If you drill down into the things that drive most men on the planet you will find money and alcohol standing out. We live in a materialistic age where the acquisition of money and property are everything. This is the overarching goal for most of us through our lives. Money represents security via the things it can buy. Alcohol is the medicinal lubricant in our day to day living experience. Often it feels like the thing that gets us through at the end, especially after a bad day. On the other side of the ledger, however, money and alcohol fuelling greed and hate is all too common.
The Demands Of Survival Means Making Money
We do not choose to be born, in any real sense, it is just something that happens. Time passes and childhood finishes. Before you know it you are having to make your own way in the world. Somehow you have to make money to survive. The game of life has begun in earnest. It is not a level playing field, as some of us are better equipped by our parents than others in terms of advantages. Many of us must work for a living. We learn by experience to make our way in life. Making money and accruing it is paramount to our success in materialistic terms. We live in a materialistic society.
“Psychologists who study the impact of wealth and inequality on human behavior have found that money can powerfully influence our thoughts and actions in ways that we’re often not aware of, no matter our economic circumstances. “
Alcohol’s Hold On Humans Historically
Alcohol has a long and rich tradition in the recorded history of human beings. I studied ancient history for many years and wine drinking has a substantial place within the pages of Western history. The Greeks and Romans afforded time and status for wine drinking if you were a man. The term ‘symposium’ refers to a Greek piss up for men. These days it is the preserve of academics and experts. One of the iconic symbols for freedmen, those who had emerged out of slavery, was wine drinking on the couch. You will see these carved images on gravestones again and again. Having the leisure time to afford being served wine on your dining couch was a sign of your social status within these civilisations. Drinking booze is a relaxation from the constant demands of working for a living. Most animals spend the greater part of their lives constantly concerned with getting enough to eat to survive. Drinking alcohol can be seen as a temporary release from the demands of survival.
Fighting & Boozing
Many men drink a lot of alcohol, far more than they need for any physical requirement. Consuming booze is a social pastime and often a rite of passage for younger men. Warriors would regularly gather together for a booze up after battle. The Germanic peoples like the Vikings, Angles, and Saxons would celebrate their marshal lives with lengthy piss ups. Indeed, Valhalla, the great hall in the afterlife was envisaged as one long piss up. Getting drunk is a male ritual practiced widely, according to the evidence historigraphically and archaeologically. There are numerous wine cups, kraters, and storage vessels found at archaeological dig sites around the world. Alcohol was a major part of the lives of the ancients.
Getting Money & Then Getting Drunk
So, we have these two poles in our lives at either end of the spectrum. On the one hand we must strive for money and property to survive and thrive. We must work in return for a reward or invest our money to work for us. A combination of both occurs in the lives of many of us in the modern world. There is a constant pressure on us around this driving need to survive and get a level of security from life’s vicissitudes. In contrast to this, is our predilection for alcohol. Drinking is our escape valve in many ways from the driving pressure of working for a living. To relax in the heightened hum of a booze fuelled haze is a much loved pleasure. Each glass of fermented, brewed, or distilled intoxicant takes us further and further away from the daily grind. Drinking alcohol is a much loved pursuit for many of us. However, it is an addictive pleasure, as many of us also know. One of the main reasons why alcohol is one of the two main drivers in the life of men is because of this addictive quality. It is chemically addictive for some and psychologically addictive for many more.
Alcohol’s Addictive Nature
If I say to a regular and frequent drinker, that’s it! You will not be allowed to drink ever again! In the majority of cases, this will strike cold fear into the innards of this person. They will rail and rile against the decision and quite likely fight for their right to keep drinking. If you are a drinker imagine for a moment that your drinking days are over. That the consummation of alcohol has been made illegal. Prohibition. How does that make you feel? Does it feel like some great part of you has been snatched away? Addictions are like this. The idea of going cold turkey freaks many out. Many men live for drinking alcohol in the habitual sense. They are forced by circumstance to grift and grind for money, whereas they see their drinking as the choice of a free man. This is an illusion, of course. Free will itself is illusory in the greater scheme of things. We are driven by deeper drives at the chemical level of life.
Money, Sex & Booze
Fundamentally, we are designed by nature to breed, to reproduce and to give life to our progeny. The getting of money is co-opted by this primary driver to furnish the necessaries for reproduction of the species. Possessing enough resources makes men attractive to the opposite sex. Having plenty of money usually imbues the wealthy male with the confidence to instigate courtship and the getting of sex. Alcohol, funnily enough, is often involved in the getting of and having sex. Booze is disinhibitory, which frees the sexual urge to express itself. Both men and women become more inclined to respond to their base urges when under the influence of an intoxicant like alcohol. The idea of free will is a fiction really, in that the freedoms are conditional on our primary urges having their way. As human beings, we tend not to give undue credence to our chemical selves and biological imperatives. We deny our animal reality, seeing ourselves as something greater and far above this status. Religions are a manifestation of this. We long to truly believe that our rational minds are the arbiters of all things occurring within our lives. This is wishful thinking.
Most crimes committed by people are to do with either the getting of money or the getting of sex. These are the drivers powering our lives. Crimes of passion and crimes of greed. The lust for these things can careen us off the rails. Money and alcohol fuelling greed and hate. One is the thing we strive for and the other the disinhibitory drug. Together they drive the lives of most men on the planet and a growing number of women too. Ask yourself what your relationship is to these two drivers. These daemons under whose influence we stand. Money and alcohol.
Robert Sudha Hamilton is the author of Money Matters: Navigating Credit, Debt, and Financial Freedom.
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