Chatting with the Barista (3)

"Heading into the Sumateran jungle on his first safari, the Chinese tourist was confident he could handle any emergency. He sidled up to the experienced native guide and said smugly, 'I know that carrying a torch will keep tigers away.'

'That’s true,' the guide replied. 'But it depends on how fast you carry the torch.'"

"Let's go on," said the Barista. "For most of the 20th century, the terms ‘welfare’ and ‘well-being’ were used more or less synonymously in discussions about human development, social justice and public policy. But in economics perspective, these words, 'welfare' and 'wellbeing,' have very different meanings.Welfare more commonly refers to the condition of an entire country or economy, which is sometimes emphasized by using the phrase 'social welfare.'

Well-being, in simple terms, can be described as judging life positively and feeling good. For public health purposes, physical well-being (e.g., feeling very healthy and full of energy) is also viewed as critical to overall well-being. Well-being is usually used on persons or a group of people since it means the state of being healthy, happy, or prosperous. Healthcare workers are responsible for the health and well-being of all patients. Being accountable for your mistakes is a simple way to improve your well-being.

From a philosophical perspective, well-being occupies a central role in ethics and political philosophy, including in major theories such as utilitarianism. It also extends far beyond philosophy: recent studies on the science and psychology of well-being have propelled the topic to center stage, and governments spend millions on promoting it. We are encouraged to adopt modes of thinking and behavior that support individual well-being or 'wellness'.

Well-being has a long-distinguished history as a locus of philosophical exploration. This should come as no surprise. Much practical philosophy is focused on the questions of how we ought to live in general, what we ought to do, or what morality requires of us. But the answer to these questions must be sensitive to the question of how it would be best for us to live.

To get well-being in focus, Guy Fletcher gives us an example. Suppose that you have a medical condition that has contaminated your blood and that can be cured in two different ways: receiving a blood donation or receiving a new kidney.

As your friend, I am compelled to help. It turns out that I am a compatible donor for each of blood and kidney. Let us assume that you will be cured completely by either treatment (and that the risk of failure is identical in each case). Now let us look at the two options. Donating my kidney is much more painful and much more time-consuming. It also has a much longer recovery period. Donating blood, by contrast, is only slightly painful, takes hardly any time, and leaves me with two kidneys.

In light of these facts, it seems that we can conclude that each option is equally good for you. By contrast, donating my kidney is much more costly to me than simply donating my blood. It is worse for me to donate my kidney than to lose some blood.

The kind of value that we are thinking about when we try to determine whether the blood donation is better for me than the kidney donation is that of prudential value, of well-being, of how well my life goes for me. Another way to put the point is that the currency in which the blood donation is better for me than the kidney donation is the currency of my well-being.

Fletcher then gives another illustration to get well-being in focus. You are 25 and you now face a choice between two different careers. You could be in a rock band or you could be a researcher into fundamental physics (your talents are diverse!). To get around the issue of uncertainty, let us suppose that we have the full facts about what those two lives would be like (but your memory will be wiped after making the choice).

Suppose that the life in the rock band would be unbelievably fun. You would spend a lot of time playing music you love, you would spend time with your friends, you would see the world, attend all of the best parties, and visit far flung places. You would top the charts in every major country with your first album. However, despite once being extremely popular, your band would be a victim of changes in musical taste and so your career would be over at 40. Furthermore, the years of excess would take their toll and so you would experience five years of ill health before dying alone at 45.

By contrast, life as a research scientist would be extremely intellectually rewarding. You would spend a lot of time thinking about and researching issues that are fundamental to the nature of the universe and that you therefore find extremely interesting. You would make discoveries about the fundamental nature of the universe, writing academic books whose influence, though modest, lasts for centuries. Your life would be comparatively solitary. You would have professional acquaintances with whom you are friendly but beyond your life partner and children you have few firm friends. However, your life would afford space for leisure time and for healthy habits and you would be active right up until your peaceful death at 70.

These two lives are very different and we can evaluate them in lots of different ways. But focusing exclusively on their prudential value, on how good they would be for the person who lives them, which would you rather live? If you have difficulty answering this question, this reflects the difficulty of comparing these lives when it comes to well-being or prudential value. It is hard to decide how good each of these lives would be for the person who lives them and, thus, which would be better for them to live. The difficulty you are facing is the difficulty of determining how well each life goes, with respect to well-being.

Some contemporary philosophers use 'happiness' to mean well-being, and some psychologists use 'subjective well-being' to mean happiness, says Neera K. Badhwar. However, most contemporary philosophers use 'happiness' to mean simply a positive psychological state (either dispositional or occurrent), and 'well-being' to mean a life that is good for the person living it.

The fact that 'happiness' and 'well-being' are distinct concepts does not, however, mean that they are unrelated. Indeed, according to some philosophers, there is nothing more to a life of well-being than happiness: if your life is happy, you have well-being. On the other extreme, a few philosophers argue that we can have well-being without any happiness at all. Most philosophers, however, occupy the middle ground, arguing that happiness is essential to well-being, but not identical to it.

Andrew E. Clark, Sarah Flèche, Richard Layard, Nattavudh Powdthavee, & George Ward, talk about 'What makes a happy adult? Does more money buy more happiness?' From their two surveys, they give an answer that, it does, but less than many people might think. There are two extreme views, both equally fallacious. On the one hand there are careless studies claiming that money makes no difference. This is certainly wrong, if we are talking about life-satisfaction as the outcome. On the other hand, there are millions of individuals who think that more money would totally change their well-being. For most people, this too is a delusion.

The effect of income on happiness is in fact one of the best-measure effects in all happiness research, not because it is the most important determinant of well-being, but because so many people have for so long thought it was. Indeed some economists have taken 'full income' as equivalent to well-being.

Happiness is not the same as income. But income does affect happiness. But how much extra life-satisfaction can extra income bring? The gain in happiness from an extra dollar of income varies greatly with income. In fact, the gain in happiness is inversely proportional to income. So when a poor person gets a dollar from someone who is ten times richer than him or her, the poor person gains ten times more happiness than the rich person loses. This so-called Diminishing Marginal Utility of Income was an article of faith in nineteenth-century economics and was a central argument for the redistribution of income. It is now substantiated by hard evidence, both across individuals and across countries.

Education certainly raises income. Education is the route to a career, and that is a major reason for its importance. It benefits society, and society pays the educated individual for those benefits. education also provides more than just extra income to the person who is educated. It provides an interesting and potentially enjoyable experience for students; it educates people as citizens and voters; it generates higher tax payments; it reduces crime. And it provides for the individuals concerned a personal resource, interesting work, and additional capacity for enjoyment throughout their life.

Crime is a problem, both for the criminal and for the community. For the criminal it can lead to social exclusion and a life that fails to satisfy. For the community, it reduces the quality of life. Why in our society some people commit crimes while others don’t? We can already predict to some extent who will commit crime later in life. It is those who have behavioral problems in early life, and to a lesser extent those who underperform academically. Poor intellectual performance also makes a conviction more likely. By contrast, children who are unhappy are less likely to become criminals—perhaps they lack the desire or energy needed for crime. Crime effects human well-being. These include effects on the individual criminal and effects on everybody else.

Work is another factor of what makes a happy adult. Full-time workers spend at least a quarter of their waking life at work. But sad to say, on average, they enjoy that time less than anything else they do. The worst time of all is when they are with their boss. Even so, people hate it even more if they are unemployed.

This is not just because they lose money from being out of work. They lose something even more precious—a sense of contributing, of belonging, and of being wanted. The pain caused by the experience of unemployment is one of the best-documented findings in all happiness research. Most unemployed people are struggling and less happy than when they were in work. For the same reason they become happier when they get back to work.

If unemployment hurts, do you get used to it after a while so that it becomes less painful? The answer is No. Unemployment reduce life satisfaction. unemployment causes pain not only at the time but also to a lesser extent over the years that follow, even after the person is back in work.

When jobs are scarce, this makes some people unemployed; but it also creates fear and uncertainty for many more people, even if they currently have work. In consequence, when unemployment rises in a region, this reduces the lifesatisfaction of the employed population in the region.

At the same time, for those who are unemployed, a high unemployment rate reduces their sense of shame at being unemployed, and it also expands the social group with whom they can interact. Does this help? The answer is 'yes,' it helps but not by much. But what determines which individuals become unemployed? The main issue is to explain who has a history of unemployment, not who is unemployed at a particular moment. But do people enjoy their work? Only recently has social science shown how little most people do in fact enjoy their work, compared with many other activities.

Another factor that related to adult happiness is building a family. Most people want a partner, and most want at some time to have children. Are they right, in terms of what will bring them satisfaction and fulfillment? These are important issues for any form of public policy that aims to support people in achieving a good life. Life-course data provide important evidence on all this. They show decisively the importance of close personal relationships to a satisfying life. When it comes to children, the answer is more nuanced.

