Why can’t we just skip the ritual?
In which an autist fails to understand humans
Hypnotism isn’t real.
It is a set of practices, yes. As a psychiatric technique to calm a patient, it does indeed work. But the stage hypnotist telling you to act like a chicken is able to cast no spell over anyone. Your clucking was always inside you. It’s all you.
I find this rather beautiful. The point of the hypnotist is to give us an excuse to let us do what we really want to do, deep down. We want to play, we want to clown, we want to act strange and be forgiven for it by our friends. Why can’t we be like this all the time?
I think a lot of things act as a way of getting permission to do what we want, without fear of embarrassment. A dance party, a karaoke night with friends, truth-or-dare, a night out partying. I suspect there are less costly ways of achieving the same effect.
I do not drink. I do not particularly wish to be drunk, and find people when drunk to be quite dull. Everything human runs out of them, and they become bestial caricatures of themselves. I would far rather talk to you sober, and have you talk with me sober, than have jabber a few hours and remember none of it.
Many people find alcohol necessary to socialize. Perhaps it is due to the inebriating effect, but I am skeptical. Why do people drink non-alcoholic beverages at social events, when they could drink water instead? The point of alcohol is not that it causes you to be open and social — it is that it gives you permission to be open and social. Robin Hanson has a blog post on how the precise symptoms of alcohol intoxication vary from culture to culture. I think it’s basically true, although I would not say, of course, that alcohol does nothing. Just that there is no particular set of behaviors which alcohol causes, nor does it particularly diminish moral culpability for bad actions.
I dream of a world where people are free to act as they want without fear. I think, though, that it is already here. We need only have the confidence to dance and play and jump and sing and talk with others. You don’t need alcohol to be social — you don’t need any of it. It was in you all along.
> I dream of a world where people are free to act as they want without fear. I think, though, that it is already here. We need only have the confidence to dance and play and jump and sing and talk with others. You don’t need alcohol to be social — you don’t need any of it. It was in you all along.
Is it really the playing and singing that people aren't doing enough of? If anything, I suspect deep down most people aspire to work hard and make the most out of their lives, but are prevented from doing so by both inherent laziness and the cultural expectation to 'have fun'. Does the average Harvard student regret not dancing enough on Saturdays or do they regret not working harder on Saturday night to give them a chance to be like Mark Zuckerberg?
Going out every night and partying it up is easy. There's probably some people who genuinely wish they could do it without alcohol but overall the supply likely meets the demand. The exact opposite is hard: getting up at 6am every single day and then not wasting a single second of your life on something that doesn't produce fruits in the long term.
Maybe what we really need is more Adderall and less alcohol.
I wish the world worked this way. I suspect that the problem is we don't trust each other.
The social rituals and rules give people a framework for how to engage with each other. They basically signal that people are part of an ingroup. If you violate the rules people assume you're not part of the ingroup and therefore can't be trusted.