Hacker News Reader

Comment by chrischen | Hacker News Reader

The positives are almost always cultural. Then you just have to ask yourself if you want society to dictate how you live your life.

View on HN

Bullcrap, booze is delicious and fantastic on its own. It's just like any other vice though, when it begins to interfere with your life you have to dial it back or stop or else the consequences can be severe and profound.

If you're the personality type where that's hard, then please stop drinking immediately. You'll just have to accept that. I've had too many friends in their 30s having to rebuild their lives after alcohol problems.

By fantastic on its own, do you mean pure ethanol? hehe.

Sorry, but this is not true.

Just a few days ago I was muttering to myself about why I couldn't just stop caring about the opinion of an essentially meaningless person, and enjoy the excellent things around me. The moment I had a beer, I stopped worrying about them, and got on with it. The understanding that I had previously been an idiot outlasted the mild inebriation.

I will be exploring why one drink was so remarkably helpful here. In the meantime, it was helpful, and I would have been in a healthier mindset if I had drunk it sooner.

Many things -- alcohol, caffeine, food, exercise, work, video games, reading -- affect how we think and feel. We can use those effects for good and bad. The trick is to understand those effects, get the good, and avoid the bad.

Life is cultural. We're embedded in a culture. Cultural positives are not any less "true" positives.

But we're also capable of thinking and acting outside of any given cultural norms, as evidenced by this very conversation!

Heterosexual marriage was (and still is) the cultural norm. Sometimes you gotta ask yourself, does the cultural norm make sense anymore (to adhere to it religiously)?

On the other hand, you wouldn't get very far if you decided that no part of your life could be dictated by society. You'd die before you'd worked it all out from first principles. Unless you were some sort of magical wizard, what has magic and stuff. Then you might be ok. Though I bet you wouldn't, cos it would all have to be new magic and you would have to think of it really fast, like in three days cos you can't accept just anyone's say so about the whole water/thirst thingy and stuff. That water might be poison. So you'd have to be a really powerful wizard to make all new stuff that works without the imposition of society so that you can be truly free before you die of thirst. Though I guess if you were a really powerful wizard you might not get thirsty anyway, so it might not matter.

You're posting drunk, aren't you?

It seemed somehow appropriate.

Then you just have to ask yourself if you want society to dictate how you live your life.

Well, no, I don't. But its an unavoidable force that has and will continue to dictate almost every waking moment of my life.

Switching from one broadly socially acceptable state (drinking socially) to another broadly socially acceptable state (never drinking) does not change the level to which society dictates how you live your life. The only thing that changes is that your sobriety may be a curiosity for people that engage in drinking.

> Switching from one broadly socially acceptable state (drinking socially) to another broadly socially acceptable state (never drinking) does not change the level to which society dictates how you live your life.

It depends. Did you switch because society told you to? You can drink if you want, or not. I'm just saying, if you drink are you doing it because everyone else is doing it or because you want to for good reason?

I made a choice to not drink, and it was based on practical concerns. I decided the negatives outweighed the positives in my case. Simple as that.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com