I do actually completely agree with this. I like getting off my head. There is a need for it. But we shouldn't have a system where the only legal option is alcohol, and it shouldn't be available and pushed at you at every turn.
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I hear that and are pretty much the same consumption ability wise, both Mrs Numbers and I - it's frightening what we can get through if on it. If out socially the end of night we're the ones who ensure others are safe in their cabs home etc. and we always seem to be the last ones standing yet be first one up the next day, very rarely with a hangover.
We’re the last ones standing at most gatherings as well and, like you say, it’s a clue as to how things are. Irish stereotypes don’t help much either in terms of family attitudes which tend to characterise it all as just a bit of a laugh.Mrs SFM comes from similar stock as me and she is capable of as the same ridiculous consumption. Perhaps we subconsciously chose each other all those years ago
Exactly what I was going to say — the whole story is a confusion between phylogenetic and sociogenetic (and even ontogenetic, arguably). For drunkenness to be a phylogenetic adaptation would require that humans were making alcohol long enough in our past that there has been time for genetic adaption to take place. But we’ve only been making alcohol for something like 10,000 years, as I understand it. That’s a remarkable speed of phylogenetic change. “Ah,” the argument goes, “but maybe it’s other types of poison, rather than alcohol”. Really? So ancient tribes routinely and reliably had access to the type of naturally-occurring toxins that inebriate but don’t kill, and had this access in a sufficiently systematic way that it could form the basis for an actual phylogenetic alteration?
We do actually know that the effect of any drug is in part determined by the cultural context. Intoxicated people will tend to behave in a way determined by social norms.Exactly what I was going to say — the whole story is a confusion between phylogenetic and sociogenetic (and even ontogenetic, arguably). For drunkenness to be a phylogenetic adaptation would require that humans were making alcohol long enough in our past that there has been time for genetic adaption to take place. But we’ve only been making alcohol for something like 10,000 years, as I understand it. That’s a remarkable speed of phylogenetic change. “Ah,” the argument goes, “but maybe it’s other types of poison, rather than alcohol”. Really? So ancient tribes routinely and reliably had access to the type of naturally-occurring toxins that inebriate but don’t kill, and had this access in a sufficiently systematic way that it could form the basis for an actual phylogenetic alteration?
It makes much more sense to me that displays of ability to handle toxins would be result in sociogenetic adaptation, whereby the rituals of drunkenness would become inscribed in cultural practices.
ayahuasca, mushrooms etc ended with shamans/etc in various places based a lot on being the one taking the substance and had statusExactly what I was going to say — the whole story is a confusion between phylogenetic and sociogenetic (and even ontogenetic, arguably). For drunkenness to be a phylogenetic adaptation would require that humans were making alcohol long enough in our past that there has been time for genetic adaption to take place. But we’ve only been making alcohol for something like 10,000 years, as I understand it. That’s a remarkable speed of phylogenetic change. “Ah,” the argument goes, “but maybe it’s other types of poison, rather than alcohol”. Really? So ancient tribes routinely and reliably had access to the type of naturally-occurring toxins that inebriate but don’t kill, and had this access in a sufficiently systematic way that it could form the basis for an actual phylogenetic alteration?
It makes much more sense to me that displays of ability to handle toxins would be result in sociogenetic adaptation, whereby the rituals of drunkenness would become inscribed in cultural practices.
“In various places” is really not systematic enough to be the basis of phylogenetic adaptation, though. And by the time you have have shamanic tribes, you already recognisably have modern humans anyway.
I mean it's almost every continent it happened on. Then transference of the status to simple authority figures fulfilling the same role. Depends on your definition of ancient versus modern, North Sentinel island is still ancient. Some other areas were only discovered recently historically speaking, then what counts as modern? If areas progressed at different rates then its comparing apples with oranges and imposing a set definition that may not fit the culture.
For a change in human DNA to occur requires a very long time period.
The point is that if you want to argue that humans underwent biological, genetic change in order to adapt to a process by which the better pissheads got more totty then you need to show how that adaptation ended up presenting itself across all humanity. By the time humans are living on every continent, that’s a hell of a challenge. You either need a population that is small and isolated enough that a change in that population ends up being the basis for the whole species, or you need the adaptive pressure to present itself systematically enough that it somehow affects an entire dispersed species in the same way.
