Alcohol unites: how the tradition of drinking together has brought people together for centuries
Miscellaneous / / May 06, 2023
Find out why the ancient Greeks didn't like water-drinkers and why the Mexicans were furious if someone refused pulque.
Cognitive psychologist Edward Slingerland wrote the book Tipsy, in which he talked about how the relationship between man and intoxicants has evolved throughout history. With the permission of the Alpina Non-Fiction publishing house, we publish an excerpt from the chapter "Intoxication, Ecstasy and the Origins of Civilization" on the social function of alcohol.
Socialization is based on trust. Therefore, it is not surprising that liquid truth serums have always served as a vivid symbol of social cooperation and harmony. In ancient Mesopotamia, a beer vat of a characteristic shape personified social interactions in general.
Ritual gatherings in ancient China, regardless of their purpose - finding harmony between people or between the living and their ancestors, - revolved around alcohol, and the main ritual attributes were bronze vessels for drinking, which had a bizarre shape. The joyful exclamation "The spirits are drunk!" in an ancient ode, it means the favor of the ancestors and the establishment of harmony between the living and the dead. All over the world, throughout history, feasts and drinking parties have brought strangers together, united
feudal clanssettled differences and helped create new social bonds. For example, the word bridal - "wedding" - in modern English comes from the Old English bryd ealu - "wedding ale", which was exchanged by the bride and groom, sealing their union, and most importantly, the relationship that arose between them families.Anthropologist Dwight Heath, one of the first researchers of social function alcohol, notes that alcohol has always played a vital bonding role in situations in which individuals would otherwise remain isolated and forced to be alone: sailors in the port, lumberjacks just out of the forest, cowboys gathered in the saloon. International workers' organization at the beginning of the 20th century. Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) was supposed to solve a serious problem public interest: to help ethnically heterogeneous, mutually suspicious workers from different industries and with different life experience overcome narrow selfish interests and present a united front in the collective struggle against the owners of capital, defending better working conditions. A huge role in solving this problem was played by abundant libations, combined with music and singing, which reflected in the nickname by which the members of the organization are best known today, the Wobblies, "staggering". Most likely it reflected their habit of stumbling from saloon to saloon.
Drunk, bawling songs "staggering" with their motto "If one is injured, then all are injured" managed to unite up to 150,000 workers from a wide variety of industries and obtain important concessions from employers.
In many cultures, grandiose drinking parties also serve the purpose of wars. In medieval Celtic, Anglo-Saxon and Germanic tribes, it was customary to periodically get drunk until vomiting - this helped to bind the warriors to the master and to each other, the exchange of alcohol was expressive symbol of fidelity and devotion. As we noted, George Washington, although he defeated the Hessian army, taking advantage of the intoxication of its soldiers, considered alcohol to be so important. a component of the military fighting fraternity that called on Congress to create state-owned distilleries so that the US Army will never know a lack in the swill. King Frederick the Great of Prussia in 1777 spoke with diatribe against a new and, in his opinion, dangerous habit to drink coffee instead of beer.
Frederick the Great
King of Prussia from 1740 to 1786
It is disgusting to watch my subjects' consumption of coffee grow and the sums that flow out of the country as a result. Everyone drinks coffee; this should be prevented. My people must drink beer. His Majesty was raised on beer, like his ancestors and officers. Many battles have been fought and won by soldiers raised on beer, and the King does not believe that coffee-drinking soldiers are capable of withstanding the hardships of another war.
Other chemical intoxicants were also used to create the particularly strong social bonds needed for warriors. One of the first Spanish missionaries in the New World noticedthat some native tribes use peyote, before going to war. “He encourages them to fight without thinking of fear, thirst or hunger,” he reported. “They say it protects against all dangers.” The battle fury of the legendary berserkers from the Scandinavian sagas, most likely ensured psychedelics, and the terrifying murderous assassins of Ancient Persia owe their name (pers. hashashiyan, Arabic. hashīshiyyīn) psychotropic substance from which they drew fighting spirit - hashish.