'What do you most desire in life?' Many people say physical and mental health. Physical pain is one of the worst of all human experiences—bodily torture being an extreme case. And mental pain is as bad as most physical pain, and very similar—it is experienced in the same brain areas as the affective components of physical pain. Indeed mental illness is the most common cause of suicide.

So both mental illness and physical illness are major causes of human wretchedness. But many existing studies of life-satisfaction ignore mental illness. Implicitly they assume that misery and mental illness are the same thing. This is quite wrong. Many things can cause low life-satisfaction, some of them directly and others indirectly by causing mental illness. But there are also sources of mental illness that are uncorrelated with any of the obvious external causes like poverty, unemployment, separation, or bereavement.

Social norms and institutions are public goods that affect all individuals living in a society. So we can study their effects only by comparing life-satisfaction across societies, rather than across individuals. The simplest thing is to compare different nations.

Countries differ in many ways apart from income and health. Perhaps the most important of these are in their: ethical norms of behavior (including trustworthiness, generosity, and so on); networks of social support ('bonding capital'); openness and tolerance ('bridging capital'); personal freedom; the quality of government (including corruption); equality, and levels of religiosity.

Good behavior consists of 'do’s' as well as 'don’ts.' It is crucially important what positive things we do for each other. People are happier in societies where people behave well.

Different from ethical norms are the social structures that give people a sense of belonging, and of having others they can rely on for support. What people most enjoy is socializing with friends—there is little worse than being friendless.

But in any multicultural or multiclass society there is something else that is also critical. That is bridging capital. In most societies, people who belong to minorities, including ethnic minorities and migrants, are on average less happy than the rest of the community. One reason why migrants are unhappy is of course that they are separated from many of their family and friends—they lack bonding capital. But too often they are also second-class citizens in the place they have moved to—they lack bridges.

Closely related to tolerance is the issue of freedom—the willingness of society to let people lead their lives as they wish, provided they do no harm to others. We are not talking here about the organization of government nor about economics, but about the freedom of individuals in their daily lives to choose their own way of life. This includes, for example, to choose where to live, and to speak your mind. More freedom is always better, ceteris paribus. But in practice, more freedom may sometimes mean less social cohesion. There is therefore a balance to be struck.

Much research has shown that for the personal wellbeing of the population, it is the quality of government that is the more important. It is that which impinges on peoples’ daily lives. Across countries, democracy is of course correlated with the quality of government. But there are some states that are high on quality but low on democracy.

Revolutionaries everywhere have demanded liberty, equality, and fraternity. Equality directly influences the quality of interpersonal relations in a society. More equal societies tend to have more trust, better health, and so on—at all levels of society. This implies some kind of atmospheric effect.

The conclusion should probably be this: an ethos of mutual respect and care is crucial for a happy society. Such an ethos will be highly correlated with trust, low corruption, good social support, effective government—and greater equality of income. The priority is therefore to improve the whole ethos of a society and not simply to equalize income.

Thus, what about religion? The issue of religion, can play at least three major roles: to instill values, to offer comfort, and to provide valuable social interaction.

The last thing that makes a happy adult is happiness at older age. As people move from middle into older ages, their circumstances and experiences change in many ways. Most people retire; their children leave home and establish independent lives; physical and cognitive capacities decline; and the experience of the death and loss of loved ones becomes more common. These changes influence financial resources, social relationships, independence, and autonomy. At the same time, people who no longer feel bound by the constraints of middle age may find fresh opportunities as they age, together with relief from many important sources of stress. All these processes mean that the determinants of satisfaction with life may change with ageing, or at least that the relative importance of the various sources of life-satisfaction may shift as we grow older."

Wulandari said, 'My time is up. I have to go." The Barista then said, 'Finally, as a closing, well-being and personality or character are the two most basic(and deeply inter-connected) dimensions by which people understand and judge themselves and others. How good or successful we are depends on who we are (character) and what sort of life we have (well-being).

The definition of well-being sees life as active. Only valuable activities contribute to our well-being. People's well-being depends not only on themselves; it requires that conditions which make their activities possible, and give them their meaning, obtain. And to obtain it, people must work hand in hand, not separately. Well-being cannot be achieved individually, but collectively. And Allah knows best.'"

Time to go, the Barista waved and hummed,

But if you look at me closely

You will see it in my eyes

This girl will always find her way *)

Citations & Reference:

- Annete Moldvaer, The Coffee Book, 2021, Penguin Random House

- Jonathan Morris, Coffee: A Global History, 2019,  Reaktion Books Ltd  

- William H. Ukers, All About Coffee, 2012, F+W Media, Inc.

- Scott Rao, The Professional Barista's Handbook, 2008, Scott Rao

- Sebastien Rachneux, Coffee Isn't Rocket Science, 2016, Black Bull

- Guy Fletcher, The Philosophy of Well-Being: An Introduction, 2016, Routledge

- Guy Fletcher (ed.), The Routledge Handbooks in Philosophy of Well-Being, 2016, Routledge

- Andrew E. Clark, Sarah Flèche, Richard Layard, Nattavudh Powdthavee, & George Ward, The Origin of Happiness: The Science of Well-Being over the Life Course, 2018, Princeton University Press

- Joseph Raz, Ethics in the Public Domain: Essays in the Morality of Law and Politics, 1996, Clarendon Press

*) "I'm Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman" written by Max Martin, Rami  Yacoub, and Dido Armstrong  

[Session 2]
[Session 1]

Bahasa

Chatting with the Barista (2)

"A clothes store owner called up all the marketing staff—including two female students who were doing their four-weeks internship—and angrily said, 'From the Financial Statements, I see that our sales show a very significant value. But, P&L report shows a negative number. What's this? Explain it to me!'

'Well Boss,' explained the marketing manager, 'our plaid shirts are selling well in the market. But ....'

'But why?' asked the boss.

'Many have complained, because after only a few days, it has worn off. We have reported this to you and you have agreed to replace all claims with white shirts.'

Hearing this, the boss understood. 'Okay, keep up the spirit!' then said, 'From now on, we're going to sell this very 'camera friendly' shirt!' while taking out a black and white striped shirt.

"Haa, moire?" all the employees lowered their heads while grumbling.

An intern who had been sitting by the door, whispered to her colleague, 'Sis, how long are our internship plans?'

'Don't worry, friend!' said the colleague. 'If he gets angry again, our internship period has long gone.'"

"Coffee’s growing popularity led European trading companies to try and secure supplies: the situation became acute in 1707 when the Ottoman administration imposed an export ban on coffee outside the empire. By then Nicolaes Witsen, a governor of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), had already started to plant coffee on Java in 1696. The seeds came from Malabar in India, where legend has it that coffee was planted by the Muslim scholar Baba Budan," said our Barista.

"On Java, the VOC operated by coercing indigenous chiefs into supplying a fixed quantity of coffee in exchange for a low, pre-established, price. Regular shipments from Java to Holland began in 1711, enabling Amsterdam to establish the first European coffee exchange. In 1721, 90 per cent of the coffee on the Amsterdam market originated in the Yemen; by 1726, 90 per cent was supplied from Java. Deliveries from the island continued to increase until the middle of the century, but tailed off as new plantations in the Caribbean took over.

The Dutch were partly responsible for this, says Morris. In 1712 they introduced coffee to Suriname, a colonial enclave on the northeastern coastline of mainland Latin America, bordering the Caribbean Sea. Exports began in 1721 and surpassed those from Java by the 1740s. In Suriname, cultivators had no option but to produce coffee—the crop was grown on plantations tended by slave labour.

The Dutch colonial authorities continued to work through local rulers, introducing the so-called Collection System that required peasant households to set aside a portion of their land or labour to cultivate commercial crops sold exclusively to the state. The autobiographical novel Max Havelaar, penned by a former administrator in 1860, Multatuli (the pen name of Eduard Douwes Dekker), showed how peasants starved while the Dutch indulged their indigent lords. By the 1880s, 60 per cent of Java’s peasant households were forced to grow coffee. Tending to the trees took up 15 per cent of their time, yet generated only 4 per cent of their income, due to the low fixed prices.

The British also expanded their colonial coffee production, most notably on Ceylon (Sri Lanka). British entrepreneurs cleared the forests to set up coffee plantations, killing off many of the island’s elephants and importing workers from the heavily indebted Tamil population of the Indian region of Madras. Untold numbers died ‘on the road’ to these plantations or due to working conditions when they got there. By the late 1860s total British coffee production in Ceylon and India was approaching that of the Dutch colonies.

Coffee was transformed into an industrial product during the latter part of the nineteenth century by two nations in the Americas: Brazil and the United States. Brazil’s ability to rapidly expand coffee output without significantly raising its prices enabled the U.S. to absorb this into its enlarging consumer economy. Brazil extended the coffee frontier into its hinterlands by replacing a slave labour force with imported European peasant labourers. U.S. consumption per capita tripled between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, as consumers moved from home roasting to purchasing pre-prepared, branded industrial coffee products. Once Central America and Colombia began to compete for the U.S. market, new forms of coffee politics appeared, as states strove to protect their national interests.

