Why We Love Drinking: How Alcohol Determines the Success or Failure of Human Society Author: Sen Gelan Translator: Tao Ran Zhejiang People's Publishing House

Every drop of alcohol is harmful to the human body, but almost no civilization has missed alcohol. There are some things worth pondering behind this phenomenon. In this book, Mori Gelan argues that alcohol is the earliest portable truth serum that humans carry with them. It brings about a rapid but mild and stable loss of rationality and improvement of creative thinking, and has always been a key factor in promoting human cooperation, cultural inheritance and innovation. In places where there is no alcohol, it is replaced by more time-consuming dances and drugs whose effects are more difficult to control.

Based on a comprehensive review of interdisciplinary literature, Mori Gelan puts forward without exaggeration: Alcohol has opened up modern civilization and has also promoted the development of human society. Human obsession with alcohol is not an accident, but the result of evolution. Only by recognizing the positive significance of alcohol can we more effectively deal with the new problems it raises in modern society.

——Bonus from reading this book (everything makes sense!)——

Henry Kissinger once told Deng Xiaoping: "I think if we drink enough Moutai, we can solve any problem."

In The Analects, Confucius discusses the taboos of eating and drinking at great length, but at the end there is a sentence that says, "Although wine is unlimited, it does not lead to disorder" - one can drink as much as he wants without being disrespectful, which is the sign of a saint.

Alcohol is the most commonly used technological means to make people tell the truth. In areas where alcohol is not available, other intoxicants have replaced it and performed the same function.

The Kamba men living in a remote area of ​​the Bolivian Amazon often drink together until they black out, because in their view, only friends who have vomited after drinking together are true friends.

In ancient Persia, no important decision was not negotiated over a banquet.

Evening discussions and debates at Oxford University began with the Latin declaration, "Now, it's time to drink" (nunc est bibendum).

——Editor's recommendation——

🌟 Agriculture tricked Homo sapiens into joining the game, and alcohol made Homo sapiens fall into it

🌟 It's fun to read when you're drunk, but scary to read when you're sober

🌟 Breaking disciplinary boundaries and integrating research results from evolutionary biology, neuroscience, anthropology, archaeology, and literature

🌟 Daniel E. Lieberman, Randolph M. Nice, Joseph Henrich, Paul Blum, Michael Sayet Happy Recommendation

🌟 Amazon Editor's Choice for 2021, highly praised by The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, New Scientist, and Publishers Weekly

——Praise from all sides——

◆Why We Drink is a love letter to Dionysus. Even as it evoked memories of patients whose lives were ruined by alcohol, it also made me appreciate the value and pleasure of drinking with friends and the joy of reading a great book.

--Randolph M. Nice, author of Why We Get Sick

Why We Drink is one of those rare, fascinating books that is as entertaining as it is instructive. Mori's erudite and hilarious exploration of the history, anthropology, and science of intoxicants will forever change the way you drink and think.

—Daniel E. Lieberman, author of Exercise

◆ To understand why people drink, you have to ask questions at the core of the human experience. Professor Mori Gelan seamlessly blends a dizzying array of observations from the sciences and humanities. In the process, he offers provocative insights into why we like to drink, and provides practical advice to guide us in how to drink responsibly and better integrate the drinking and non-drinking members of society. Read the first few paragraphs and you'll immediately realize that you're reading a truly fascinating and enjoyable book! Read on and you'll realize that the most cutting-edge knowledge about the pleasures and harms of drinking is right in front of you. Mori Gelan skillfully educates, surprises, and entertains readers while distilling the essence of the complex literature on alcohol to answer the question of why we humans drink and get drunk.

—Michael Sayet, professor of psychology and psychiatry and director of the Alcohol and Smoking Research Laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh

◆ "Why We Drink" is like an intellectual cocktail, short, powerful, and inspiring, it takes a fresh look at one of our most perplexing obsessions as humans - our daily consumption of a psychoactive drug. It effortlessly weaves together history, anthropology, genetics, and chemistry, but this erudition feels relaxed, like chatting with an old friend over a beer. You will learn a lot, but you won't notice it because you will be so entertained.

--Joseph Henrich, professor at Harvard University and author of The Secret of Human Successful Domination of the Earth

◆ Does alcohol make us human? In this wide-ranging, provocative, and hilarious exploration, Mori makes every case for believing that intoxication is a powerful force for trust and love. From the first paragraph to its rousing conclusion, reading Why We Drink is as much a joy as getting drunk.

--Paul Bloom, author of Against Empathy

Edward Slingerland

A well-known sinologist, Distinguished University Scholar and Professor of Philosophy at the University of British Columbia, Canada, he holds a part-time position in the Department of East Asian Studies and the Department of Psychology, and is the co-director of the Center for Human Evolutionary Cognition and Cultural Research and the Director of the Religious History Database. His academic interests include comparative religious philosophy between China and the West and the study of ancient Chinese. His translation of The Analects was published by Harcourt Publishing in 2003.

Tao Ran - Translated

Biological researcher, translator as a sideline.