541–550 of 938 posts
Go Ghengis!
That's quite interesting. Lots of Mongol rulers drank themselves to death. The timing had world historic consequences: they tended to cark it just after they nuked the entire muslim world from horseback, and just before they moved on to Europe. Maybe the invention of distilled spirits was the key to European domination.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
[Citation needed]
AskHistorians on reddit has put this very question into their "very frequently asked questions" due to its popularity, and there's a decent number of answers describing why its a myth: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7b8jea/is_it... https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2bewpo/what_...
Some of my most cherished memories are those where I was out drinking wine and having really good food with my wife and friends. When people were telling stories about Jesus, the central figure of their religion, one of the miracles they told of was him turning water into wine. This is held up as one of the most important stories in their entire moral system. When the pyramids were being built, the builders were paid…
You are associating alcohol == good times, which if you want to do so is fine (we are adults, we have free will), but know that you can have good times without alcohol as well. They aren't mutually inclusive.
There are a few other threads where people say similar things. If you need to have alcohol to have good times, then you do actually have a drinking problem. If you can't imagine going out with friends without drinking, then you do actually have a drinking problem. If you can't imagine eating a meal without drinking, then you do actually have a drinking problem.
It's hard to reduce the US to a single culture. Alcohol consumption habits vary greatly from region to region, or even city to city depending on where you live. I've noticed that heavy drinkers tend to cluster with other heavy drinkers. The more you see your friends and coworkers binge drinking regularly, the more you feel it's an acceptable and even common behavior. Likewise, non-drinkers tend to cluster with each o…
Europe is exactly the same though. Majority of the countries/people don’t drink fancy wines for dinner but binge drink to party and forget about their troubles. Upper middle class in a few wine producing countries does not create a continental monoculture. Anyone from Northern/Eastern Europe or UK will be shocked by US drinking culture in the opposite direction. My experience of Germany was also certainly not “wine f…
I'm going to generalize, but the US is more diverse (rank #90 vs #151 for Germany, #169 for France, #111 for Croatia [0]) and we also have a very painful past and present that makes us acutely aware of our inability to socialize. America also has a cultural obsession with self-reliance/liberty/frontier-as-a-virtue which makes "socializing" a bit of a taboo concept, in a weird way. It's a crutch to "need" to be around…
What are you talking about?
In the UK you can be an alcoholic for decades and still hold down a respectable job. Nobody bats an eye at a few drinks at lunch. I remember feeling so weird the first time I was at a formal event in the UK for a lunch at noon where wine was being served. First time in my life I had felt buzzed and the sun was out and hot. I did not like it at all. But I imagine, with the frequency of these events in academic settings, that half the academics in the more prestigious universities are functioning alcoholics. Many students and young professionals in UK/Europe make it a point to go out and get wasted as much as possible. That happens in the US too, but it seems to be looked down upon more? I think the idea that drinking is more under control in Europe would fade pretty quickly if all alcohol was temporarily banned there for a week.
Having lived in the UK and the US, I firmly disagree. I had never seen drinking at the extreme levels until I went to the UK. I seriously doubt the entire articles premise that somehow alcohol binging is unique to the US. There are a lot of counties with a lot of forms of alcohol out there…
I lived in Bermuda which is the crossroads for expats from all over the world. Not sure if it’s an expat thing but the Americans didn’t drink nearly as hard as the Brits, Canadians, Aussies, Kiwis and South Africans.
I'm South African[1]. You'd be an alcoholic too, if you lived here :-)
[1] To be honest though, I rarely have a drink. Had one in 2020, half in 2019, 4 in 2018. I really should drink more, seeing that I still have past b/day presents from my sisters that total about 5 bottles of single-malt scotch, and from my wife a 25 year old Glenfiddich - all unopened.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Genuine question: what do you drink instead? Do you stick to water or do you order any kind of soda/lemonade (or something I’m not thinking about)
As another non-drinker, Kombucha and occasionally non-alcoholic beers. Kombucha has a tiny bit of alcohol (<0.5%) and tastes a bit like a soda but has a tiny amount of sugar (usually only 8g / serving).
It's hard to reduce the US to a single culture. Alcohol consumption habits vary greatly from region to region, or even city to city depending on where you live. I've noticed that heavy drinkers tend to cluster with other heavy drinkers. The more you see your friends and coworkers binge drinking regularly, the more you feel it's an acceptable and even common behavior. Likewise, non-drinkers tend to cluster with each o…
It’s actually very easy to reduce the us to a simple monoculture, compared to other regions of similar size. Compared with the EU or India, us culture is very similar across regions. Same language, same food, same religions, same work culture…
It's not at all what I've experienced as a US born after living on both coasts, a few different states, and a range of small rural and large urban cities.
Food sure, if you only consider culture as the corporate branded chains. That's missing out on a lot though.
Language, accents, nomenclatures, sayings, mannerisms, all widely varied.
Religions, there are dozens of Christian based sects all with widely varying spectrums of beliefs.
Work culture, still many good-ole boys clubs in certain geographies, pick yourself up by the bootstraps types in others, and anything you can imagine in between.