Coffee became a global commodity during the second half of the twentieth century. The foundation was the planting of Robusta as a hardier alternative to Arabica, reviving coffee production in Africa and Asia. Its cheaper price facilitated everyday coffee drinking among new consumers, and dramatically altered the beverage’s taste and forms. International institutions developed to regulate the world coffee market, but proved incapable of protecting producers from price volatility, culminating in the coffee crisis at the century’s end.

The repositioning of coffee as a specialty beverage at the end of the twentieth century has had profound effects upon the global coffee industry. What began as a protest by independent roasters in the U.S. against commodification and industry concentration spawned the spread of international coffee shop chains, the hipster ‘third wave’ movement, the development of the coffee capsule, and a set of fierce debates about ethical coffee consumption. Arguably, the role of specialty in stimulating consumption in non-traditional markets has laid the foundations for a new era in coffee history.

Coffee was an important ingredient of 1960s American counterculture, whose spiritual home lay in San Francisco. Hippies hung out at North Beach espresso bars run by Italian immigrants, and purchased their beans from Alfred Peet’s store in Berkeley. Peet, a Dutchman, roasted his coffee considerably darker, and brewed it much stronger, than a regular ‘cup of Joe’. Despite the proprietor’s barely disguised disdain for many of his customers, Peet’s became a mecca for those keen to experience ‘European’ coffee.

The first person to use the term ‘specialty coffee’ was Erna Knutsen. In the mid-1970s she convinced the San Francisco coffee importers where she had started as a secretary to allow her to try selling small lots of quality coffees. She found a niche supplying a new generation of independent roasters, many of whom had ‘dropped out’ from conventional career paths.

Specialty coffee took off once emphasis switched from selling beans to serving beverages. Seattle was at the centre: in 1980 the first coffee carts incorporating espresso machines appeared in the city; by 1990 there were over two hundred carts positioned close to monorail stations, ferry terminals and major stores.

Starbucks was set up by three college friends in 1971. It primarily sold beans supplied by Alfred Peet, whose dark roasting style they subsequently adopted. Howard Schultz, a salesman for a Brooklyn company which was one of their equipment suppliers, visited in 1982 and convinced the founders to hire him as sales and marketing director. In 1983 Schultz visited Milan, where he tried to persuade Starbucks to re-create in America, the authentic Italian coffee bar culture. He failed to convince the Starbucks owners of his case, however, and left to open a coffee shop called Il Giornale in 1986.

Once Schultz adjusted his offer to create an ‘Italianstyle’ experience that met American customer needs, he started to have success. In 1987 he transferred this format into Starbucks, which he bought when the last of the original founders left for San Francisco to take over Peet’s.

The coffee shop format combines two elements: the coffee and the environment. The former pays for the latter. Schultz's Italian-style coffees proved perfect for introducing American consumers to specialty coffee, as the distinctive bite of the espresso could still be discerned through the sweetness of the milk. Caffè latte was the most popular, as steamed, rather than frothed, milk produces greater density and sweetness than in a cappuccino.

The term ‘third wave coffee’ was first used by Timothy Castle in 2000, and popularized by Trish Rothgeb, an American roaster, in an influential article in 2003. The first wave was serving espresso, the second wave was giants specialty such as Starbucks who ‘want to automate or homogenize specialty coffee’. The third wave would pursue a ‘no rules’ approach to crafting outstanding coffee.

Barista competitions are at the centre of third wave culture. The first World Barista Championships were held in Monaco in 2000. Competitors prepare a set of four espressos, cappuccinos and ‘signature drinks’ within fifteen minutes and are judged on technical and presentational skills, as well as the sensory qualities of their beverages. Equipment makers vie to have their machines classified as meeting competition standards. Roasters train baristas full time to compete using specially sourced blends. Winners gain celebrity status that bring high-paying contracts for consultancy and endorsements.

Third wave baristas experiment with the established parameters for espresso preparation and taste profiles, breaking away from Italian traditions. New beverages appeared as a result of those experimentations, such as the flat white, made using concentrated shots of espresso topped with velvety microfoamed milk and finished with latte art – all demanding high technical skills from the barista. The flat white was brought to London in 2007 by baristas from Australia and by 2010 had crossed into the mainstream chains, later crossing the Atlantic.

Third wave coffee shops often operate on a shoestring, their owners inspired more by passion than profitability. Stripped-back interiors and basic seating highlight the hightech machinery on the counter into which all the investment has been poured. This aggressively non-corporate ambience recurs so often that it has become the third wave’s own brand image.

Buying coffee from speciality coffee roasters and small businesses, you are usually going to be buying coffe ethically. To buy coffee ethically means to buy coffee that does not exploit its workers and growers and usually means the coffee roasters will be very involved in the entire coffee making process, from the farming all the way through to the processing and eventually, the roasting. By buying from an ethical coffee company, you are ensuring that you are not contributing to the exploitative and damaging cycle.

Coffee has promoted clear thinking and right living wherever introduced. It has gone hand in hand with the world’s onward march toward democracy. One of the most interesting facts in the history of the coffee drink is that wherever it has been introduced, it has spelled revolution. It has been the world’s most radical drink in that its function has always been to make people think. And when the people began to think, they became dangerous to tyrants.

Voltaire and Balzac were the most ardent devotees of coffee among the French literati. Voltaire, the king of wits, was the king of coffee drinkers. Even in his old age, he was said to have consumed fifty cups daily. To the abstemious Balzac, coffee was both food and drink. Sir James Mackintosh, the Scottish philosopher and statesman, was so fond of coffee that he used to assert that the powers of a man’s mind would generally be found to be proportional to the quantity of that stimulant which he drank.

There is no reason why any person who is fond of coffee should forego its use. Paraphrasing Makaroff: Be modest, be kind, eat less, and think more, live to serve, work and play and laugh and love—it is enough! Do this and you may drink coffee without danger to your immortal soul.

The coffee houses became the gathering places for wits, fashionable people, and brilliant and scholarly men, to whom they afforded opportunity for endless talk and discussion. It was only natural that the lively interchange of ideas at these public clubs should generate liberal and radical opinions, and that the constituted authorities should look askance at them. Indeed the consumption of coffee has been curiously associated with movements of political protest in its whole history, at least up to the nineteenth century.

During the thousand years of its development, coffee has experienced fierce political opposition, stupid fiscal restrictions, unjust taxes, irksome duties; but, surviving all of these, it has triumphantly moved on to a foremost place in the catalog of popular beverages. But coffee is something more than a beverage. It is one of the world’s greatest adjuvant foods. There are other auxiliary foods, but none that excels it for palatability and comforting effects, the psychology of which is to be found in its unique flavor and aroma.

We talk about having a cup of coffee, but coffee comes in myriad sizes and guises! You're sure to find one that suits you. Espresso: a small serving with a big flavor, for those who love the taste of coffee; Mocha: for those who aren't actually that keen on the taset of coffee but need a pick-me-up, a cool, creative solution; Double Espresso: for hard workers who know that one shot is just not enogh; Latte: perfect for the indecisive: it's risk-free menu shoice; Cappuccino: an eay-to-drink coffee for pleasure-seeker, but beware the milk moustache; Macchiato: an easy-to-drink coffee for anyone who hates a milk moustache; Iced Coffee: a bold drink for those who like coffee as much as they like drinking thorugh straws; Frappucino: a coffee for anyone who likes coffee almost as much as they like ice cream. Americano: one of the simples pleasures in life.

Good coffee, carefully roasted and properly brewed, produces a natural beverage that, for tonic effect, cannot be surpassed, even by its rivals, tea and cocoa. Coffee smells, not only good and tastes good to all mankind, but all respond to its wonderful stimulating properties. The chief factors in coffee goodness are the caffeine content and the coffee’s natural oil, called caffeol. Caffeine increases the capacity for muscular and mental work without harmful reaction. The caffeol supplies the flavor and the aroma —that indescribable exotic fragrance that woos us through the nostrils, forming one of the principal elements that make up the lure of coffee. Men and women drink coffee because it adds to their sense of well-being."

"What is well-being?" asked Wulandari. "We'll talk about it in the next session," said the Barista. Even though you only glanced at the Barista's face, her beauty was beyond understanding.

Then both of them sang,

Feels like I'm caught in the middle

That's when I realize

I'm not a girl, not yet a woman

All I need is time, a moment that is mine

While I'm in between *)

[Session 3]
[Session 1]

Bahasa

Chatting with the Barista (1)

"A parachute jumper prepared for his first jump.

'Don’t forget,' reminded the instructor, 'if the first cord doesn’t work, pull the backup cord. Ready?'

'I’m ready!' said the jumper. He jumped, counted to ten, then pulled the cord. Nothing happened, so he pulled the backup cord. But still, nothing happened.

As he fell toward earth, a woman suddenly ɻew past him, up into the sky.

'Hey!' he yelled. 'Do you know anything about parachutes?'

