> Drawing on evidence from archaeology, history, cognitive neuroscience, psychopharmacology, social psychology, literature, and genetics, Slingerland shows that our taste for chemical intoxicants is not an evolutionary mistake, as we are so often told. In fact, intoxication helps solve a number of distinctively human challenges: enhancing creativity, alleviating stress, building trust, and pulling off the miracle of getting fiercely tribal primates to cooperate with strangers.
My experience was before lived in Asia (USA only) I thought drinking was bad (bar fights, drunk driving deaths, etc...) After living in Asia my entire attitude changed because I never saw a bar fight and I wasn't driving. Instead, drinking around food was a place to get to know people. Drama's showed people getting in arguments at work and then settling their differences at drinks after work. A recent anime had a line "drinking is healing" meant that's where you let go of your worries and you heal relationships.
> My experience was before lived in Asia (USA only) I thought drinking was bad (bar fights, drunk driving deaths, etc...)
Wow, I guess I just don't hang out with the same kinds of people you do (USA as well). I don't think I've ever witnessed a bar fight, and no one I know has been involved in a drunk driving crash (on either side of it). And yet I've done plenty of drinking (I don't remember much of my 30s because of it, sadly).
Instead, drinking around food was a place to get to know people.*
I agree that alcohol is a good social lubricant, and sure, it can be an aid (or even a shortcut) to social bonding. But this article made me believe that, in some East Asian cultures, alcohol is pretty much required to get them to communicate effectively about certain things. That seems... not particularly safe or healthy, not just physically, but emotionally too.
It's the same in Denmark. It's basically required to get Danes to open up emotionally but it's destructive because the emotional opening-up doesn't carry over back across the veil to sobriety.
For a people who were once Vikings, they're incredibly non-confrontational. If you have a difficult conversation with them and they're sober there's a high chance they simply never speak to you again.
I don't really think alcohol is the answer to constructing a society, especially given its other negative health effects.
> I don't think I've ever witnessed a bar fight, and no one I know has been involved in a drunk driving crash
I grew up drinking and lived in alcohol culture(s). At 25 I moved to another state, didn't drink and mostly circulated in non-drinking circles.
Before 25 I saw plenty of alcohol fueled fights. They weren't in bars but neither was I. I've been on both sides of drunk crashes (not driving) as were (possibly most of) my friends. As for family & friends, they ranged ~evenly from non-drinkers to heavy.
After 25 I saw few drinking related issues. I knew vastly more non-drinkers after 25 and can't recall any being hit by drunk drivers (unlike before 25).
It describes much of American suburbia, regrettably... I grew up in South eastern Pennsylvania and it seemed more like 'when' not 'if' people would get a DUI.
When there's not much to do and you live in an area designed for cars, a shocking amount of people will just not give AF and drink drive. Can't afford cabs but can afford the bar.
I grew up in an isolated location with a big drinking culture. As a youngster I wasn’t aware that there were places to move to without this problem. You could choose to avoid the drinking culture, but that was basically social suicide in both University and in Industry.
I think the social norms are such that doing that while not specifically in a socializing event is low-class. Probably it's fine between peers in a blue-collar environment, or in high school.
My argument would be that these social intoxicants allow for the reduction in anxiety stress (more broadly ego attachments) which enables a ego reduction and more incentive to unmask and resultant follow on effects.
In the best case, this allows for social vulnerability that leads to trust and trust is the basis for society.
Note that for some people, they are deep into traumatic fear stress that inebriation might actually make unmasking look like a fight, flight, fawn…
> My argument would be that these social intoxicants allow for the reduction in anxiety stress which enables a ego reduction
Just a counterthought:
If I your anxiety stress becomes reduced, you might be less anxious to call your boss an idiot. :-D
Seriously: if you become less afraid of the social consequences, this actually might increase your ego. I know quite some people who in my observation have a stronger ego under influence than when they are sober.
The ego was always there. It was repressed by social norms and intoxicants can release those constraints.
As a “boss” I actually like when people challenge me, including calling me an “idiot.” I’ve gone as far to tell people to feel free to tell me to, “fuck off” if I’m getting something wrong. It’s all about intent and trust. If we can’t be honest things don’t work.
Yes, the point is that it’s reducing the anxiety to unmask.
Your boss may in fact be an asshole and unmasking would make you feel more incautious about being yourself, which might mean a narcissistic outburst from all your pent up frustration.
My friend used to work for a company headquartered in eastern Europe. The first time his office had an off-site they busted out a handle and said 'okay, no talking about work until this is finished'. The idea was they wouldn't trust you until you were drunk enough everyone could be sure you were too inebriated to hide your true feelings or thoughts.
