#910 Cupness

The first question my first philosophy professor (a cool guy named Kevin O'Neil) ever asked was, “What is a cup?” He was talking about Platonic ideal forms, the way we seem to know what a cup is whether it’s a mug full of coffee or a small plastic glass full of juice or a weighted tippy-sippy container for a toddler.
He called the ideal, “cupness.”
Somehow we perceive “cupness” in all those various permutations. Plato postulated that sense of “cupness” came from perceiving in our subconscious an ideal world beyond our own, which contained perfect forms of all we come to know here on earth. Sort of.
It’s lucky Plato didn’t have to deal with the whims of today’s marketers. Because cups are more varied than ever. I was reading an ad the other day for a machine called the Keurig Personal Brewer. Sounds German and therefore well designed.
Keurig, Krupp, Touareg, Braun, farfegnugen.
In any event, this machine purports to make ideal “perfect” cups—of coffee. It does so in individual amounts. So if you’re having a coffee klatch, allow enough time for everyone’s coffee to be brewed. And keep ‘em rotating because each cup it brews is only 8 ounces.
Which is the ideal measuring cup cup. But try putting that amount in the big handled mug cups I use for coffee and 8 ounces looks pretty paltry. My morning mug of coffee actually measures out to 11 ounces. Nearly a cup and a half. But I still call it my morning cup of coffee.
You might say my ideal morning cup of coffee.
I’d have to use 2 Keurigs a morning. My Folgers coffee can is different. It promises 332 cups brewed from its can. But they are 6 ounce cups. So that means I get 166 of my mugs.
The Keurig individual “perfect” cups cost 30 dollars for sixty of them. That’s only 50 cents apiece, but with Folgers costing 10 dollars for 166 cups or 6 cents a piece, I get a lot more buzz for the buck.
6 versus 50.
I guess we can finally answer that other ancient philosophical question.
What price perfection?
America, ya gotta love it.