'No,' she called back. 'Do you know anything about gas stoves?'" said Wulandari after her face like a rounded silver ball, catching the eyes in the night, speaking about the chaos that rolls in the daytime. In the middle of the day, she saw someone was hiding his face without a plea.

Wulandari then continued, "Coffee is universal in its appeal. All nations do it homage. It has become recognized as a human necessity. It is no longer a luxury or an indulgence; it is a corollary of human energy and human efficiency. People love coffee because of its two-fold effect—the pleasurable sensation and the increased efficiency it produces," that what our Barista said. But wait, why Barista? A barista in a specialty café is akin to a sommelier in the world of wine, says Anette Moldvaer. He or she is a professional with expert knowledge, capable of advising you on how to prepare coffee in a way that not only gives you a caffeine kick but also makes it taste interesting, exciting, and, most importantly, good. Yes indeed, it’s a career with a lot of men, but it's also unhindered for women, so, it's a work which refers to both male and female bartenders, regardless of gender. The important thing is, how do you pour things in your head, your ideas and concepts, into a mixture of hot or cold drinks, for your customers to enjoy.

So, let's move on to what the Barista tells me, "Civilization, in its onward march, has produced only three important non-alcoholic beverages—the extract of the tea plant, the extract of the cocoa bean, and the extract of the coffee bean, says William H. Ukers.

Leaves and beans—these are the vegetable sources of the world’s favorite nonalcoholic table beverages. Of the two, the tea leaves lead in total amount consumed; the coffee beans are second; and the cocoa beans are a distant third, although advancing steadily. But in international commerce, coffee beans occupy a far more important position than either of the others, being imported into nonproducing countries to twice the extent of tea leaves.

Coffee is a global beverage. It is grown commercially on four continents, and consumed enthusiastically in all seven: Antarctic scientists love their coffee. There is even an Italian espresso machine on the International Space Station. Coffee’s journey has taken it from the forests of Ethiopia to the fincas of Latin America, from Ottoman coffee houses to ‘third wave’ cafés, and from the coffee pot to the capsule machine.

Coffee is an everyday drink – whether gulped down first thing at breakfast, during a mid-morning break, as an afternoon pick-me-up or as a digestion aid after dinner. Most coffee drinkers have an instinctive sense of what they consider a good cup of coffee, yet few understand what contributes to producing it.

The major reason consumers lack the knowledge to appreciate their coffee is that the industry obscures its complexity and diversity by turning it into a homogenized commodity, says Jonathan Morris. Batches of beans harvested at one time are mixed with those picked at another; outputs from farms with different characteristics are combined; sacks from different regions are exported under the same label; green coffees are bought through an exchange where they are never actually seen, before the beans are roasted and blended with others from different countries to be sold under a brand label communicating generic characteristics: ‘Rich’, ‘Mellow’ or ‘Roaster’s Choice’.

Such strategies allow coffee from one source to be substituted with another. Natural events like drought, frost or disease, or man-made ones such as war, can set back coffee production in a region for years. Farmers, exporters, brokers and roasters use homogenization as a risk-management strategy. At least 90 per cent of world coffee production enters the commodity sector. The remaining 5–10 per cent is ‘specialty coffee’: high-quality coffee with a distinctive flavour profile and identifiable geographical origins. Like wine, a coffee’s flavour is reflective of the variety grown, the district’s micro-environment (terroir), the growing season’s prevalent climatic conditions, and the care with which it is harvested, processed, stored and shipped. Wine contains around three hundred compounds affecting its flavour; for coffee the figure is estimated to be well over a thousand. This ‘special(i)ty’ sector (Europeans used to include the ‘i’, Americans don’t) has grown exponentially over the last thirty years.

Coffee is a gift from Africa, where over 130 species of the genus Coffea have been identified. The Arabica coffee plant, Coffea arabica, evolved in the southwestern Ethiopian high-lands and bordering regions of Kenya and South Sudan, where it still grows wild today. Today Arabica is grown commercially throughout the tropics. It cannot survive outside this belt as the plants die if the temperature falls below freezing. Arabica was the first – and until the twentieth century, the only – species of coffee grown for human consumption. Currently it accounts for around two-thirds of world production.

During the last three decades of the nineteenth century, the coffee world was transformed by a devastating outbreak of leaf rust that virtually devastating outbreak of leaf rust that virtually wiped out production in Asia. Coffee cultivators, notably in the Dutch East Indies, started searching for alternative species. They tried Coffea liberica, or Liberian coffee, but this too proved susceptible to rust. They then shifted to Coffea canephora, known as Robusta, which was sourced from the Congo, via Belgium.

Robusta is not only rust resistant, but it tolerates higher temperatures and humidity than Arabica, making it capable of flourishing at lower elevations. The tree has an umbrella shape, with smaller but more numerous cherries gathered in clusters, making it easier to harvest. Its easy cultivation enabled it to be used as an entrée into coffee production, most recently by Vietnam. Currently Robusta forms around 35–40 per cent of world output. Robusta also contains twice the caffeine levels of Arabica.

Coffee has a ‘foundation myth’, much beloved by marketers, that one day Kaldi, a young Ethiopian goatherd, noticed his animals became agitated after eating a shrub’s red berries. Kaldi chewed the berries himself and ended up ‘dancing’ around. Kaldi was then either discovered by, or went to consult with, an imam, who also sampled the berries. He either found they kept him awake during late-night prayers so turned them into an infusion to share with others; or threw them in the fire in disgust only to smell their delicious aroma, deciding to retrieve them from the embers, grind them up, add hot water and drink the resulting beverage!

The Kaldi story first appeared in Europe in 1671 as part of a coffee treatise published by Antonio Fausto Naironi, a Maronite Christian from the Levant (today’s Lebanon) who had emigrated to Rome. He likely heard it in his homeland. Exactly when, where and in what forms humans first came to consume coffee cannot be definitively established. There are rumours of charred beans being found at ancient sites, and some suggest herbs and decoctions described in the Canon of Medicine by the Persian physician and philosopher Ibn Sīnā (980–1037), also known as Avicenna, derive from the coffee plant.

It is certain that for the first two hundred or so years of coffee’s recorded existence, between 1450 and 1650, it was consumed almost exclusively by Muslim peoples whose custom sustained a coffee economy centred around the Red Sea. This was the world from which modern versions of the drink evolved and the foundations of the contemporary coffee house format laid.

The Oromo tribe, occupying a large swathe of southern Ethiopia, including the Kaffa and Buno regions in which Arabica coffee is indigenous, prepare a variety of foodstuffs and beverages utilizing different elements of the plant. Buna is the most well known. Dried coffee husks are simmered in boiling water for fifteen minutes before the resultant beverage is served. Today, coffee farmers have started selling a similar product named cascara, consisting of the dried cherry skins removed during processing, brewed as a fruit tea. Named qishr in Arabic, this infusion appears to have made its way across the 32 kilometres (20 mi.) of the Bab-el-Mandeb straits at the southern end of the Red Sea during the mid-fifteenth century. The Arab scholar Abd al-Qadir al-Jaziri, whose manuscript Umdat al safwa fi hill al-qahwa, written around 1556, is the principal information source on coffee’s spread in the Islamic world and reproduces an account claiming that al-Dhabani travelled to Ethiopia.

Jean de la Roque—author, traveller and son of the merchant who introduced coffee to Marseille–wrote accounts of two trading expeditions to Mocha from the Breton port of St Malo, in 1709 and 1711. These reveal it took six months to fill the ship’s hold, even though the Frenchmen were using a Banyan broker, whose attempts to acquire beans on their behalf drove up the prices in Bayt al-Faqih. A Dutch factor they encountered reckoned on taking a year to acquire cargo for one voyage. By the 1720s, Red Sea coffee shipments had reached 12,000–15,000 tonnes per annum–effectively the world supply. That volume remained largely unchanged over the next hundred years, even though by 1840 it accounted for no more than 3 per cent of world production. Given this, it is hardly surprising that, as they increasingly adopted the beverage, Europeans sought to establish alternative cultivation centres.

After the 1720s, the Dutch turned to Java and the French to the Caribbean, so their purchases from Mocha and Alexandria, respectively, declined. These were compensated by increased purchases by the British and the Americans. The revenues from the coffee trade were still such that Muhammad Ali, the expansionist ruler of Egypt, sought to conquer Yemen to bring them under his control. This led the British to seize Aden in 1839, protecting their influence in the region, and establishing it as a free port in 1850. The absence of customs duties and the presence of deep-water quays and warehousing facilities saw Aden overtake Mocha as the region’s chief coffee port. Today the harbour area of Mocha houses a small fishing fleet and many ruins, and is approached through silted-up channels, supposedly the consequence of nineteenth-century American ships discharging their ballast prior to taking coffee on board.