Terribly unhealthy but it supposedly accomplished it's purpose
But doesn't that - starting young - simply encourages intoxicants as a prerequisite to any opening up or social contact at all - rather than helping people communicate better and see each other better. That is, it's a crutch and NOT training or re-education.
Other communities strive to make communication safer and full of good examples which helps get over excessive shyness. Always seemed a better direction to me.
Yes fully open, healthy attachment recognizing, empathy filled communities, are leaps and bounds healthier than ones with pathologically traumatized people coping with that with medication/intoxication.
I think the "with food" bit is underrated. Bar/pub food in the West is crappy almost by definition (the occasional gastropub notwithstanding) and many/most people don't eat anything at all, while if you go drinking in Tokyo, food is an absolutely critical part of the izakaya (Japanese pub) experience.
It's also quite socially acceptable for women to go to an izakaya and drink oolong tea instead of alcohol all night long. The real social barrier for women is the next round of entertainment, which in sales circles very often entails prostitution in some form or another.
At least here in Australia you get pretty decent food at pubs I mean it's not going to blow your socks off but any pub worth it's name will serve a decent Chicken Schnitzel or Parmigiana. It's the high end hipster bars that tend not to do any food.
As a rule of thumb the more blue collar the pub the better the food will be - Builders Clubs and Trade Union associated places tend to have the best food followed by Sports clubs. These places have their own issues though namely poker/slot machines (Gambling is a big problem in this country).
I think the differences are mostly cultural I have zero desire to go out drinking with people from my workplace. We have exactly one social event a year - which is the work Christmas Party and that is a fairly tame event.
I don't really see how this is the case, every single nice restaurant also has a bar and bar area, it's not like you have to go to Buffalo Wild Wings or something.
I think it's less about alcohol and more about how individual cultures and society evolve and create third places. Alcohol can be part of that (such as in pubs or even Romans having engaged in a bit of drinking at the bathhouse) but you also had examples like coffee houses in the 17th century. I think the problem arises when the amount of third places available narrows to strictly a culture around drinking, which increasingly becomes the focus rather than the social aspect.
As long as the "big man in the room takes a shot, everyone takes a shot" rule isn't maliciously invoked, you have functional ALDH genetics, aren't a woman, etc.
The episode with the red headed kid having flashbacks about the ice cream?
I didn’t quite have the same takeaway but I suppose that’s one way to look at it.
It is an excellent anime however. I suspect it will go down as one of the best anime’s of this decade. Story is great, premise is great, and now at the current episodes, the fighting animation is getting some more love as well. I’m hyped for how it will eventually wrap up!
> I see the consumption of alcohol as weak, immature, and reckless
I don't drink, at all, ever. I came to the conclusion quite some time ago that it's been the cause of far more problems than it's ever solved, and it's just better for everyone if I never pick up a glass again.
That said, I know plenty of people who somehow do have that chip installed that allows responsible drinking, in moderation, in appropriate settings - and I would never be so judgemental as your quote. There do exist plenty of people who can drink in moderation and without any real negative consequences. Who am I to begrudge or look down on that, and indeed who are you to?
There's certainly a lot of people for whom alcohol consumption, knowing all the facts, would indeed be "weak, immature, and reckless". Knowing myself and my history, that list includes me! But there's plenty of people not on that list, and so I just don't think you can make blanket judgements like that.
Isn't this obvious? Coffee and drugs either. Even if drugs were harmless for the health they could probably be prohibited because of the sudden changes a society will experience.
Based on my experience living in Korea, it appears that the country exhibits a collectivist culture. Collectivism emphasizes the importance of careful consideration in forming relationships, which can lead to significant stress. A key aspect of this culture is the desire to avoid causing inconvenience to others. Similarly, alcohol culture, akin to ice-breaking activities, serves as a means to alleviate tension in social interactions, making it a crucial cultural element in Korea.
I know I have my biases, cultural and otherwise, so I shouldn't say that one way is right and another is wrong, but...
To me, this widely-acknowledged need to go get drunk with bosses, colleagues, and business associates in order to facilitate communication feels like a tacit admission that the reserved, low-confrontation, hierarchical communication styles are a hindrance, and that people would be better off being direct, (politely) confrontational, and egalitarian.
And yes, I know that I say this as someone who is more used to the latter. But I, personally, am somewhat conflict-avoidant, and do couch my criticism in positive, flowery language (if I present that criticism at all) often. And frankly I don't like that, and think I'd be able to express myself better, to the benefit of both myself and whoever I'm talking to, if I could be more blunt and direct about these sorts of things.
Honestly I just can't imagine living in Japanese or Korean society, having to conform to these sorts of conversational rules. I guess the thing that really gets to me is the hierarchical, automatic-respect-for-the-boss stuff. Respect is earned, not given just because someone promoted you. And regardless, I think the default should be one of greater familiarity.
