Tall Order

I was at the Northwest Coffee Festival this past weekend. The festival also heavily featured chocolate since the two have similar flavor profiles. Samples varied in bean species, origin, farming methods, roasts, brew/extraction methods, and preparations. To those sensitive enough to flavor, each of these things alone has a dramatic effect on the end result. But the general pattern I noticed is that the more time and effort required to make the coffee or chocolate, the better it will taste -- even down to things outside human control. With chocolate for example, there are three main types of cacao trees:

1. Forastero: Resistant to disease, can grow in several climates, grows quickly, and has a high yield of fruit.
2. Criollo: A more fragile tree. Requires specific climates, grows slowly and has a low fruit yield.
3. Trinitario: A blend between the above two and the precise midpoint in their distinctive qualities

Can you guess which one is considered the most delicious bean? Exactly. Criollo. For some reason, fragility seems to be associated with quality and I wondered why that is. The quick and dirty biological explanation is that the criollo can afford to spend more of its energy further developing qualities that happen to be relevant to a good flavor when less energy is spent making poisons like disease resistances and insecticides (which we are evolutionarily inclined to dislike anyway). We could infer then that the criollo bean tastes the best because the elements contributing to flavor are more chemically complex than in the forastero or trinitario. But why should complexity lead to better flavor at all? We could again argue from a biological standpoint and say that the composure of the blah receptors blah..... chemically... blahdy blah co-evolved.... micronutrient.....yadda yadda etcetera. But this link between a thing's complexity and its quality is in everything. Here's a jargon-less Internet reference:

Without reading into meaning, accessing previous knowledge, or responding to personal associations, the Trogdor on the right is cooler. I enjoy it more than the Trogdor on the left. I wrote about what makes something cool a while back by talking a bit about how we decide we like something based on our interpretation of it. There's something even simpler in this case though. There's a sort of basic, surface-level, sensory pleasure we got from observing complexity.

It seems like at pretty much every level, conscious or unconscious, what we really take pleasure in is experiencing order. It's even conceivable that our brains are able to appreciate order down to a micro scale, as we might with the criollo bean. Though certainly this is trumped by other things like personal preference as demonstrated by the accelerating resurgence of pixel art

The simplicity in pixel art is appealing to some either for the sake of nostalgia, artistic intent, resistance to convention, or whatever else. Just like I might prefer what others would consider a poorly made cup of coffee if I take pleasure in it because it, say, reminds me of my father or if I think the barista is an artist trying to convey a message through the flavor. But then the desire to experience sensual complexity is outweighed by a desire to experience something that stimulates more complex cognitive faculties such as memory or interpretation. Cognitive or sensual, we still have a tendency to favor complexity and order.

And there's something kind of existential about that. Coffee and chocolate aside, all matter of creation is the process of actively resisting entropy. As beings who seem to be both designed and programmed to embrace order, what is the purpose of life if not to do exactly that? Maybe I won't create an artistic masterpiece or a powerful bit of technology in my lifetime -- Maybe I won't even create a good cup of coffee tomorrow morning -- but thinking that I exist to try is inspiring. If creation defines purpose, then the only question left for me to ask is, "What are my creative limits?"

It's amazing how therapeutic a cup of coffee and a bit of chocolate can be.