According to the general idea, drinking is more associated with men than with women. In cultures where both sexes drink, men usually do it much more actively. Physiological factors almost certainly play a role in this. Men, on average, have a larger body, hence they need more alcohol than women to get the same psychological effect. More importantly, however, that in traditional patriarchal societies, it was men who were the main figures in public and political life, they were mainly had to decide dilemmas of cooperation with potentially hostile outsiders.
That's what writes Anthropologist Justin Jennings on modern-day aboriginal tribes living in the Andes: "Men are more connected here with alcohol than women... Although both sexes drink, a man's relationships with other men are strengthened by the process drinking. The ability to drink testifies to a person as a man, and through alcohol “friendship and harmony are strengthened, kinship is recognized.” In Dwight Heath's classic anthropological work on the Kamba tribe living in isolation in the Bolivian Amazon, describedthat kamba men use binges, often getting drunk to unconsciousness, to strengthen their social unity and overcome interpersonal conflicts. Vomiting together, forever together. Therefore, outsiders are usually greeted with huge amounts of booze. Enduring a whole night of heavy drinking is perhaps the fastest way to integrate into a new social environment.
Anthropologist William Madsen, while doing research in rural Mexico, photographed a local religious ceremony, and when this was noticed, an angry mob gathered around him. He was pinned to the wall with the tips of their machetes by men drunk on pulque, the traditional beer made of agave juice, and was released only when the elder of the neighboring village where he was staying said: “Release our friend. He is not a stranger. He drank our pulque." The machetes immediately disappeared, and that's it. sit down drinking pulque together.
Drinking together expands the circle of belonging and trust. It is noteworthy that perhaps the oldest legal document known to us, the code of laws of Hammurabi, obliges tavern owners, on pain of death, report conspiracies hatched over a few beers. The ability of alcohol to create deep bonds is exactly what is needed to strengthen the spirit of rebels or revolutionaries.
Therefore, refusing to drink together or accept the offered cup is a serious manifestation of rejection and hostility. It may even entail divine punishment. Jennings cites a myth from the beginning of the 17th century. about a Peruvian deity who decided to test the strength of human society by appearing at one of their feasts in the form of a poor, hungry wanderer. Only one person noticed him and greeted him by offering him alcohol. When the god finally revealed himself and took out his wrath on the selfish feasters, he spared only this man. Also, refusing to accept an offered drink is often seen as a deadly insult. For example, in Germany at the beginning of the modern era, "refusal to drink a glass offered as a sign of friendship was an insult that could make men from any section of German society snatch swordswhich sometimes ended in death. Equally dire would be the consequences of refusing to drink a glass offered in a saloon on the American frontier.
Alcohol was associated with trust and bonds of such strength and sincerity that breaking an oath sealed with wine or beer was regarded as an unusually serious crime.
Archaeologist Piotr Michalovsky gives an extremely unpleasant example from Ancient Sumer, described in a letter complaining about the king continuing to maintain relations with a man named Akin-Amar: “Is not Akin-Amar my enemy and is he not an enemy of His Majesty? Why does he still enjoy the favor of His Majesty? Once this man stayed with His Majesty when he drank from the cup and raised it (in greeting). His Majesty considered him true to himself, endowed him with clothes and granted a [ceremonial] headdress. However, he retracted his word and defecated in the cup from which he drank; he is an enemy of His Majesty!”
Indeed, an impressive picture. It is impossible to imagine a worse insult than the symbolic annulment of the absorption of the drink by defecation. This is a metaphorical destruction of the entire symbolic system created by complex greeting ceremonies and ritual exchange of gifts.
Surely there's only one way to reverse toast. Akin-Amar could have soiled his fancy headdress to convey a similar message, but he brings it to the fullest with a blow to the bonds created by drinking together.
In many, if not most, societies, alcohol intoxication not only creates bonds between potentially hostile people, but also seen as a collective rite of passage, testing the character of the individual.
