What conclusions may be drawn from this? Well, culture matters and culture endures. In sour moments one might also wonder if this hedonistic excess also represents and escapist over-reaction to the banality of much of contemporary society. Religious folk will doubtless see the absence of god in that, but more important, I'd suggest is the fragmentation of family life, coupled with a reluctance to enforce existing laws (creating, therefore, the need for fresh legislation at every turn; honey for parliamentarians and other busy-bodies). That, and the central part booze has played in British culture (from top to bottom; think of Pitt's heroic alcohol consumption. Churchill too, for that matter.) Can it be just a coincidence that the only other people you see behaving like this at, say the Munich Beer Festival, are citizens of other anglophone and commonwealth countries?
Alex brings to mind what I've told Dutch friends before about why Amsterdam's drug tolerance would have a tough go of it in America. Nearly every Dutchman I've ever known is perfectly comfortable with liberalized drug laws. But nearly every Dutchman I know would never touch the stuff, and moreover, can hold his or her liquor. And further, when an American goes to a Dutch restaurant, he may think he's being gypped, given how relatively small the portions are (which is to say, how massive the portions are in US restaurants). And not to put too fine a point on it, the "all you can eat" buffet, which is standard in US culture, is unknown in Holland (or was last time I checked). Why? It ill-suits the culture.
And so, I wonder to what extent overindulgence in booze and grub is particular to Anglophone cultures -- and why? Thoughts?
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Marian Neudel might be right. Southern Europeans report lower rates of drunkenness than Northern Europeans. African Americans, whose descendants are largely tropical, are less involved in alcohol related crimes than Caucasians. Alcohol consumption is lowest however in Southeast Asia. I don't know if this pattern holds with Southeast Asian Americans, but I've not heard a great deal about drunkenness among Laotians or Vietnamese.
The pattern doesn't entirely work though as Norway, Sweden, and Iceland reportedly have lower alcohol consumption rates. The Dutch are also below the British.
However many nations in Europe drink more than the British and I believe are more likely to have drunks. Hungary, Czechs, Lithuania, and Latvia stand above the UK in alcohol consumption. Belgium is placed quite high in "binge drinking."
It seems like a factor is if alcohol is viewed as part of a meal or primarily as an intoxicant. In the US I think alcohol is viewed largely as an intoxicant or as a part of a party or celebration. That also seems to be true in the northern parts of Eastern Europe and, to an extent, in Japan. In Italy or Malta it seems to be more often seen as something to go with a meal. This probably does not entirely predict behavior, but it might play a role.
http:
//ec.europa.eu/health-eu/doc/alcoholineu_chap4_en.pdf
I think it's a question of making something taboo.Like when you're a teenager if you're parents told you absolutely and in no minced words not to do something ,that's exactly what you were going to do!If you make something unattractive ,then guess what?No one wants it!In America our drug policies are woefully inadequate and outdated.
My father served in the United States Air Force and in the sixties we lived in Germany.Small children drank beer there ,I don't know if they still do?I myself used the caps on the beer bottles as toys(you could sort of make them hop like a frog)
In those days (we lived in Bohn)Germans would have festivals where the main attraction and beverage was,you guessed it,beer.They just had a big old party centered around beer and it was perfectly normal for them.Drugs as you said follow the same principal in Amsterdam,most of the users there are from other countries with the main participants being Americans.Just say no is not working and it never will and no offense against older people(I myself am 48)but until we see some younger people coming into America's corridors of Government with some new ideas about how to stop this terrible scourge of both legal(perfectly acceptable because they come with the name of a big drug company attached to them)and admittedly horrible drugs such as crack,cocaine (notice I haven't mentioned marijuana?)our drug problem in the good old U.S.A.will stick around to haunt us and our children.
Something I thought about a while back?Why is marijuana illegal when you can go in to any convenience store in America and purchase rolling papers?If you are caught with the rolling papers you can be charged with possession of drug pharapenalia.My grandfather rolled prince albert cigarettes but how many people are putting prince albert tobbaco in the cigarettes they are rolling today?Something to ponder huh?
Thank you for your time,
cheryl3
The cheapness of wine seems to be a cause, not of drunkenness, but of sobriety .... People are seldom guilty of excess in what is their daily fare .... On the contrary, in the countries which, either from excessive heat or cold, produce no grapes, and where wine consequently is dear and a rarity, drunkenness is a common vice.
I don't know about this whole idea that "making alcohol taboo makes it attractive and European countries do all this much better." I lived in Denmark in high school, and drinking was perfectly normal and all that, but the teenagers got just as drunk. What really put me off drinking for life was going to a local concert and seeing a girl in the foyer. She was maybe 12, she was passed out, she had vomited on herself, and she was completely alone. Her friends had left her.
Now, it's true that in all the massive drunkenness I saw, there was not a lot of violence. There were plenty of guys who would try to grab a girl's bottom, but not a lot of real sexual assault (that I know of). One guy did steal my bicycle--with me on it for a little while there--but I got it back the next day.
At any rate, IME there's plenty of overindulgence in Northern Europe too. There's not a heck of a lot of violence, and I suppose that's because the cultures frown on it so thoroughly, while there appears to be a large British subculture that lives for drinking and getting into fights. But why that is, I don't know.
Rod, you're right about the portions in Dutch restaurants except when ordering pancakes. I was in Amsterdam a couple of years back and was pretty surprised when my banana pancakes were the size of a turkey platter. They were really good too. I was talking about them when I got home and my wife asked me to make some Dutch style pancakes. I told her we didn't own a pan that big.
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