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Leo Tolstoy on why people drink (2014)

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Re: Leo Tolstoy on why people drink (2014)

#131

Post by Dalewyn »

thenoblesunfish wrote: post #114

Let's consider this quote "All human life, we may say, consists solely of these two activities: (1) bringing one’s activities into harmony with conscience, or (2) hiding from oneself the indications of conscience in order to be able to continue to live as before." Note that he has defined all of life as two points about "one" and "oneself". This is why I and I assume many others roll their eyes. Because Tolstoy, and…

Alcohol doesn't exist for socializing, though it does make socializing easier. Correlation does not equal causation.

No, alcohol exists for a very simple reason: Clean and sanitary beverage.

Lest we forget, alcohol is alcohol. It is by its very nature sanitary and safe to drink, which is why humanity has long consumed it. Safe and clean drinking water in abundance is a fairly modern phenomenon, and it's still only available in a small part of the world at large.

Given that, alcohol satisfies both aforementioned activities.

Producing and consuming alcohol is harmonious with conscience, that is the desire to "do right" both for yourself and your peers, because beverages that are safe to drink is critically important to yourself and everyone.

It is also denying the brutal reality of the world we live in, that is to say we hide from our desire to "do right" because producing and consuming alcohol is easier than ensuring clean and safe drinking water while achieving the same practical goal.

Alcohol obviously has its problems, but they are far better than ones incurred from drinking foul water.

Re: Leo Tolstoy on why people drink (2014)

#132

Post by b800h »

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #83
_yb2s wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alcohol and other drugs feel good and allow you to have a good time by allowing you to escape negative emotional experiences and just enjoy the moment: fear, social anxiety, trauma. Without those negative feelings, you would already feel good, and the alcohol would lose it's appeal.

You're confusing "drinking as a coping mechanism" and "drinking for recreation". You know what rich college students don't have a lot of? "fear, social anxiety, and trauma". Know what they do a lot of? booze, sex, and drugs. You show me the most content, meditation-and-philosophizing-on-a-Friday-night person, and I'll show you someone who could be having an even better time on MDMA. Booze, sex, and drugs are just lif…

> You know what rich college students don't have a lot of? "fear, social anxiety, and trauma".

Good lord, what a statement.

Re: Leo Tolstoy on why people drink (2014)

#133

Post by kgwgk »

Dalewyn wrote: post #131
thenoblesunfish wrote: post #114

Let's consider this quote "All human life, we may say, consists solely of these two activities: (1) bringing one’s activities into harmony with conscience, or (2) hiding from oneself the indications of conscience in order to be able to continue to live as before." Note that he has defined all of life as two points about "one" and "oneself". This is why I and I assume many others roll their eyes. Because Tolstoy, and…

Alcohol doesn't exist for socializing, though it does make socializing easier. Correlation does not equal causation. No, alcohol exists for a very simple reason: Clean and sanitary beverage. Lest we forget, alcohol is alcohol . It is by its very nature sanitary and safe to drink, which is why humanity has long consumed it. Safe and clean drinking water in abundance is a fairly modern phenomenon, and it's still only a…

> No, alcohol exists for a very simple reason: Clean and sanitary beverage.

That’s why distillation was developed: to separate alcohol from water via evaporation and condensation and get a super-clean and super-sanitary beverage - with as little water as possible.

Re: Leo Tolstoy on why people drink (2014)

#134

Post by EGreg »

I really like Leo Tolstoy! Like Newton, he also devoted himself to studying Hebrew and the original Jewish texts to try to get at the root of his beliefs, and wound up questioning much. He worked alongside his own peasants (who at the time it was legal to own) and left the Russian orthodox church and ended up living basically in the woods. He was also a pacifist and refused to fight for the Tzar, citing scripture.

Centuries ago, another such interesting figure said similar things as you see here… Blaise Pascal:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25483334

Re: Leo Tolstoy on why people drink (2014)

#135

Post by bambax »

> How is it that where there is no vodka, wine or beer, we find opium, hashish, fly-agaric, and the like, and that tobacco is used everywhere?

