Quote: (11-26-2015 10:15 AM)Mage Wrote:
I see so many myths here about the usefluness of alcahol. I call bulshit on those of you who say alcahol was used as a tradition and social lubricant since stone age.
Rather it would be more correct to say that alcahol was used as a separator between a slave class and ruling class, since the dawn of time.
Spartians made their slaves to drink and abstained themselves and went to vigorous training instead. That was to opress a slave rebellion anytime since slaves outnumbered citizens by a huge factor.
Russians and drinking has nothing to do with climate. Russians were not drinking a lot since before Peter "the Great" made them to precisely because he hated his own not westenized people. (he was bought up in west) and made a sleve class out of them.
Even today - what is difference between a manual labour worker and intellectual worker? It's drinking. I don't know how it is in USA but here in eastern europe every construnction worker, every plumber, every electrician, every welder drinks and smokes heavily and lacks a college degree. Their bosses with college degrees and cushy office jobs drink much much less and are much less likely to smoke.
Alcahol makes people sexually loose so they copulate without restraint. This goes against the ideas of nobility and conscious partner choosing which is extreamly imortand for aristocrats to manitain power within their families.
It's obvoius for me alcahol is a thing for slaves tolerated and prohibited for the very reason of creating a slave caste peacefully. Without alcahol we would have to fight much more often to determine who is going to be master and who is going to be a slave.
Another explanation is that lower classes and upper classes often have different levels of impulse control. Alcohol is a drug, and over time can lead to addiction. People who are drug addicts tend to have a higher time preference and impulsive histories even before they become addicts. Throughout history, I think this was the main reason for alcoholism, and the encouragement of binge drinking by different classes was a smaller influence.
I'm not sure it's still like that though. A lot of people who are middle or upper middle class seem to be binge drinking more and more. Growing up and even today it seems like binge drinking or getting fucked up is glorified in music and movies. Movies like animal house, van wilder, how high, beerfest, the hangover, etc. Music, especially Rap/R&B/Pop where getting hammered in the club is sold as cool over and over. College parties, frats, house parties, drinking games, bacardi commercials. Even far into adulthood (30+), people still go to the bar to get hammered. All of that may be looking too far into it, and could be true for other generations, but what seems different is the necessity of alcohol in social situations. If you're not drinking, it makes a lot of people uncomfortable.