going to want anything to do with smart pills because they have Fox News and already think they are smart.