4 ms·

as someone who grew up i a community that has for many reasons, religious, social, economic that no one really does alcohol. when there is nobody who is drunk,

• jdhn 5y ago
  Because alcohol has been purposely drunk by people for literally thousands of years, and the vast, vast majority of people are able to drink without having a problem?
  • amirbehzad 5y ago
  • 2Gkashmiri 5y ago
    people have purposely been doing a lot of slavery for thousands of years as well. took us some time but we got over the whole "its been fine for millions of years so it must be good or at least fine" to get to the root of the issue. once we found that, slavery was abolished pretty much everywhere. my point is, why bring "societal pressure of 500 years" into an argument for an inherently bad thing. just thinking out loud
    • N1H1L 5y ago
      Slavery is not alcohol, and equating the two is a very obvious strawman argument
      • netizen-936824 5y ago
        The point was the "doing something for a long time is not a good reason to view it as okay"
    • JodieBenitez 5y ago
      I don't know what the slavery has to do here... but as for psychoactive drugs, it's not only a bad thing, it also has its upsides that are well-known, hence why humans have been consuming drugs since forever. The downsides/upsides ratio varies greatly depending on the dose and the frequency. I think there's better education around alcohol now than there was 30 years ago (at least where I live). Still, a lot could be done, particularly for the youth, like banning pre-mixed cans and other sugary ready-to-binge beverages. Habits start early.
• antoniuschan99 5y ago
  Could it be that it’s the result of prohibition? Because the Temperance Movement advocated a few of the things you mentioned. Ken Burns has a great doc on Prohibition!
  • 2Gkashmiri 5y ago
    from my small understanding of "prohibition" it was like thry tried to enforce it by way of brute muscle and people found ingenious ways to fool the system. what would the result have been if they had worked on educating people and building a society wide consensus about its ill effects.
    • hydrok9 5y ago
      Well, they did educate people, alcoholism was a huge problem in the US at the time and men who became alcoholics often abused their families and could not provide for them, leaving them destitute. AFAIK, these issues did change for the better as alcoholism rates were lower after Prohibition than before, and less hard spirits were consumed. But building a society-wide consensus in the US confirming teetotalism? Outside of the highly religious communities, it's just impossible.
• hydrok9 5y ago
  The answer to your question is in your statement. Most communities don't have "many reasons" to favour prohibition, in fact most communities don't even have one. Yes there's the idea that no alcohol = no alcohol-caused problems, but people don't assume they will have a problem when they start to drink. In my area, the only dry communities are small towns with strong Mennonite backgrounds. And in every one of those towns, there's a bar right outside city limits, or in the next town over, where people in the dry community go to drink.
• tatrajim 5y ago
  Alcohol use around the world over the centuries is a vast topic, but coming from a US religious community that prohibited all alcohol, I was duly impressed while serving in the peace corps in rural South Korea with the social utility of drinking to moderate the rigid hierarchies of local culture there and to provide a place for blunt truth telling otherwise impossible. The costs of alcoholism were readily visible as well, but I do believe drinking culture in South Korea is a hidden partner to its vaulting economic and cultural success from the ruins of the Korean War.