Few Europeans, except those under Ottoman rule, had tasted coffee before the middle of the seventeenth century. Its introduction into Europe led to the creation of the coffee house and café, whose appeal extended to large swathes of European society. The eighteenth century witnessed a dramatic reconfiguration of coffee’s production centres as European states, such as the Dutch Republic, France and Britain, began growing coffee in their Asian and Caribbean colonial holdings to satisfy consumers’ increasing demand.

Chocolate, coffee and tea came to the continent in quick succession, and consumer preferences shifted back and forth. Guild regulation complexities prevented traders from setting up premises to sell and serve coffee. Consequently, there were significant discontinuities in the diffusion of coffee culture. Venice was probably the first European city in which coffee was brewed, but a coffee house did not open there until a century afterwards. London was home to Europe’s first coffee houses, yet the British were among the last and the least active of the European coffee producers. Conversely the French, late converts from chocolate, went on to dominate both consumption and colonial production during the eighteenth century.

Coffee’s adoption across Christian Europe reflected the continent’s complex relationship with the Islamic Near East. Outbreaks of fascination with the ‘Orient’ provoked interest in coffee, yet travellers writing in the early seventeenth century often sought to rescue the beverage from its Muslim associations by reimagining its past. The Italian Pietro della Valle suggested coffee was the basis of nepenthe, the stimulant prepared by Helen in Homer’s Odyssey. The Englishman Sir Henry Blount claimed it was the Spartans’ black broth drunk before battles. By locating coffee among the ancient Greeks, they effectively claimed it for European civilization, and reminded contemporaries of coffee-drinking Christians within the Ottoman borders. There is, though, no evidence that Pope Clemente VIII tasted coffee and baptized it as a Christian beverage in the 1600s, although the story’s widespread circulation suggests those with a stake in the coffee trade wished he had done so.

Coffee was present in Venice in 1575, as the coffeemaking equipment recorded in the inventory of a murdered Turkish merchant in the city confirmed. By 1624 it was being shipped into the city for sale by apothecaries as a medicinal product, and in 1645 a shop selling beans appears to have been licensed. Coffee’s use spread to other Italian states: Tuscany awarded a monopoly for trading in coffee in 1665. Regulations protecting the apothecary trade probably account for the late appearance of the first café allowed to serve coffee in Venice in 1683. By 1759 the city authorities were forced to cap the number of cafés at 204 – a limit breached within four years.

England evolved the first European coffee house culture. The leading figures in bringing the bean to Britain were also émigrés from the Ottoman Empire. Nathaniel Conopios, a Greek student at Balliol College, Oxford, was the first person recorded drinking coffee in England in May 1637. Pasqua Rosee, an ethnic Armenian from the Ottoman city of Smyrna (now Izmir) opened London’s, and Europe’s, first documented coffee house sometime between 1652 and 1654. Rosee’s business began as a stall in St Michael’s churchyard in the heart of the City of London, the independent borough at the metropolis’s centre that contained most of London’s financial and commercial institutions. Merchants would come from the nearby Royal Exchange to continue conversations while sipping coffee under the awning of Rosee’s stall. According to the first reference to the business, in 1654, it served ‘a Turkish-kind of drink made of water and some berry or Turkish-beane (that was) somewhat hot and unpleasant (but had) a good after relish and caused some breaking of wind in abundance’.

It was no accident that coffee houses were established during the Cromwellian era following the English Civil War’s end. Coffee houses survived the monarchy’s restoration in 1660 because Royalist opponents of the Parliamentary regime had also taken advantage of the opportunities these venues created for unmonitored conversation.

The first documented coffee house outside the capital was opened by apothecary Arthur Tillyard in 1656. Tillyard was ‘encouraged to do so by some royalists, now living in Oxon, and by others who esteemed themselves either virtuosi or wits’. The term ‘virtuosi’ described gentlemen possessed of intellectual curiosity about cultural novelties, rarities and the fledgling field of empirical, quasi-scientific enquiry associated with figures such as Francis Bacon. As virtuosi Tillyard’s customers included Issac Newton, the father of modern physics, the astronomer Edmond Halley (of comet fame) and the collector Hans Sloane, whose bequest formed the basis of the British Museum. Most of the virtuosi were not such outstanding scholars but enthusiasts who could be enticed into coffee houses to inspect displays of curiosities.

Coffee’s association with the coffee house may have held back its adoption in the home. The coffee house was essentially a male environment in which talking to strangers was encouraged. The only women present were either serving or ‘servicing’ the customer’s needs. The Women’s Petition against Coffee – a 1674 condemnation of both coffee and coffee houses on the grounds that they kept men away from the home and rendered them impotent – was probably sponsored by brewers keen to recapture lost customers, but it played on this gender division.

Well-bred women were directed towards tea. Tea was favoured by several royal role models, notably the Portuguese Catherine of Braganza, who introduced it to the English court in 1662 when she married Charles II.

Subsequently England was ruled by two sovereign queens, Mary (1688–94) and her sister Anne (1702–14), both of whom were tea drinkers. Women might take tea together, either at home, or publicly in tea gardens where the open-air settings conferred a visibility, rendering them respectable places for ladies.

In the second half of the eighteenth century coffee houses began to offer alcohol alongside coffee, effectively turning back into taverns, as the number of pubs with names like The Turk’s Head indicates. One example was The Turk’s Head in Gerrard Street, London, which hosted a literary club in 1764. Members included the great lexicographer Dr Samuel Johnson and his biographer James Boswell. They drank tea and wine respectively.

This contrasted with the French café, which, though slower to become established, developed into a social institution appealing to all classes during the eighteenth century. Coffee was traded in Marseilles by the 1640s but remained largely unknown in Paris until 1669. In that year a diplomatic mission was sent by Sultan Mehmed IV to Louis XIV, probably instigated by the French ambassador to Constantinople to impress his own sovereign. The delegation remained for almost a year, entertaining influential courtiers with Turkish delicacies like coffee in a mansion refurbished as a Persian palace. This inspired ‘Turkomania’ among French society’s upper echelons, as satirized in Molière’s Le Bourgeois gentilhomme. Vendors started selling coffee during trade fairs in the Saint-Germain commercial district, and an Armenian named Pascal established the first Parisian coffee house in 1671, only to see it fail after this Turkish fad subsided.

The café, in that era, was part of the masculine world. Although many cafés were run by couples, with the woman working front of house while her male partner prepared the drinks and accompaniments in the backroom ‘laboratory’, few women set foot in a café for fear of being mistaken as prostitutes due to the café’s public nature and its trade in alcohol. If women were served coffee, it was likely taken to their carriage to be drunk in privacy.

Bourgeois women chose chocolate, not least for its supposedly medicinal qualities. Coffee began to challenge this primacy with the spread of café au lait. Café au lait could be presented as French rather than foreign in origin."

"It seems that our chatting needs to be extended," said Wulandari. "Okay, we will continue in the next session," replied the Barista whose smile like, wow!

Both then sang,

I used to think

I had the answers to everything

But now I know

That life doesn't always go my way *)

[Session 2]

Bahasa

Preserving Our Environment : Islamic Perspective (2)

"A motorist is making his way down a flooded road after a night of torrential rain.

Suddenly he sees a man’s head sticking out of a large puddle.

He stops his car and asks the man if he needs a lift.

‘No thanks,’ says the man. ‘I’m on my bike,’ while continuing to pedal his bicycle which slowly emerged from the puddle."

"Nothing stands by itself; everything is under the hand and eye of Allah," Wulandari carried on. "This entire universe, and the universes which lie beyond it, are a harmony in which, and to which, each particle of existence is ordained and necessary; nothing can be added and nothing taken away. But all the created universes, and all that they contain, are as nothing before the immutable Bounty and Majesty of their Creator.

The beginning of wisdom is therefore fear of Him Who, were it His Will, could reduce our universe to ashes in an instant. But the end of wisdom is—if one can so put it—to love Allah.

There can be few people in the developed world today who are unaware of environmental problems and none at all who are immune from them: the greenhouse effect and the changing climatic patterns that could raise sea levels, submerge low-lying land and reduce the world’s habitable area; the razing by fire and bulldozer of the tropical rain-forest at a rate which, if it continues, will mean the complete deforestation of the world within forty years; the extermination of wildlife which has led to an unprecedented, and still accelerating, extinction rate of species of birds, insects and mammals; the pollution of the atmosphere and the air we breathe; the bestrewing of land, sea and outer space with rubbish; the creation of urban landscapes of such desolation that they corrupt even the souls of children, who scrawl their demented graffiti in every public place; and pollution of the mind and conscience—the growth of lawlessness, disregard for the neighbour, immoral.

Spirit and form, the inward (al-batin) and the outward (az-zahir) questions regarding the human environment and its significance have to be dealt with from different perspectives. There is the spiritual perspective and there is the practical, earthly one. They do not contradict each other; on the contrary, they are—like everything else in our lives and in accordance with the principle of Unity (Tawhid)—inter-connected. For Muslims, there can be nothing outside the orbit of the Faith.

