"A negroni will essentially wipe out the prefrontal cortex, the site of pragmatic, grown-up thinking. Zap the same region with a transcranial magnet and you’ll get the same results: happier, less inhibited, more childlike adults. Given that transcranial magnets are 'expensive, not very portable and typically not welcome at parties,' alcohol remains a handy, low-tech tool to get good will and fresh ideas flowing. For our ancestors, inebriation was especially essential, 'a robust and elegant response to the challenges of getting a selfish, suspicious, narrowly goal-oriented primate to loosen up and connect with strangers.... It is no accident that, in the brutal competition of cultural groups from which civilizations emerged, it is the drinkers, smokers and trippers who emerged triumphant'.... Human society would not exist without ample lubrication."
From the NYT review of Edward Slingerland's book "Drunk/How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization."
I just put that in my Kindle. I enjoyed Slingerland's encounter with Joe Rogan. Here's a 14-minute segment of the show (which was 166 minutes):
There's a lot of historical detail in the book, looking into why human beings did so well over the millennia when we've been sloshing around in alcohol the entire time. The negatives are obvious, so there must be something quite positive.
I've written a few times about what I've considered the crucial benefit of alcohol: "freedom and democracy depend on our disinhibition; we need to be able to laugh at authority."
Here's the Reddit discussion of that Joe Rogan episode. Most interesting comment: "If you listen carefully, you can hear Joe's erection slamming into the underside of the table when that guy mentions gobekli tepe."
Here's the Wikipedia article "Göbekli Tepe." Oh, what am I doing, reading Wikipedia. I have the book in my Kindle now. From the book:
We’ve touched several times on what is possibly the oldest epic ritual site in the world, the stone enclosures and mysterious, monumental pillars erected at Göbekli Tepe. Over 11,000 years old, Göbekli Tepe must have been created by hunter-gatherers, since it predates the advent of settled agriculture. Its discovery a couple decades ago was therefore an important piece of evidence against the traditional view that certain key trappings of civilization—monumental architecture, elaborate ritual-based religion, and the brewing of alcohol—only could have developed once humans had attained the stability and access to resources brought about by the agricultural revolution. Beer before bread advocates see this site, with its stone basins that could hold up to forty gallons of liquid, scattered remnants of drinking vessels, and evidence of extensive feasting on wild animals, as an illustration of how ancient humans were first motivated to come together in large groups by the draw of intoxication and ritual, with agriculture coming after. It is revealing that there are no grain silos or other food storage facilities at Göbekli Tepe. “Production was not for storage,” notes the archaeologist Oliver Dietrich and his colleagues, “but for immediate use.” In other words, people gathered in large numbers at this site for temporary, epic, blowout feasts, accompanied by dramatic rituals, all of it likely fueled by generous quantities of booze.
The booze served multiple functions. The appeal of drink and food drew together otherwise widely scattered hunter-gatherers from far and wide, creating the kind of workforce that could move, carve, and erect enormous sixteen-ton stone pillars. The monumental architecture, in turn, must have lent incredible authority and power to the organizers, while the intoxicant-fueled rituals conducted among these pillars created a sense of religious and ideological cohesion. Periodic alcohol-fueled feasts, after which the participants scattered again until the next ceremony, thus served as a kind of “glue” holding together the culture that created Göbekli Tepe and other sites in the so-called Golden Triangle where agriculture, and civilization, had its birth.
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8 comments:
Ignorance is Bliss writes:
So, cultural groups who had the ability to get their womenfolk liquored up managed to out-reproduce other groups.
Then the pill came along and ruined everything.
From the book:
It is hard to imagine a better cultural solution than one or two glasses of wine, combined with a meal, for getting a nervous, budding romantic couple over initial awkwardness or anxiety. Drinks at the end of the day, or beginning of the weekend—what the addiction researchers Christian Müller and Gunter Schumann dryly characterize as a “‘scheduled’ and time-dependent…transition from professional to private microenvironments”—help uncoupled people meet potential partners and established couples to flip from task-oriented, wolf-mode to relaxed, Labrador-like intimacy. This is why champagne or wine is associated with romantic occasions, like weddings and Valentine’s Day....
One of the more disturbing events in the book of Genesis (and that’s saying something) is when the daughters of Lot get him almost insensibly drunk in order to seduce and become impregnated by him (Genesis 19:33). This is only the first in a long line of literary portrayals of alcohol as date rape drug. Chapter Four discussed the role of alcohol in enhancing intimacy, allowing strangers to open up to one another and romantic couples to get beyond awkwardness or unhelpful inhibitions. Here we must balance that account by noting that alcohol, especially in excess, can also dangerously distort and harm romantic and sexual behavior....
Lucien writes: "Take a look at "A History of the World in 6 Glasses," if you haven’t read it already."
The 6 beverages are beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea, and Coca-Cola — so, only half alcoholic, but all mind-altering.
The book "Drunk" also has a lot about coffee and tea.
Here's something from "Drunk" about coffee:
Frederick the Great of Prussia, in 1777, issued a diatribe against the novel, and in his view dangerous, habit of drinking coffee instead of beer:
"It is disgusting to notice the increase in the quantity of coffee used by my subjects, and the amount of money that goes out of the country as a consequence. Everybody is using coffee; this must be prevented. My people must drink beer. His Majesty was brought up on beer, and so were both his ancestors and officers. Many battles have been fought and won by soldiers nourished on beer, and the King does not believe that coffee-drinking soldiers can be relied upon to endure hardships in case of another war."
"Nourished on beer" — it is a way to pack in calories, to consume all the grain.
