Edward Slingerland

American culture remains quite bipolar about alcohol, with most trending either toward teetotaling abstinence or freewheeling excess. But however much one does or does not drink, very strong feelings and opinions abound regarding alcoholic beverages and their consumption.

Yet whether one abstains or partakes, the question which Edward Slingerland raises in Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization remains relevant: why is it that almost every human culture has put a lot of effort into developing and consuming alcoholic beverages when they represent a poison to the body?

The author began the work with this question and conundrum. He explored the archaeological, historical, and scientific evidence: it would seem beer consumption preceded agriculture, and therefore it remains quite plausible that humans began the agricultural life in the pursuit of beer and wine. Other cultures in other places figured out how to concoct alcoholic beverages from some kind of accessible native plant.

But why? Slingerland approached the question from an evolutionary/scientific point of view. He delved into the science and research behind the effects of alcohol and what might lead people to want to enjoy such effects. He focuses on the role of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) in our functioning: it develops over time and has an important organizing and disciplining effect, but comes at the cost of out of the box and creative thinking, social coherence, greater guardedness, and some other consequences.

There are various ways one can turn down the PFC, but few have proven more effective and efficient than the consumption of alcohol. And so the author suggests the consumption of alcohol would help inspire creativity and serve as a social lubricant, facilitating greater communication in a group setting. And this has proven the case historically: cultures throughout time and place have used consumption of alcohol in various rituals and events to foster creativity and group cohesion. It allowed natural skepticism and suspicion to be sufficiently allayed between rivals and rival groups to facilitate treaties or other forms of joint participation. It provided a bit more confidence in trying to foster a relationship.

And so the author ultimately attempts to make his case for drinking, independent of the standard scientific matters of health, but in terms of fostering group creativity and cohesion.

Yet the author is able to soberly assess many of the challenges which attend to the consumption of alcohol. He recognizes the addiction tendency in a proportion of the population, and would want to respect their abstinence. He maintains great concern regarding distilled spirits: they have only been around for a few hundred years, prove quite potent, and often short-circuits whatever social benefits might come from shared alcoholic consumption and leads to sheer drunkenness. He also maintains concern regarding drinking alone and the tendency toward isolation in drinking in modern society, pointing out how drinking was a social construct and worked best as a social construct but proves dangerous when done alone as a coping mechanism and/or an addiction, and all the more so when it involves distilled spirits. The author recognizes the challenge of prejudice and discrimination: what do you do with those who decide not to drink in environments where drinking is serving as a social lubricant and catalyst for creativity? Or, for that matter, the exclusion which would attend to those who have other responsibilities and cannot drop in to the pub after class or work?

I definitely appreciated the concerns about distilled spirits and isolation, and can recognize the merits of his arguments in anthropological and historical frameworks. Those who lived in the worlds of the Old and New Testaments consumed at least wine if not beer and/or cider. Abstinence was not condemned, but drunkenness consistently was condemned, with plenty of examples of the problems involved set forth.

This is definitely an interesting historical and scientific exploration into human consumption of alcohol, and has important information for us to consider in terms of how societies function. Yet one’s decisions regarding alcoholic consumption should not be informed merely by historical or scientific analysis, and drunkenness should never be commended. But it does help to understand what alcohol is doing in the body, and why people in societies have found at least some virtue in what can also quite quickly become a vice.… (meer)