Why, when we want to relax at the end of a day, does our head think of a glass of wine or a beer? Why do we prefer to have a couple of drinks instead of a coffee on a first date? Why do we continue to drink alcohol if its extremely harmful consequences for health are currently known? All these questions that affect the daily life of many people are resolved in the book Drunken, a study by Edward Slingerland, sinologist, philosopher and professor at Columbia University. The book focuses on the transcendental role of alcohol for the survival of human civilization. In this way, Slingerland opposes the medical opinions that sentence us to zero alcohol consumption and values ??its important social function, since it helps us to cooperate with strangers, overcome social discomfort and be able to lose our inhibitions. For this reason, the author does not believe that the human tendency to consume can be considered an “evolutionary error” and that the fact that we have drunk throughout our history is not a mere coincidence.
Considering the stigma attached to alcohol today, what led you to write a book on the subject?
The issue of alcohol consumption is closely related to my previous work Trying not to try (2014), in two ways. Firstly, because I have always been interested in elements of human behavior that we have systematically naturalized, but which are really very mysterious. For example, religion. Throughout history and in every culture around the world, humans have worshiped invisible beings, built colossal monuments in their honor, and sacrificed time, energy, and resources. This adoration has been present throughout our evolution, although apparently it seems anti-evolutionary. But religious cultures have been the prosperous and those that have not died out.
So I asked myself: What is the function behind these religious traditions? Why have they been preserved over time? In this way, I came to believe that alcohol and other toxic substances had persisted over time for a similar reason. It is widely known that alcohol has a terrible impact on a physiological level and, in a strictly medical sense, its consumption is not usually recommended. However, we continue to drink. That is why I defend that it is not an “evolutionary error”, but that it plays a significant role in our survival.
On the other hand, in my first book I also focused on the Chinese ideal of existing effortlessly and entering a state where you lose self-awareness. Consequently, everything works and people get greater social recognition. The problem with this technique is that when you think you want to relax, it’s impossible, you do the opposite. Early Chinese thinkers developed different strategies to try to overcome this paradox, such as meditation. So, I thought that alcohol is also a very effective resource to overcome the barrier of relaxation and spontaneity. My hypothesis is that alcohol is a cultural technology to overcome this social problem, so that people overcome the paradox of “trying not to try.”
Taking into account the fundamental social role of alcohol for human evolution, would our current society be possible without its consumption?
I believe that alcohol, although it is currently being punished more than ever, still has some social function to fulfill. The clearest examples are: overcoming individual creativity problems, overcoming collective cooperativism problems or social discomfort when we start to get to know someone. If these social problems are not solved in another way, we are going to continue consuming alcohol.
What I try to make clear in my book is that it is true that alcohol has harmful consequences for health, but we also have to take into account the positive social factors that it promotes. I think intuitively, a lot of people know what I’m talking about. Everyone knows that on a first date the conversation will be better with two glasses of wine than with two cups of coffee. But we don’t have a conscious notion of why this happens. Therefore, when someone tells us that we should not drink alcohol because it is bad for our health, it seems that we have no counterargument. My aim with my book is to offer all the reasons for and against drinking so that everyone can make the best possible decision about what role they want alcohol to play in their life.
However, there are more and more trends on social networks that promote challenges and “healthy” lifestyles with zero alcohol consumption.
Yes. Again, these trends are supported only by the medical view of alcohol. The British Medical Journal published an article in 2018 that collected the negative physiological impacts of alcohol. The conclusion was that the only healthy consumption of alcohol is zero. A more recent study, with a slightly more flexible vision, says that alcohol cannot be drunk in a healthy way until the age of 40 and, after forty, in small doses. I reiterate that depending on the quality of your relationships, your creative capacity or your ability to relax at the end of the day, alcohol can help you to a greater or lesser extent. People who claim zero alcohol consumption are missing out on this whole range of social functions that it fulfills and that has historically helped us evolve as a civilization.
Does a moral factor weigh more than a medical criterion in these tendencies?
Yes. It is more common in English and North American cultures. People show themselves to be virtuous or morally superior by censuring certain imputes of pleasure. This moral arrogance has also played an important role in the associative fabric between different peoples and cultures throughout history, because it enhances our ability to impress others. But sometimes being that puritanical can backfire. Even if we take better care of our bodies, our genes don’t care if we have fun or experience pleasure. But we do care! (laughs). We want to feel pleasure and alcohol greatly enhances it. Culturally, perhaps we should be more permissive with what gives us pleasure.
He also comments that alcohol consumption often encourages types of reprehensible behaviors, such as sexual harassment, exclusion in activities related to the workplace or more aggressive behaviors between people. Could it be said that they are not the consequence of alcohol, but of structural problems in our societies that we are unable to solve?
Exact. Alcohol inhibits us from our conscious self-control and then the more impulsive actions that we can normally repress by social discipline come out. But the real problem is not alcohol consumption, but why someone is violent or assaults another person. We also don’t pay enough attention to the methods we have to drink safely. For example, drinking in a group and that consumption is limited to one meal, not just drinking for the sake of drinking. Furthermore, there are cultures in which being publicly drunk is highly frowned upon and is synonymous with not knowing how to drink. This happens above all in Italy, which, paradoxically, has the highest ratio of alcohol consumption per capita and, at the same time, the lowest rate of alcoholism in Europe.
This shows that, when it comes to alcohol consumption, southern European cultures are healthier and that alcohol consumption is compatible with good social behaviour. It is true that the drink is very addictive and dangerous, but we can find help mechanisms to be able to drink so that we can benefit from its inhibition while we do not get carried away by this endemic violence that continues to be part of humanity.