Mr. Forward writes:
" ...a robust and elegant response to the challenges of getting a selfish, suspicious, narrowly goal-oriented primate to loosen up and connect with strangers..."
So, kind of like the comments section?
Temujin writes:
As has already been pointed out by the Rogan podcast, your commenters, and you- this history of humankind is a history of alcohol in some form or another. It has been used in various forms as nourishment, medicine, and most definitely as a social tool- to bring people together, introduce new people to each other, seal a new friendship or association, or to celebrate the tribe or family.
But one of those categories- wine- to me seems singularly focused on bringing people together- often over food. And it has been with us for so long. In Judaism there is a standard prayer, regularly recited at certain holidays, which is the blessing of the wine- or per the actual prayer- a blessing to 'the fruit of the vine'. There are many prayers in Judaism, but having a standard one to the fruit of the vine tells you the importance wine had in the early days. And as Jesus turned water into wine, many Christians today take part in communion with Sacramental wine (in the form of grape juice). But Jesus and his Disciples drank plenty of wine at meals, as was the custom in those days. And continues to this day.
Gather friends for dinner, what is served with it? Typically there will be some alcohol around. And often wine. And as they say out in Napa...Life's too short to drink bad wine. I second that and add that the same goes for Scotch.
Charlie writes:
"The 6 beverages are beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea, and Coca-Cola — so, only half alcoholic, but all mind-altering."
Water was deadly in the "civilized" world . Fermenting, distilling and boiling saved it.
This theory is discussed in the book. Excerpt:
"Perhaps the most obvious piece of cultural-historical evidence against the idea that the need for water purification drove the invention of alcohol is the case of China. People in the Chinese cultural sphere have been drinking tea forever (well, for at least a few thousand years), and for a long while have also had powerful cultural norms against drinking untreated water. Of course, that’s not how they frame it: According to traditional Chinese medical beliefs, drinking cold water harms the qi, or energy, of the stomach. If you must drink water, it should be “opened water” (kaishui), boiled and drunk warm or at least at room temperature. The theory focuses on temperature and its effect on qi, not on the danger of water-borne pathogens, but it has the same function: Don’t drink water unless it’s been boiled and the nasty stuff has been killed off. It seems, then, that Chinese and Chinese-influenced cultures, which together encompass a pretty impressive proportion of the people who have ever lived on the earth, have solved the pathogen-load problem through the simple expedient of drinking only tea or boiled water. And yet they still have booze. Oceans of it. From ancient Shang times (1600 to 1046 BCE) to the present, alcohol has dominated ritual and social gatherings in the Chinese cultural sphere as much as, if not more than,anywhere else in the world. This makes no sense if killing off pathogens in our water or stomachs was the main function of alcoholic beverages. Once the Chinese discovered tea and adopted norms against drinking untreated water, alcohol use should have tailed off and then disappeared, its primary function having been taken over by something much less dangerous, costly, and physiologically harmful. The unfortunate continued existence of baijiu (“white alcohol”), a brutally effective sorghum-based spirit, reminds us that this is not the case. It is also important to note that the dirty water hypothesis does not, in fact, fit with other cultural norms we see when we look around the world. Groups that have beer or wine typically still drink untreated water, or mix untreated water into their booze.47 None of this makes sense if the main adaptive function of alcohol is to help us avoid bad stomachs. Given the obvious costs of consuming alcohol, then, cultural evolutionary dynamics suggest that alternate solutions to the problems of dirty water, lack of micronutrients, or food preservation would be quickly discovered and exploited, driving alcohol use into extinction. This has not happened, to say the least.
PDM writes:
In Mississippi, nearly every examination of the ills or benefits of alcohol lead us to the famous Whiskey Speech by legislator Noah “Soggy” Sweat, Jr., in 1952, debating the lifting of Prohibition. He got it about right:
My friends, I had not intended to discuss this controversial subject at this particular time. However, I want you to know that I do not shun controversy. On the contrary, I will take a stand on any issue at any time, regardless of how fraught with controversy it might be. You have asked me how I feel about whiskey. All right, here is how I feel about whiskey.
If when you say "whiskey" you mean the devil's brew, the poison scourge, the bloody monster, that defiles innocence, dethrones reason, destroys the home, creates misery and poverty, yea, literally takes the bread from the mouths of little children; if you mean the evil drink that topples the Christian man and woman from the pinnacle of righteous, gracious living into the bottomless pit of degradation and despair and shame and helplessness and hopelessness, then certainly I am against it.
But if when you say "whiskey" you mean the oil of conversation, the philosophic wine, the ale that is consumed when good fellows get together, that puts a song in their hearts and laughter on their lips, and the warm glow of contentment in their eyes; if you mean Christmas cheer; if you mean the stimulating drink that puts the spring in the old gentleman's step on a frosty, crispy morning; if you mean the drink which enables a man to magnify his joy, and his happiness, and to forget, if only for a little while, life's great tragedies, and heartaches, and sorrows; if you mean that drink, the sale of which pours into our treasuries untold millions of dollars, which are used to provide tender care for our little crippled children, our blind, our deaf, our dumb, our pitiful aged and infirm, to build highways and hospitals and schools, then certainly I am for it.
This is my stand. I will not retreat from it. I will not compromise.
Charlie writes:
Ha! Obviously, the author has never been around an alcoholic. Oh, hey guys, we don't need to drink this crap that knocks us out of our heads and makes us late to work in the morning, we have coffee and tea, now!
It's like he believes addiction (or pleasure, or escape, for that matter) wasn't a thing in ancient times, or times past.
I've read that, if not for coffee houses, we would not have democratic or communist societies. Devise your agenda in the coffee house, raise your army in the pub.
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