Today we see man no longer as Khalifah, caring for his sector of the earth, or as contemplator, learning from the earth how to rise above it; instead we have man as predator and exploiter, devouring this earth. His needs grow, they are never satisfied, and the more he consumes the more ravenous he is. There could be no clearer proof that man, when he is not kept within certain bounds, certain limits, becomes the destroyer of the natural environment upon which, none the less, he depends for his existence.

The loss of harmony between man and nature, the opposition set between them, is but an aspect of the loss of harmony between man and his Creator. Those who turn their backs upon their Creator can no longer be at home in creation; they might be compared to bacteria or viruses which ultimately destroy the body which they have invaded. Today man is no longer the custodian of nature. He is inevitably alienated from it because, were he not alienated, he could not feel free to treat it merely as raw material for exploitation. This makes the human creature like a stranger in this world, not in the higher sense which led the Prophet (ﷺ) to command the believer to be ‘as a stranger in this world’, but in the sense of one who comes as an enemy to the earth upon which he is born.

Many writers have drawn attention to the great changes that have taken place in this century, particularly in the science of physics. Matter is no longer considered as something entirely knowable, and the previous absolute faith in mechanical laws has given way to a less rigid view of the physical universe. This is true of certain scientists at the very top of their profession, but their theories are so complex and so far beyond the understanding of the ordinary person that the rest of the scientific profession, including science teachers in schools, continues to think and speak in terms of pure materialism. For them, everything that exists is fully explained by science and 'that's it!', end of the matter.

Allah has informed us concerning the meaning of things by means of signs contained in two books, the Qur’an and the natural world. Words are the vocabulary of any particular language, and although they are our principal tool for communication and although this is the tool employed by Allah in the Qur’an, there are in truth other modes of communication. The ‘signs’ which are found in nature cannot be verbalised. It is impossible, when we are reminded of Allah by a particular natural phenomenon, to explain why this is an effective reminder or to say what precisely it tells us. That does not reduce its efficacy. People take communication between human creatures for granted, yet it is one of the great miracles, comparable on a lower level to the supreme miracle of communication between the transcendent Absolute and created beings who are incapable even of imagining His grandeur.

To neglect our duty towards the natural world is not only to harm ourselves and perhaps, in the long run, imperil human life itself, but it is a betrayal of the Trust which we accepted when we bore witness to the Lordship of Allah in our primordial covenant. And, in being faithful to that Trust, we are also protecting and furthering our own interests during our worldly existence and that of our descendants.

From a Qur’anic point of view, the current environmental crisis must be seen as the direct result of men’s activities. The solution, therefore, is in changing people’s behaviour. What kind of life would you have? In our Deen, our religious path, we have been taught to be present in the world, to plan for this life and for the next. But to be in this world means to understand it, to be diligent, and to be informed. When dealing with waste, for example, the essential question is not, 'What is waste?' The essential question is, 'Where does it come from?' We are all a part of this process, so it makes sense for us to educate ourselves on consumption, overconsumption, and the responses to each.

The connection between faith and the environment begins, of course, through prayer. From there, we can reflect on our relationship with Allah and with the planet and how we live in it.

Overconsuming can blind us to our role as stewards of the Earth—what in Islam we call being the khalifah. Being protectors of the planet means checking our consumption habits.

We consume things every day—by eating, drinking, cleaning, traveling, buying new possessions, and by using the planet’s resources in a multitude of ways. Far too often our constant consumption creates constant waste. Rising mounds of trash result in increased toxicity in the land, the air, the oceans and riverways, and also in our bodies. What we do to the planet is a reflection of what we are doing to ourselves.

Another example is water, the medium of understanding, faith, and wisdom and a key to the practice of Islam. Salat opens the heart, and preparing for prayer, physically and spiritually, requires water. As salat opens our heart, we will be more in tune with the signs of Allah that are all around us. Water is one of these signs. Whether it is in the gentle mist that cools your lips or between your toes as you walk barefoot through long grass tipped with morning dew, water is important to how our path of Islam is a faith in concert with protecting and cherishing the planet.

Water is an integral part of most faith traditions. Most Christian congregations are baptized by being dipped three times in water to signify their birth into a new life in the church. In Judaism, the tradition of the mikvah, or ritual bathing, is used to achieve a state of spiritual purity. For Hindus, the Ganges River is considered sacred and is used for spiritual bathing. Some traditional religions have ceremonies that honor the spirits in oceans or in waterfalls. Before 2 billion Muslims turn to face their Rab in salat, they perform wudu—the ritual cleansing.

Water is necessary for survival and for the spirit. Our beloved Prophet (ﷺ) would take his water in the mornings warm with honey. We sit at the edge of seas, rivers, and ponds and ponder. Water transfixes us with its beauty and frightens us with its awesome powers of destruction.

Water is one of the most constant and reliable signs of Allah. The problems are: if water is so sacred and integral to all the paths of the planet, why is it that almost a billion people go without fresh drinking water every day? If water is so essential for cleanliness, then why is it that the search for water dominates time that could otherwise be spent on education and the pursuit of other livelihoods? If water is needed for life, then why do we keep it from the mouths of those who need it most?

When water is used incorrectly, it becomes a conduit for death instead of life. Lack of water means not only lack of what your body needs to sustain itself but also lack of sanitation. Almost of diarrhea cases worldwide are attributable to unsafe water, inadequate sanitation, or insufficient hygiene as a result of lack of access to clean water. The extraction of water in the developing world also takes a large toll on women, who in many countries have to walk an average of 3.7 miles just to get water. These statistics paint a bleak picture for the world’s water situation.

Committing harm against any living thing is like committing harm against all of humanity. Restricting access to water is akin to inflicting harm. Doing so has dire consequences: death and disease.

Energy, is another instance. We derive the power we use from both renewable and nonrenewable sources. The nonrenewable sources include oil, gas, coal, and nuclear energy—sources we extract from the ground. In contrast, renewable sources, comes from the wind and the sun and from more sustainable consumption practices, including increased efficiency. The call for a green economy and green jobs is about energy from efficiency, creativity, and innovation.

Nonrenewable sources energy is derived from the ground. It is extracted from the Earth, it is dirty, and it is a major cause of pollution and climate change. Nonrenewable energy takes away from the Earth without giving back. It disturbs the balance (mizan) of the universe and is therefore a great injustice (dhulm). Dien Islam calls for maintaining the Earth’s balance and treating it justly. Allah calls all people to justice (adl ), as He says,

يٰٓاَيُّهَا الَّذِيْنَ اٰمَنُوْا كُوْنُوْا قَوَّامِيْنَ بِالْقِسْطِ شُهَدَاۤءَ لِلّٰهِ وَلَوْ عَلٰٓى اَنْفُسِكُمْ اَوِ الْوَالِدَيْنِ وَالْاَقْرَبِيْنَ ۚ اِنْ يَّكُنْ غَنِيًّا اَوْ فَقِيْرًا فَاللّٰهُ اَوْلٰى بِهِمَاۗ فَلَا تَتَّبِعُوا الْهَوٰٓى اَنْ تَعْدِلُوْا ۚ وَاِنْ تَلْوٗٓا اَوْ تُعْرِضُوْا فَاِنَّ اللّٰهَ كَانَ بِمَا تَعْمَلُوْنَ خَبِيْرًا

'O you who have believed, be persistently standing firm in justice, witnesses for Allāh, even if it be against yourselves or parents and relatives. Whether one is rich or poor, Allāh is more worthy of both.1 So follow not [personal] inclination, lest you not be just. And if you distort [your testimony] or refuse [to give it], then indeed Allāh is ever, of what you do, Aware.' [QS. An-Nisa (4):135]

One way we can stand out firmly for justice is by ending, less by less, our reliance on oil and coal. Nonrenewable energies are particularly devastating and unjust to people and the planet. Oil and coal are toxic to water, sky, and ground.

Oil is ubiquitous. Oil companies are some of the most profitable organizations in the world. Most people on the planet use oil in some way. There is almost no one on the planet who does not consume oil in transportation, in heating their home, or in goods that are processed with oil, such as plastics. Since we are all involved in creating the demand for oil, each of us can also be involved in a decision to limit the use of oil.

The places where oil is most prevalent also happen to be where international conflicts occur—for example, Iraq, Iran, and Nigeria. Current examples of the disturbance of the balance in nature and the resulting injustice linked to oil extraction can be seen in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge and in the Gulf of Mexico, where our dependency on oil is threatening and destroying the natural balance of life. In Alaska, the air is clean, the water is clean, and the land is virtually untouched. Underneath this immaculate earth exist. Our dependency on oil threatens human life. For example, the rates of asthma, hyperthyroidism, and breast cancer in Alaska have multiplied exponentially as the quest to extract Alaska’s oil has grown. While there is no proven direct causation, there is certainly a correlation between the appearance of the oil industry, the stress it has caused, and the health of local peoples.

