Xứng đáng là đề tài cấp Nhà nước

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...“Yeah, my colleagues in early Asian Studies were like, what?” admits Slingerland. “My training is in early Chinese philosophy and comparative religion.” But the professor’s new book (full title: Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization) actually has its origins in a more scholarly project.

“My big research has been in the evolution of religion — as in, why are we religious in the first place?” he asks. “It’s costly, you’re fasting (ăn chay), cutting off foreskin (cắt bao quy đầu), not eating certain foods, building enormous monuments like the Terracota warriors and then burying them … it’s weird. Why waste resources? Why not just use that knowledge to build an irrigation system (hệ thống tưới tiêu)?”

Those questions led Slingerland — who enjoys the occasional single malt — to larger ideas about cultural identity and cooperation problems (vấn đề hợp tác) in large-scale societies (xã hội quy mô lớn). And how, in his research, it’s actually alcohol that seems to alleviate a lot of those issues

...So, feeling good is rooted in deep thinking? “An early Greek school of thought was that philosophical hedonists (chủ nghĩa khoái lạc) thought the purpose in life was to maximize pleasure,” says the author, who adds a big caveat. “That said, early Greek hedonists were not big partiers. They thought the cost of hangovers wasn’t worth the pleasure of drinking. They liked figuring out intellectual problems. That was their idea of pleasure.”

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