The ability to drink is a sign that the person as a whole can be relied upon, or even virtue. One of my favorite sayings about Confucius, which comes after a long description of his pickiness in eating and drinking, is "only in regard to wine he did not know the measure." The fact that Confucius he could drink as much as he liked, but never became violent, testifies to his holiness. Socrates was also praised for his ability to control himself, participating, as every decent Athenian should, in endless revels. “He drank any amount that was offered to him,” wrote Plato, “and still he never became drunk.” For the Greeks, symposia, an evening of libations led by a symposiarch who set the pace for wine drinking, was way "to test people as a touchstone for the soul, inexpensive and safe compared to testing people in situations where a moral fiasco could entail serious damage."
Sinologist Sarah Mattis notes that both in ancient China and in Ancient Greece the requirement for adults (at least adult males) to drink together was coupled with the belief that it would allow them to demonstrate self-control and dignity in difficult conditions. In ancient China, “if a person did not get drunk, it was often considered an insult, but at the same time time a man should not loosen his belt, as this would interfere with maintaining respectfulness in relations." What concerns Greek symposium: “Under the leadership of a sober symposiarch - who monitors the reputation of the participants - citizens receive the opportunity to test themselves with the desire to immerse themselves in pleasure precisely when their self-control reaches its lowest points. Drinking wine and being in a situation where shamelessness usually reigns allows citizens to develop a resistance to excess and thereby improve their character. In addition, since... symposiums are social events, the virtue of the citizen can be observed and experienced at them.
If participation in social drinking undermines the ability to lie, increases the feeling of unity with others and serves as a test of a person's true character, it is understandable why those who do not drink are looked down upon suspicion.
"Water drinker" served in ancient Greece as an insult.
For a long time, the refusal to participate in ritual toasts, which ran like a red thread through a traditional Chinese feast, was a manifestation of almost unthinkable rudeness, as a result of which you would immediately be expelled from civilized society. This link between drinking and camaraderie remains powerful today in cultures around the world. Anthropologist Gerald Mars in his study of social dynamics in a group of Newfoundland longshoremen writes: “At the beginning of the study, I asked a group of movers why one of them, a married young man, was strong and hardworking, and they appreciate all these qualities in workmates, nevertheless, he was not their own for them, and they answered me: the whole point is that he is a “loner”. I began to inquire about how this manifests itself, and they told me: “He doesn’t drink - that’s what a loner means.”
We see a similar pattern in cultures in which the role of alcohol is something else. psychotropic substance. In the Fiji Islands, John Shaver and Richard Sosis observed that men who drank the most kava had more prestige in society, and drinkers often interact better with others during collective gardening works. Men having canicani, an unpleasant skin disease due to the abuse of kava, enjoy respect and are considered true "people of their village": they are trusted to protect the village values and they fully meet the expectations of society. Anthropologists suggest that these men's social and reproductive benefits derived from kava-based prestige outweigh the more obvious ones. physiological costs, although significant. On the contrary, men who limit themselves to drinking or do not attend kava-drinking ceremonies at all are viewed with suspicion and are not allowed to participate in many social events.
The social functions of intoxication are well described in reasoning classicist Robin Osborne on ancient Greek symposium: “Intoxication was not simply tolerated in others for the pleasures it provided. Intoxication simultaneously revealed the true individual and bound the group. The intoxicated realized how they dispose of the world and what place they occupy in it; those who were to fight and die together were imbued with trust in each other, allowing guilt to reveal what kind of people they are and what their values are.
In this context, one should also understand comment Ralph Waldo Emerson on the role of the lowly apple in early American society: "Man would have been more alone, had less friends and less support if the earth only provided useful maize and potatoes [and] denied this decorative and social fruit." Blossoming of apple trees gave beauty, as well as fruity cider and applejack apple vodka. Thus, besides the obvious usefulness of decent maize and potatoes, Emerson distinguishes a less visible function of beauty and intoxication, as important to social monkeys as bread and potatoes.
The book "Intoxicated. How people wanted to have a drink, but built a civilization ”is a boring story about how alcohol helped people survive for many centuries. The author calls for thinking about what alcohol is - a friend or an enemy, and also discusses how a person in the future can make alcohol a factor in social progress.
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