Post: #1

I was reading a post by Valentine in the 1 year drinking wagon thread and one of his points really struck me:

Quote:It's Socialising on Crutches - Makes socialising easier in the short-term, but in the long-term hinders social skills (see Damages Game)

This makes me wonder how much the encouragement of binge drinking plays into the wider trend of social atomization. People are being pushed into very narrow windows of acceptable socialization.

During the day, people are encouraged not to talk to each other in public through fearmongering about talking to strangers, kidnappers, murderers, and potential rapists. Ridiculous rape stats like 1 in 4 are pushed so that men and women are terrified of normal socialization in the workplace or in public.

People are forced into social media for connection and attention, where their communications can be permanently recorded. The recordings of their interactions can be used as leverage against them in employment or social situations. This makes socialization much more controlled, encouraging people to lie and act fake to avoid being ostracized. This makes the act of socializing with others more mentally taxing, and gives it a more artificial feel, discouraging people to form connections with each other. The only comfort provided is by becoming part of a tribe for a sense of community. Perhaps that explains the hivemind aspect of SJWs, who will allow their tribal emotions to overcome all sense of morality or logic. Further, socialization online has been reduced to attention whoring with likes, notifications, and pop ups, transforming socialization from the building of connections between humans into a hedonistic dopamine rush.

The only popular social environment where people are allowed to gather is in bars. In order to overcome the fears associated with socialization in person, people are encouraged to get absolutely shitfaced in order to talk to each other, let alone hook up. This often leads to regretful nights, reinforcing negative emotions about socialization. If done often enough, it screws with normal dopamine and serotonin function, which could lead to depression and make healthy socialization even more difficult. Now that I think of it, it's amazing really how polarized the idea of socialization is in our culture. If you're in public or using transportation, you're expected to be dead silent. If you're using twitter or facebook, you're expected to toe the party line and you'll be seen as a total asshole if you drop some facts that don't fit the narrative. The only place most people meet up in public is in a bar, where conversation proceeds only in an altered mental state.

Maybe I'm being paranoid, but I thought Valentine's point tied in with Roosh's recent observations on the intentional atomization of society. Lately I've been noticing a growing awareness of the connections between different aspects of modern society. I'm happy to see this awareness is spreading, and allowing those in our community to recognize destructive behavior and attitudes. I wonder how far down the rabbit hole goes. Thoughts?

Post: #2

Like the next phase of Bowling Alone ( http://bowlingalone.com/ ), manifesting in 2010's social idioms.

Post: #3

(11-25-2015 12:57 PM)thoughtgypsy Wrote:  Maybe I'm being paranoid

Yeah, you are, LOL.

Alcohol has been a big part of how human beings -- and men in particular -- have socialized since what a BBC or Discovery Channel documentary narrator might plummily call "the dawn of history". It's one of mankind's deepest and most ancient traditions, across many and very different cultures. The warmth, excitement, and sociability induced even in otherwise reserved men by a drinking buzz are one of alcohol's greatest charms, and different in kind from the state associated with any other drug. No wonder that men who love drinking love it with an almost desperate depth and intensity.

The dangers of alcohol to men who have gone to the well too often, and have drunk too hard for too long, are real and grave -- both the obvious ones, and the less obvious dangers that I've written about at length in the wagon thread. Few things are more harrowing than the death-in-life that can be the fate of a hard drinker whose spirit is coarsened and diminished by years of reliance on the sauce. But there is no need to deny the virtues of drinking at its best as something that brings men together and opens them to each other and to the world; and there is still less need to invent bizarre contemporary conspiracies to explain one of humanity's most familiar and longest-standing traditions.

Post: #4

I appreciate what you're saying Lizard, but I want to clarify that I'm not demonizing alcohol itself. I should have named the title "Binge Drinking and Social Atomization".

While alcohol is a normal part of socialization, I think the extent to which many people use it is excessive these days. When I was working in DC, it seemed like most people never got out of the college phase. Most people my age would binge drink 3 or 4 days a week. Weekday happy hours were normal. "Sunday funday" for the guys and Sunday brunch mimosas for the women were more common than not. People would very rarely socialize unless alcohol was involved. Not drinking in a social setting makes you seem weird to a lot of people.

There's also some anecdotal evidence that alcoholism has been on the rise for the past decade: http://www.thenewstribune.com/opinion/ar...24242.html

I'm probably just being paranoid, but I still think it's worth a further look.

Post: #5

(11-25-2015 12:57 PM)thoughtgypsy Wrote:  I was reading a post by Valentine in the 1 year drinking wagon thread and one of his points really struck me:

Quote:It's Socialising on Crutches - Makes socialising easier in the short-term, but in the long-term hinders social skills (see Damages Game)

This makes me wonder how much the encouragement of binge drinking plays into the wider trend of social atomization. People are being pushed into very narrow windows of acceptable socialization.

During the day, people are encouraged not to talk to each other in public through fearmongering about talking to strangers, kidnappers, murderers, and potential rapists. Ridiculous rape stats like 1 in 4 are pushed so that men and women are terrified of normal socialization in the workplace or in public.

People are forced into social media for connection and attention, where their communications can be permanently recorded. The recordings of their interactions can be used as leverage against them in employment or social situations. This makes socialization much more controlled, encouraging people to lie and act fake to avoid being ostracized. This makes the act of socializing with others more mentally taxing, and gives it a more artificial feel, discouraging people to form connections with each other. The only comfort provided is by becoming part of a tribe for a sense of community. Perhaps that explains the hivemind aspect of SJWs, who will allow their tribal emotions to overcome all sense of morality or logic. Further, socialization online has been reduced to attention whoring with likes, notifications, and pop ups, transforming socialization from the building of connections between humans into a hedonistic dopamine rush.

