Drinking cultures - Part 2 of 3
A sensational survey of the evidence about alcohol and health, a test to value.
Since I’ll be traveling a little this fall, I’ve planned a mini-series for supporters. Free subscribers will continue receiving post previews and trivia. Paid subscribers will receive the full articles and (re)sources. Thank you for supporting this work!
If you’re interested in the topic of culture and drinking, consider becoming a supporter. This 3-part mini-series will run in the next couple of weeks.
Making the case for alcohol in the modern age is complicated. It can ravage individual lives and communities. Since it’s probably not going anywhere for a while, we must at least ensure that our debates about its role are informed by our best scientific and anthropological scholarship—not moralism and debunked science.
If we acknowledge both the dangers and benefits of alcohol, we can practice drinking mindfully—so we can continue to thrive as the bizarre, successful species of ape that we are.
We drink because alcohol makes us more creative, emotional, and trusting. And we need these characteristics to collaborate—and survive. Cultural evolution is much smarter than we are. Innovation has and continues to be an outcome of cooperation.
But before we immerse ourselves in the pleasures and benefits of drinking, here’s the key to the film and book trivia from I promised in the first installment of this mini-series.
“Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” (1966) Edward Albee (1962)
“Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” (1958) Tennessee Williams (1953-1955)
“Rio Bravo” (1959)
“The Thin Man” (1934)
“National Lampoon’s Animal House” (1978)
“Weekend at Bernie’s” (1989)
“Sideways” (2004)
“The Hangover” (2009)
“The Great Gatsby” (2013)
“The Swimmer”(1963) John Cheever
How did you do matching stories with titles?
My disclaimer—I’m not qualified for nor providing any advice, health or otherwise, nor do I have strong opinions on either end of the spectrum. My place on the spectrum is the occasional drink with a meal or in social gatherings.
An anthropological survey showed that population size and connectedness with other islands correlates positively with progress. Pacific island cultures that worked together increased the number of tools available and the degree of tool complexity.
“Sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and says no; drunkenness expands, unites, and says yes. It is in fact the great exciter of the YES function in man. It brings its votary from the chill periphery of things to the radiant core. It makes him for the moment one with truth.”
William James
You’ll remember the dining area in Roman homes were known as the triclinium, or ‘three-couch room’—the central for the honor guest, and the other two for the host and his other guests.
I found an interesting reference to a similar structure in Thoreau’s Walden Pond, “I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.” Some people have only two. Others only one.
The people with three chairs may be the ones to pull off the miracle—getting fiercely tribal primates to cooperate with strangers. The gradual build-up of technology and knowledge accumulates in culture. In turn, this cultural accumulation benefits future generations.
Alcohol is useful to humankind. What we do with it is a result of culture, as we’ll explore in this article.
In Part 1, I covered a brief review of the history of drinking, that of the places where we consume alcohol, and the role of specific glasses in culture.
For Part 2, I’m switching more firmly onto historical roots of the benefits of fermented libation to society, customs, and interesting experiments to test value.
Part 3 will be a historical review of how we brand, package, market, and sell a promise to make it the most appealing, with selected libations from Northern Italy and Europe—including my favorite wines, beers, and digestive liquors.
Before the gradual reframing of alcohol as evil, libations were a welcome lubricant to creativity.
In vino veritas
There’s truth in wine. That’s because our inhibitions loosen up and our self-awareness decreases when we drink. Which is why throughout historic societies, no gathering of hostile individuals ever occurred without staggering quantities of intoxicants.
If you’re wondering what the safe level of drinking is, try figuring out the safe level of driving, or living. It’s a dilemma, isn’t it? We want to have the benefits of an activity, yet we abhor the potential risks. So we need a certain level of trust that we’ll know when and where to draw the line. Trust we gain from experience.
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