The Fifth of November — Coffee and the Resilience of Conspirators

In Krzysztof Blinkiewicz’s new column, a proclamation about collapse, paradigms, courage, and coffee. Read. Think. Act.

Remember, remember the Fifth of November,

Gunpowder, treason and plot;

I see no reason why gunpowder treason

Should ever be forgot.

I like this day.

Each year it reminds me that one must stay resilient.

Resilience of ideas against conspiracy.

Resilience of conspiracies against failure.

Resilience of the conspirators themselves — though what grants them the moral right to resist domination?

The system wants every conspiracy against it to be forgotten.

But every idea knows that its rule can end with just one small, local, seemingly meaningless act of defiance. Butterfly effect. 

That’s how paradigms crack.

That’s how anomalies are born — when the system can no longer explain our reality, or even mine.

The fracture widens with every new “conspirator.”

Until it ends in catastrophe — the inevitable collapse of a paradigm.

November 5th commemorates the foiled Gunpowder Plot of 1605. In the cellars beneath the British Palace of Westminster, Guy Fawkes was caught guarding thirty-six barrels of gunpowder.

The plotters planned to blow up Parliament together with King James I.

It was a religious conflict.

They were tortured in the Tower of London, then hanged, drawn, and quartered — the standard punishment for treason.

Will The Better Coffee — and we ourselves — share the same fate for opposing today’s paradigm?

Hopefully not.

But we must be ready to bear many kinds of sacrifice to end exploitation, abuse, and the affliction of those who work with coffee.

To equalize what has been unequal, end neo-colonialism, and free ourselves from the dictates of stock markets and authorities that preserve the order we merely inherited.

We’ve awakened from the lethargy of specialty coffee and reveal the fractures of its system.

We walk the same path as those before us — and those now beside us — who dare to expose the anomalies.

"Market capitalism is not a religion. Market capitalism is a tool — like a stapler or a toaster. You’d be a fool to worship it." (Yancey Strickler, co-founder of Kickstarter, This Could Be Our Future.)

Adaptive liberalism — freedom and human rights, but only as long as they serve economic growth;

representative democracy, delegated not to will but to convenience;

and other systems of power that listen even less to people — these are the doctrines we watch collapse under the illusion of their own perfection.

Paradigms don’t evolve.

They’re replaced.

Sometimes by cousins, sometimes by opposites.

Revolutions follow — political, social, scientific.

The rise of smartphones changed how we see;

the rise of wellness culture changed how we breathe.

The rise of the internet changed how we speak;

the rise of AI is changing how we think.

And yet, we still believe the old system can explain these new worlds.

The capitalist–liberal paradigm keeps monetizing every innovation — bending progress to profit,

turning tools for people into markets for consumers.

Research among the young — Gen Z — reveals that faith in capitalism is fading fast.

That fading is our hope, our fuel, and our responsibility for what comes next.

The “conspiracy” of The Better Coffee does not seek to abolish money, nor the act of buying and selling.

We simply want greed to stop being the goal — and cynicism to stop being its language.

We apply this not only to the coffee universe, but to life itself.

We want success measured not by the accumulation of capital, but by dignity.

We want values like community, knowledge, meaning, justice, safety, tradition, the future of generations, and the natural world to stand equal to profit.

In 1605 they had to catch Guy Fawkes with his barrels of gunpowder.

We don’t hide our intentions.

Hey, specialty coffee system — we’re right here, and we’re saying: you’re cracking!

We’re outraged by how much you promised and how little you delivered while adapting yourself to the dominant paradigm.

And, as history teaches, defenders of a dying order will try to have movements like The Better Coffee hanged, drawn, and quartered.

But we are training our resilience.

And the spark we manage to ignite — will light the fires of conspiracies yet to come.