The only popular social environment where people are allowed to gather is in bars. In order to overcome the fears associated with socialization in person, people are encouraged to get absolutely shitfaced in order to talk to each other, let alone hook up. This often leads to regretful nights, reinforcing negative emotions about socialization. If done often enough, it screws with normal dopamine and serotonin function, which could lead to depression and make healthy socialization even more difficult. Now that I think of it, it's amazing really how polarized the idea of socialization is in our culture. If you're in public or using transportation, you're expected to be dead silent. If you're using twitter or facebook, you're expected to toe the party line and you'll be seen as a total asshole if you drop some facts that don't fit the narrative. The only place most people meet up in public is in a bar, where conversation proceeds only in an altered mental state.

Maybe I'm being paranoid, but I thought Valentine's point tied in with Roosh's recent observations on the intentional atomization of society. Lately I've been noticing a growing awareness of the connections between different aspects of modern society. I'm happy to see this awareness is spreading, and allowing those in our community to recognize destructive behavior and attitudes. I wonder how far down the rabbit hole goes. Thoughts?

It seems to me that drinking goes totally against the idea of self improvement. It´s a short cut it´s bad in the long run. There are so many alcohol addicts around. Many of them appear to me like zombies.

I think alcohol was necassary for folks like Russians and Mongols who lived in brutally cold climates. But the price for it is that ones system comes out of balance. You may become "stoic" and "masculine" but your emotions are kind of dead.

When drunk people are "funny". It does feel fake and unnatural and primitive.

Like China could not handle opium I think men can not handle alcohol. But it´s good for some businessmen.

Lesson one in the bartender class (credit to King of Queens): A depressed customer is the best customer.

Post: #6

I see so many myths here about the usefluness of alcahol. I call bulshit on those of you who say alcahol was used as a tradition and social lubricant since stone age.

Rather it would be more correct to say that alcahol was used as a separator between a slave class and ruling class, since the dawn of time.

Spartians made their slaves to drink and abstained themselves and went to vigorous training instead. That was to opress a slave rebellion anytime since slaves outnumbered citizens by a huge factor.

Russians and drinking has nothing to do with climate. Russians were not drinking a lot since before Peter "the Great" made them to, precisely because he hated his own not westenized people. (he was bought up in west) and made a slave class out of them.

Even today - what is difference between a manual labour worker and intellectual worker? It's drinking. I don't know how it is in USA but here in eastern europe every construnction worker, every plumber, every electrician, every welder drinks and smokes heavily and lacks a college degree. Their bosses with college degrees and cushy office jobs drink much much less and are much less likely to smoke.

Alcahol makes people sexually loose so they copulate without restraint. This goes against the ideas of nobility and conscious partner choosing which is extreamly imoportant for aristocrats to manitain power within their families. Established aristocrats want to prevent simple folk from creating new proud bloodlines so let them drink and live in bastardy and stupor.

It's obvoius for me alcahol is a thing for slaves tolerated and prohibited for the very reason of creating a slave caste peacefully. Without alcahol we would have to fight much more often to determine who is going to be master and who is going to be a slave.

If you drink you give up power. This is btw why drinking people mistrust those who are abstinent. The blood wedding from game of thrones is a good example of this.

Post: #7

(11-26-2015 10:15 AM)Mage Wrote:  I see so many myths here about the usefluness of alcahol. I call bulshit on those of you who say alcahol was used as a tradition and social lubricant since stone age.

Rather it would be more correct to say that alcahol was used as a separator between a slave class and ruling class, since the dawn of time.

Spartians made their slaves to drink and abstained themselves and went to vigorous training instead. That was to opress a slave rebellion anytime since slaves outnumbered citizens by a huge factor.

Russians and drinking has nothing to do with climate. Russians were not drinking a lot since before Peter "the Great" made them to precisely because he hated his own not westenized people. (he was bought up in west) and made a sleve class out of them.

Even today - what is difference between a manual labour worker and intellectual worker? It's drinking. I don't know how it is in USA but here in eastern europe every construnction worker, every plumber, every electrician, every welder drinks and smokes heavily and lacks a college degree. Their bosses with college degrees and cushy office jobs drink much much less and are much less likely to smoke.

Alcahol makes people sexually loose so they copulate without restraint. This goes against the ideas of nobility and conscious partner choosing which is extreamly imortand for aristocrats to manitain power within their families.

It's obvoius for me alcahol is a thing for slaves tolerated and prohibited for the very reason of creating a slave caste peacefully. Without alcahol we would have to fight much more often to determine who is going to be master and who is going to be a slave.

Another explanation is that lower classes and upper classes often have different levels of impulse control. Alcohol is a drug, and over time can lead to addiction. People who are drug addicts tend to have a higher time preference and impulsive histories even before they become addicts. Throughout history, I think this was the main reason for alcoholism, and the encouragement of binge drinking by different classes was a smaller influence.

I'm not sure it's still like that though. A lot of people who are middle or upper middle class seem to be binge drinking more and more. Growing up and even today it seems like binge drinking or getting fucked up is glorified in music and movies. Movies like animal house, van wilder, how high, beerfest, the hangover, etc. Music, especially Rap/R&B/Pop where getting hammered in the club is sold as cool over and over. College parties, frats, house parties, drinking games, bacardi commercials. Even far into adulthood (30+), people still go to the bar to get hammered. All of that may be looking too far into it, and could be true for other generations, but what seems different is the necessity of alcohol in social situations. If you're not drinking, it makes a lot of people uncomfortable.