"In the flickering light of the campfire, you can’t do much that requires keen eyesight like sewing or making tools, but you can chat away across the flickering flames."

"This is nicely illustrated by what South African San Bushmen talk about around their campfires. When anthropologist Polly Wiesner listened in on their conversations, she found that daytime conversations typically consisted of boring factual topics and discussions of trading agreements with neighbours, but evening conversations were invariably about social topics or involved storytelling and jokes.... So, if you want to know the secret of a long and happy life... the important thing is to take time out with people you know and talk to them over a beer or two, even that bottle of Prosecco if you really must. There’s nothing quite like a convivial evening wrapped around a pint to give you health, happiness and a sense of wellbeing."

From "Why drink is the secret to humanity’s success/Alcohol has been more valuable to our species’ survival than we might imagine" from last August in The Financial Times. I'm reading that this morning because my son John put it up on Facebook.

I like the article because it fits well with how I've been thinking about the use of disinhibiting substances ever since I read this passage in Paul Johnson's "Intellectuals":

There was one aspect of Ibsen’s vanity which verged on the ludicrous... He had a lifelong passion for medals and orders. In fact, he went to embarrassing lengths to get them...

[T]here is ample evidence for Ibsen’s passion since he insisted on displaying his growing galaxy of stars on every possible occasion. As early as 1878 he is reported to have worn all of them, including one like a dog-collar round his neck, at a club dinner. The Swedish painter Georg Pauli came across Ibsen sporting his medals (not the ribbons alone but the actual stars) in a Rome street. At times he seems to have put them on virtually every evening. He defended his practice by saying that, in the presence of ‘younger friends’, it ‘reminds me that I need to keep within certain limits.’ All the same, people who had invited him to dinner were always relieved when he arrived without them, as they attracted smiles and even open laughter as the wine circulated....

And, later, repeating that quote, I said: "Freedom and democracy depend on our disinhibition; we need to be able to laugh at authority."



That's "Mens Sana in Corpore Sano" by Georg Pauli (the Swedish painter who encountered Ibsen wearing his medals as he walked around in Rome).

"Mens sana in corpore sano is a Latin phrase, usually translated as 'a healthy mind in a healthy body," Wikipedia tells us. The idea is that "physical exercise is an important or essential part of mental and psychological well-being."

Speaking of Rome... the phrase traces back to the Roman poet Juvenal:

You should pray for a healthy mind in a healthy body.
Ask for a stout heart that has no fear of death,
and deems length of days the least of Nature's gifts
that can endure any kind of toil,
that knows neither wrath nor desire and thinks
the woes and hard labors of Hercules better than
the loves and banquets and downy cushions of Sardanapalus.
What I commend to you, you can give to yourself;
For assuredly, the only road to a life of peace is virtue.