[taurath]

Or the culture is such that people regularly use alcohol both for pleasure and to avoid their emotional issues. Real men don’t have emotions, and if you’re feeling them then it’s better to knock back a few glasses then to express them.

[eurasiantiger]

And why do you think such a culture exists? Did it always exist? What is it influenced and kept up by?

[taurath]

Machismo is a really big area of study.

[eurasiantiger]

Really? You’re ready to ascribe the entirety of problematic alcohol consumption patterns simply to ”man-drinking”?

That is intellectual dishonesty at its prime.

[taurath]

Your theory is big booze and government corruption creates a problem of alcohol. Mine is that culturally many people really like to drink as an emotional salve. I didn’t ascribe the entire problem to it, just offering an additional or alternative cause, of which there can and must be more than one.

Throwing around accusations like intellectual dishonesty sorta doesn’t help conversation.

[eurasiantiger]

Let’s review this a bit more clearly.

I agree with you that many people like to drink to suppress or bring forth their emotions. This could be generalized: many people like to heavily alter their state of consciousness.

Now, mostly because of Big Booze and government corruption, we are stuck in a system where the only legal way to heavily alter one’s consciousness is alcohol.

Culture revolves around this. Counterculture then naturally involves illegal ways to alter one’s consciousness. Since counterculture exists defined through culture as an avantgarde-like necessity - a forefront of cultural innovation - it is again natural that the makers of mainstream culture are actually counterculturalists. It is also why mainstream art - music, books, movies, TV - contains so many examples of ”promoting” drug use.

It is thus obvious that the legality of alcohol and illegality of drugs are more significant drivers of behaviour than ”alcohol culture”.

We have hundreds of mainstream idols from Willie Nelson to Snoop Dogg openly promoting cannabis use, yet cannabis culture is literally cracked down on wherever it is illegal.

Ultimately, the law trumps culture.

[taurath]

Certainly “because it’s legal” is a decent argument, but culture does a lot more than decide which recreational drugs are in or out. Overuse of and dependence on drugs and alcohol vary widely among different cultures regardless of legality.

Were there cultures that didn’t produce as much demand for altered states of consciousness, those might be seen as better addressing the needs of its people (in theory, not making this argument as I’m not a Puritan but just for the sake of conversation).