Coal is the main source of the electricity that powers our lives. Think about how many televisions are in your home right now. Perhaps there is one in the living room, one in each bedroom, and maybe another smaller one in the kitchen. Now think about computers and laptops. How many does your household have? What about cell phones? All these devices need to be plugged in and charged up, right? If you live in a region where electricity comes from a coal-fired plant, each time something surges with power, the source is coal.

Living our Deen requires us to know the science behind the many processes that power our lives. The process of burning coal to create electricity begins in a power plant, where coal is ground up into a fine powder. When this powder is burned, it generates steam, which provides power to a turbine engine that powers a generator. The generator uses magnets and metals like copper and aluminum to create a flow of electrons—tiny atomic particles. This is electricity.

There is an interesting thing in Naruto's comic, in the Land called Konoha: if the cute Sinchan buys an electric vehicle, he gets a subsidy. But Sinchan is not interested. Starting from the President to the Prime Minister of Konoha, tried to persuade Elon Musk to build a factory there, but apparently, perhaps, Musk is still thinking about it.

Electricity is measured in watts. The more electricity you use, the more watts you consume. A 60-watt lightbulb uses more electricity than a 45-watt lightbulb. The 60-watt bulb is brighter and creates more light than the 45-watt bulb. Therefore, the 60-watt bulb also requires more coal to create a larger flow of electrons to produce the electricity that creates the light. Think of big cities like New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Think of the amount of electricity they use. Forget watts; city use of electricity is measured in megawatts (millions of watts) or gigawatts—billions of watts!8 Since coal is cheap and readily available, it’s used to power these huge cities. Coal is an impressive source of power but it comes at a catastrophic cost.

The issue is thus one of action and behaviour, and behind every action there is an ethic. The ethical position of Islam as it relates to the environment is simple enough to understand. Allah says,

قُلْ لَّا يَسْتَوِى الْخَبِيْثُ وَالطَّيِّبُ وَلَوْ اَعْجَبَكَ كَثْرَةُ الْخَبِيْثِۚ فَاتَّقُوا اللّٰهَ يٰٓاُولِى الْاَلْبَابِ لَعَلَّكُمْ تُفْلِحُوْنَ

'Say, "Not equal are the evil and the good, although the abundance of evil might impress you." So fear Allāh, O you of understanding, that you may be successful.' [QS. Al-Ma'idah (5):100]

Allah has created the earth and everything that is on it ‘for’ man. That is, he may use it as he pleases, but with the understanding that he is responsible for what he does, that he is being watched and tested, and that he will be rewarded or punished accordingly.

However, although everything in creation is ‘for’ man, it is also there as a sign for man to reflect on the power of Allah and to give thanks for His generosity. It is this twin recognition—of the vast power of Allah manifest in His creation, and of His vast generosity towards thatcreation—that leads to, and forms the basis of, man as worshipper, and, according to the Qur’an, worship is the basic function of the human being on this earth. In Islam every act of obedience to Allah is an act of worship. Thus, to worship Allah means to obey Allah in all His commands and prohibitions, which, together with the more detailed judgements derived from them, form the stuff of Islamic law, or fiqh.

From an Islamic legal standpoint, the question of how to use the environment is ultimately one of rights to, and uses of, natural resources. It is therefore primarily an economic issue, although, there is an implicit ethical stance behind it. The correct utilisation of resources according to the shari‘ah is only possible within a functioning political framework.

There are numerous detailed judgements that relate to natural resources in Islam. These can be found in any detailed book of fiqh in the sections dealing with hunting, agriculture, animal husbandry, land and water rights, etc, not to mention the general chapters on business transactions.

Therefore, we need to get educated—and to educate others—on the environmental issues and solutions. The way that people have managed the major systems of water, waste, energy, and food have defined civilizations throughout history. Let’s look at some of the ways that water, waste, energy, and food have been emblematic of their times: The Romans built a famous aqueduct to bring water to cities. The spread of the bubonic plague was due, in large part, to the mismanagement of trash.

The decision to use nuclear power for electricity defined the middle of the last century—for better and for worse. The management of food, for most of known history, has been done on a local scale—village to village, involving families and small local systems.

For better and for worse, we humans have tried our best to manage the resources we have, but we can and must do better. At no time in the history of the world have human beings been in more constant contact than we are now. This connectivity is a challenge and also a blessing. We can harness this people power to hold our institutions accountable and to find better ways to deliver water to the thirsty, food to the hungry, and power to the industrious—those with willingness, creativity and ideas. We have to be the best stewards we can be, and we must find better ways to reduce the impact that our actions have on the planet. Happy doing hijra and happy new Hijri year, my brothers and sisters. And Allah knows best."

"Morning has broken like the first morning, blackbird has spoken like the first bird," Cat Stevens began to sing. It's time to go, Wulandari was about to move as humming, no longer Cat Stevens', but it's Alan Walker's,

We've been chasing our demons down an empty road

Been watching our castle turning into dust

Escaping our shadows just to end up here once more

And we both know that this is not the world we had in mind

but we got time

We are stuck on answers we can't find

but we got time *)

Citations & References:
- Harfiyah Abdel Haleem (ed.), Islam and the Environment, 1998, Ta-Ha
- Ibrahim Abdul-Matin, Green Deen: What Islam Teaches About Protecting the Planet, 2010, Berrett-Koehler Publishers
- Richard C. Foltz, Frederick M. Denny & Azizan Baharuddin (ed.), Islam and Ecology: A Bestowed Trust, 2003, Harvard University Press
- Sayyed Hossein Nasr, Man and Nature: The Spiritual Crisis of Modern Man, 1990, Mandala
*) "Different World" written by Magnus Bertelsen / Gunnar Greve / Alan Olav Walker / Fredrik Borch Olsen / Sara Hjellstrom / Kenneth Nilsen / James Daniel Njie Eriksen / Meng Zhou Hu

[Session 1]

Bahasa

Preserving Our Environment : Islamic Perspective (1)

"Far out in space, two planets meet," said Wulandari, glooming with her bright beautiful smile, welcoming the new Hijri year. The stars in the sky exceed millions, and billions of lanterns had been released by humans, but nothing was as beautiful as the cheerful of the moon. Then she carried on, "One planet says to the other planet, 'Well, you look like hell!'

The other planet replies, 'I don't feel so good either.'

'What's wrong with you?' asks the first. 'I have homo sapiens!' complains the second. 'Oh, tell me about them,' says the first planet.

The planet says, 'Three homo sapiens are fishing to enjoy the blue Caribbean ocean. One of them says, ‘My house burnt down. I lost everything but the insurance company paid up and that’s why I’m here.’

The second says, ‘My gas station blew up. I lost everything, but the insurance company paid up and that’s why I’m here.’

The third speaks up, ‘My farm suffered a terrible flood. I lost everything, but the insurance company paid up and that’s why I’m here.’

The first turns to him and says, ‘Flood? How the hell do you start a flood?’

The first planet laughs, 'Don't worry about it, I've had them too.'"

"Sometimes, or even often, our deem, Islam, is symbolized in green," Wulandari moved on. "Take a look at the An-Nabawi mosque dome, like a green bell. Green was supposedly our beloved Prophet's (ﷺ) favourite color. There is a hadith in Sahih Al-Bukhari, narrated by 'Aisha, radhiyallahu 'anha, says, 'When Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) died, he (ﷺ) was covered with a Hibra Burd,' which is green square decorated garment. One figure mentioned in the Quran, Al-Khidr, is called the Green one, who symbolizes immortality. This color in Islamic thought is also considered as a symbol of heaven and heavenly beings, prophets and imams while being as a stage of mystical behavior in mysticism and Sufism. Faith, wisdom, youth and vitality, etc. are other symbols of the green color. Green color in romanized Arabic as akhdar, also symbolizes moderation, or a symbol of nature and life. So, wecan interpret this symbol by saying: Muslims live by ethical principles, which guide how they interact with the world. Implementing their relationship with the environment in order to get deeper into Tawhid, paying attention and contemplating the ayaat or signs of Allah everywhere, becoming the caliph of the Earth, honoring the trust or amana that we have with Him to become the protector of this planet, moving towards al-adl or justice, and living in mizaan or balance with nature. Muslims live and practice Islam, while also honoring the environment.

The Environment has become a subject of interest in recent days. Before Darwin. the significance of the Environment was summed up in the word Creation. Since Darwin, Creation has become an obsolete word in scientific circles.

Human beings have been honoured by Allah in many ways: He gave them knowledge of a kind not possessed even by the angels; and made them masters, if not of the whole earth, at least of those creatures and substances that are useful for them.

The Qur'an invites people to think, contemplate and reflect upon the signs and wonders of Allah's creation: how He made the sun and moon a means for people to tell the time, how He made It possible for people to travel by sea, and derive food and transport from certain animals.

The Qur'an encourages human beings to investigate to the limits of their capacity all the phenomena they see about them, to ask questions, but Humans cannot comprehend anything of His knowledge, unless He wills it.

