Creative3 - The Monday Morning Memo

Thanks to Andrea Wells Miller
for the motivated ads in today's rabbit hole.

“IN PRAISE OF GETTING DRUNK: There is a very good reason we have historically gotten drunk. 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. In all of the ways outlined above, intoxicants—above all alcohol—appear to have been the chemical tool that allowed humans to escape the limits imposed by our ape nature and create social insect–like levels of cooperation. We have seen that traditional views about the functional benefits of alcohol consumption find confirmation in modern science. By enhancing creativity, dampening stress, facilitating social contact, enhancing trust and bonding, forging group identity, and reinforcing social roles and hierarchy, intoxicants have played a crucial role in allowing hunting and gathering humans to enter into the hive life of agricultural villages, towns, and cities. This process has gradually scaled up the scope of human cooperation, eventually creating modern civilization as we know it.

I would argue . . . that we have not entirely outgrown our need for chemical ecstasy. Alcohol and other intoxicants can and should continue to play a role in our modern world. Indeed, in some ways we need them more than ever. There’s a strong case to be made that chemical intoxication has not outlived its functional role, and there are plenty of reasons we should continue to get drunk.”

- Edward Slingerland, Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way Into Civilization (2021)

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