Was "tobacco" at the time different from what it's now? I have been a smoker for years (stopped a long time ago) and in my experience, as well as others', tobacco does not stupefy, at all.

Is it possible that what Tolstoy called "tobacco" involved other substances as well?

Re: Leo Tolstoy on why people drink (2014)

#136

Post by b800h »

ldjkfkdsjnv wrote: post #5

Call me crazy, but as a highly analytical person that has spent 70% of my waking hours in the last five years working on something technical, my social skills are best when I'm hungover. The logical analytical side of me is diminished and I am much more "normal". I have a much higher rate of success on dates with women when I have a really bad hang over and then a few drinks. It does feel like a lobotomy, and that's…

I have what gets called ADD, and found at 17 that I was a much better programmer when hungover, keeping focus all day long and finishing a project. It is somewhat sad that when I excitedly told people about this the next day, that no-one spotted that this was a clear sign of ADD. The ensuing 28 years would probably have been simpler.

Re: Leo Tolstoy on why people drink (2014)

#137

Post by bambax »

Blahah wrote: post #9

Drinking slows down my brain and reduces the number of threads running in parallel. Sometimes very useful to enable normal-passing interaction in social environments. Or just to be able to focus. Lots of people with ADHD drink to achieve a more single threaded experience. Edit to add: I don't meant to encourage drinking as a tool for managing ADHD. It works but it's a blunt and dangerous tool. If you're at that point…

Drinking drowns creativity. I can do many many things almost properly while drunk, but one thing I can't do is write anything good.

It's possible that's what we're after when we drink: stop the flow of ideas. That's one meaning of "stupefy".

Re: Leo Tolstoy on why people drink (2014)

#138

Post by jalapenos »

thenoblesunfish wrote: post #114

Let's consider this quote "All human life, we may say, consists solely of these two activities: (1) bringing one’s activities into harmony with conscience, or (2) hiding from oneself the indications of conscience in order to be able to continue to live as before." Note that he has defined all of life as two points about "one" and "oneself". This is why I and I assume many others roll their eyes. Because Tolstoy, and…

That's one big reason, but the other is numbing bad feelings, which I think is a more interesting field, especially since it often blurs into the social bit.

Indeed, for the social aspect, everyone is already fully aware it's not needed, and that they can have fun socialization without it, because of their childhoods.

I think the biggest reason alcohol is used is, to put it bluntly, how painful life is.

As the child grows into an adult, and realizes the real nature of life and the world, baseline pain increases. And it's hard to be social when you're worried about things or down about things.

But alcohol is a cheap, readily available blunt instrument against this pain. No matter how bad you feel, if you down a litre of booze, that pain will definitely, and quickly, stop.

Re: Leo Tolstoy on why people drink (2014)

#139

Post by soligern »

thenoblesunfish wrote: post #114

Let's consider this quote "All human life, we may say, consists solely of these two activities: (1) bringing one’s activities into harmony with conscience, or (2) hiding from oneself the indications of conscience in order to be able to continue to live as before." Note that he has defined all of life as two points about "one" and "oneself". This is why I and I assume many others roll their eyes. Because Tolstoy, and…

Maybe as a corollary. But the answer is really simple when you start out. It makes you feel good. Some of these answers feel like people are allergic to straightforward answers.

Re: Leo Tolstoy on why people drink (2014)

#140

Post by Simon_O_Rourke »

Samuel Johnson had a more pithy quote on the same subject.

"I called on Dr. Johnson one morning, when Mrs. Williams, the blind lady, was conversing with him. She was telling him where she had dined the day before. "There were several gentlemen there," said she, "and when some of them came to the tea-table, I found that there had been a good deal of hard drinking." She closed this observation with a common and trite moral reflection; which, indeed, is very ill-founded, and does great injustice to animals—"I wonder what pleasure men can take in making beasts of themselves." "I wonder, Madam," replied the Doctor, "that you have not penetration to see the strong inducement to this excess; for he who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man."

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Samuel_Johnson

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