The Qur’an is an ocean, but human intelligence and understanding are strictly limited. As human creatures we are scarcely capable of encompassing all the facets of our religion and giving to each its correct weight. It is inevitable that we did, in the past, emphasise certain aspects of the Faith according to our needs and neglect others. That is to be expected. But this indicates that there is still much of the ocean unexplored. There are in the Qur’an, as also in the Sunnah, elements which are not developed to their logical conclusions because circumstances did not require this. And yet, if we may replace the image of the ocean with a different one, both these sources might be compared to the rocks from which springs gush forth and from which new springs may yet gush forth when times demand this renewal.

This is not 'conquest' of nature by human beings as some would like to think but the subtle observation and use of the ways these things are made—the laws of Allah. What is science but a process of discovery of 'natural laws' so that they can be put to use in the service of mankind? If those 'natural laws' are changed, or different, or even just unpredictably disrupted in some way, human beings are no longer in control of nature, like the ship mentioned in the Qur'an which is tossed by a storm. The people on it only remember Allah when they do not feel in control of the situation, but as soon as they feel safe, they forget about Him again.

Similarly, today we find that disruption in the environment is threatening our control of it and we are startulg to worry, and appreciate the fine balance of 'nature' which we have taken for granted up to now.

Environmentalists point out the many destructive results of human science and its applications in the modern world. Allah says,

ظَهَرَ الْفَسَادُ فِى الْبَرِّ وَالْبَحْرِ بِمَا كَسَبَتْ اَيْدِى النَّاسِ لِيُذِيْقَهُمْ بَعْضَ الَّذِيْ عَمِلُوْا لَعَلَّهُمْ يَرْجِعُوْنَ

'Corruption has appeared throughout the land and sea by [reason of] what the hands of people have earned so He [i.e., Allah] may let them taste part of [the consequence of] what they have done that perhaps they will return [to righteousness].' [QS. Ar-Rum (30):41]

It also shows the right way to interact with the environment. As long as people respect Allah, and the way He has set His creation in order, He will help them. Allah says,

وَلَا تُفْسِدُوْا فِى الْاَرْضِ بَعْدَ اِصْلَاحِهَا وَادْعُوْهُ خَوْفًا وَّطَمَعًاۗ اِنَّ رَحْمَتَ اللّٰهِ قَرِيْبٌ مِّنَ الْمُحْسِنِيْنَ

'And cause not corruption upon the earth after its reformation. And invoke Him in fear and aspiration. Indeed, the mercy of Allāh is near to the doers of good.' [QS. Al-A'raf (7):56]

He, Subhanahu wa Ta'ala, set a measure for everything and set up the Balance or Mizaan. So finely interlinked is this balance that the least action of the least creature can, in theory, make all the difference between, for example, fine weather and a storm. This is called, in chaos theory, the Butterfly Effect. How much more so then do the actions of human beings affect the state of the environment? With this in mind, the 'Balance' in the Qur'an, refers not just to the 'ecological balance' we know today from science. Most often, it means the Balance of Justice which weighs the deeds of human beings, the Balance of Right and Wrong. There is a right way to live and a wrong way. If people follow the instructions given by the Maker, then the balance is maintained, if they go against them, the balance is upset but, as Allah, the Creator, has power over all things, the balance He has created will be restored, at the expense of those who disturb it. It is on their own heads that the results fall.

The Qur'an does not condenm wealth and spending money, in fact it encourages it, so long as it is spent in a good way, the way of Allah. But it does say that wealth should not circulate among the rich and that it should be shared as a right with those not so well off. It encourages enterprise and development of natural resources, but also condenms excessive profit and usury that distort the market.

The person with the best right to own land is the one who cultivates it and makes the desert green. Conversely, as the Qur'an says, the deeds of the unrighteous can be recognised by their destruction of the environment, whatever they may think and declare their intentions to be:

وَاِذَا قِيْلَ لَهُمْ لَا تُفْسِدُوْا فِى الْاَرْضِۙ قَالُوْٓا اِنَّمَا نَحْنُ مُصْلِحُوْنَ

'And when it is said to them, 'Do not cause corruption on the earth,' they say, 'We are but reformers.' [QS. Al-Baqarah (2):11]

The Qur'an condemns those who heap up wealth, believing it will make them live forever; those who. appear to be pious, yet do not help orphans or feed the needy, and refuse to do even small good deeds. These are the people whose callous attitude to Allah's creation and His creatures make then unaware and heedless of the damage they are doing in their quest for wealth.

These are the men who cut down huge forests of majestic trees to provide hardwood for office furniture, window-frames, even paper, and pay no attention to restocking the forest; men who fish vast quantities from the sea, heedless of the fact that they are not allowing the ocean’s life to replenish itself; men who oppress people and keep them poor, who force them from their lands, leaving them without any livelihood, and then employ them for low wages on their own land to grow crops for the market to make their employers rich; those who even kill and maim people in order to profit from the land they have stolen. These are the people who cause direct damage to the environment.

Profits should be moderate and fair. Cartels and monopolies, hoarding and any other method of artificially interfering in market prices are banned in Islamic law. The office of consumer protection and market supervision, the muhtasib, was instituted during the khilafah of Umar Ibn al-Khattab (d. 644 CE) to ensure that fair prices and quality control were maintained.

The means of making profit should be generally beneficial to the community. Any harmful trade, like drugs or alcohol, is forbidden. By analogy, trade in harmful chemicals, once proved to be so, should also be banned, as would tobacco and other harmful consumer products, like petrol containing lead, and CFCs which destroy the ozone layer.

No believer in Allah could ridicule a person who earnestly strives to protect the environment and Allah’s creatures, or argue that jobs come before protecting the environment. The environment is jobs. No product, however small and insignificant, can be made without using natural ingredients derived from the earth and its plants and animals. Food is not made in supermarkets, or even factories, it is grown in Allah’s earth, nourished with His rain and harvested by workers He has created. The cars and lorries that transport it are built from iron dug up from the earth, and plastics made from oil which used once to be trees. Electricity is generated from heat made by burning coal, oil and gas from under the earth, and from uranium dug out of the earth. Pencils are made from trees, and computers from oil and metals dug out of the earth. The intelligence with which human beings devise means to use these resources is also a gift from Allah, Who first taught Adam the Names of Things, and subjected the earth and many of its creatures to the use of humanity.

Allah gave the responsibility to humanity as a khalifah—which basically means successor, but has also been translated variously as vicegerent, agent, steward - to care for His Creation. In the Qur’an this responsiblity is called al-amanah—the Trust, which was refused by the mountains and all of creation but taken on by humanity in their folly.

So each one of us has a responsibility to use what little power we have to make things better, not worse. We should try to live economically, grow some of our own food, use electricity and petrol sparingly, walk and cycle and use public transport where possible, and share whatever we have with others who are not so well off.

As recent corporate learning theory has confirmed, only when each person can see beyond their own individual needs to the effects they produce on the rest of the community, does the whole community begin to work properly and adapt to survive as a viable organism. Environmentalists agree that education and information are a vital way to improve the situation.

Unity, trusteeship and accountability, that is tawhid, khalifah and akhirah, the three central concepts of Islam, are also the pillars of the Islamic environmental ethics. They constitute the basic values taught by the Qur’an. It is these values which led our beloved (ﷺ) to say, ‘Whosoever plants a tree and diligently looks after ituntil it matures and bears fruit is rewarded’, and ‘If a Muslim plants a tree or sows a field and men and beasts and birds eat from it, all of it is charity on his part’, and again, ‘The world is green and beautiful, and Allah has appointed you his stewards over it.’ Environmental consciousness is born when such values are adopted and become an intrinsic part of our mental and physical make-up.

As easily the most eventful century in human history comes to a close, environmental issues are taking on an increasingly prominent role in our affairs. There is the ever growing realisation that this is not just another problem. Our sustained and massive abuse of the planet for the past four or five centuries is now being noticed by ‘mother nature’ and she is protesting vigorously, much to our discomfort. News of eco-disasters is commonplace and accounts of environmental catastrophes are now part of everyday media fodder.

In spite of all the governmental, non-governmental, international and national organisations that have been set up, and all the words that have been written on this subject, and all the effort that has gone into producing ‘solutions’ to the environmental problems we face today, the general consensus is that we are sliding down a slippery slope to disaster at an ever-increasing rate.

The problem is that the conceptual construct which the modem world functions within, is decidedly anti-environment. Society today is about economic progress and material gain and this takes precedence over everything else. Politics is about increasing standards of living and there is only one source from which we can extract wealth to enable us to do this and that is the earth. Exploiting it takes precedence over protecting it. Using gross national products and rates of economic growth as measures of progress is the most obvious manifestation of this. Therefore, any attempt at producing solutions to environmental problems is cosmetic and being cosmetic only lasts a short while, leaving the environment with even more complex problems to be covered up the next time. It cannot be permanently protected and our lives made reasonably safe unless there is a profound shift in attitudes and a permanent change in the manner in which we conduct our affairs.

In the next session, we will still discussing about Islamic Environmental Ethics, bi 'idhnillah."

[Session 2]

Bahasa