Clearly these other societies are able to function with whatever setup they've mutually agreed upon over centuries or millennia, so it's not like no one is able to communicate effectively. But it just seems so exhausting and stressful to me to have to act that way.
> A month ago, I didn’t know. Now, after my interviews with people in China and Korea, the answer is very obvious.
I don't know if I think a month is sufficient time to make such concrete and definitive statements. In my experience, there is rarely a tidy explanation for something as complex as cultural norms - this feels more likely to be a "just so story" + hubris than the clear answer. American Finance and Consulting firms are extremely direct and confrontational, and their employees aren't exactly tee totalers.
The article as a whole also felt like a value judgement on the relative merits of high / low context cultures...
This is only partially true from my experience as a Chinese grew up in Northern China. I think a greater factor is deliberately causing pain or embarrassment.
Like the initiation rites for fraternities or sororities, the pain is the point. The reason behind this is that a commonly shared embarrassing experience creates intimacy and loyalty.
I'm more inclined to accept this theory over others including the one from the article, because it can explain many rules observable in the drinking culture (at least in Northern China).
1. It's rude to reject an invitation to drink together from a person with higher status.
2. When many people drink together, the more you drink, the greater respect you show to others.
3. As a consequence, the person with higher status can choose to drink less than others, or they can choose to drink the same to show greater respect.
4. People with lower status should proactively invite people with higher status to drink, in the order of their status.
Therefore, in a typical drinking party (饭局), the people with lower status usually drink the most, often to the point of being unconscious or causing a scene, and that would show their loyalty.
This was part of the job for government officials and those who work with them. And people could genuinely get pretty sick from alcohol consumption. Death from drinking is not uncommon. There was even a debate on how to divy up the legal punishment to the people at the same table when this occurred. And it's not a theoretical sophistication at all.
Luckily, Xi has banned this as part of his anti-corruption campaign (八项规定, the Eight Rules), so it's less of an issue now.
Furthermore, young people in China have moved passed the drinking culture as well. Back in the university, one can choose whether to drink or not, and when one drinks, any amount to their personal preference is acceptable.
I should add that I don't drink at all, but I was often in a situation where I was supposed to drink and got asked a lot. That's why I sought an explanation for the drinking culture and I suspect that many people who participate in this culture can't explain it explicitly.
That’s a great point that everyone else is overlooking. The comparison is obvious if you have a little experience with frat culture.
(I was never in one, but I went to a college where fraternities are a huge deal, and I never felt comfortable there. I packed my schedule with extra classes to get my degree and get out as soon as I could.)
An interesting point (Dutch interpretation), since it obviously causes the writer of the article to be in pain and embarrassment. Which may also be a secondary point. It self selects for those who are willing to go through the hazing.
Reading these kind of descriptions of asian societies always strikes me as them simply being behind. Societally or culturally. Of course the west still has a lot of these things like happy hour drinking and team events and even to some degree the adverse effects and exclusion of women, but not at the level described in the East -- because we already went thru this in like the 50s-80s. It's a partially old/solved thing. We removed the corporate weight of it and it's more of just a social thing, just part of general broader culture (which doesn't mean there is value in participation of course), and in turn, hopefully, women have been able to partake/avoid more problems etc. East Asia will perhaps grow out of it also.
For the first few years of grad school (in the US) I skipped the weekly drinks night because I didn't drink and saw no reason to start drinking. In hindsight I rather regret that decision because as I later found out these were unique opportunities for profs (even normally very uptight or high strung ones!) and fellow grad students to unwind and share stories or anecdotes or tips that would never surface in any other context. Simply being there to listen would have been very enriching quite apart from the chance for personal bonding. (I do remember in later years some female grad students complained about it but the practice persisted). My experience of Chinese academia is rather limited but afiak weekly drinks night is not as much of a thing there.
Related to this, I've often thought that the popularity of Karaoke in Japan and Korea is somehow related - it may provide a 'safe' environment to escape from the relatively strict social hierarchy and roles that are pervasive in these cultures.
Even in the US, in tech firms, it's pretty common to have happy hours where everyone drinks a bit.
I don't drink at all due to my sleep apnea, and don't even have caffeine after 1pm for the same reason, so I'm pretty much always in this kind of awkward position of sipping on a water throughout the night while coworkers get more and more inebriated.
I don't think it's ever directly hurt my chances of promotion or anything, but I do think it makes socializing harder.
My experience at a bigtechco where they have a weekly happy hour with free alcohol is that it's a pretty small minority that partakes (~20% out of the ~20% of in-office folks that attend these after work events). I've also never seen anyone have more than ~2-3 drinks total. The median number of drinks is 1 by far.
This is all post-covid though, perhaps it was different in the before times.
About ~8 years ago, in one of my previous jobs, we would start around 4PM almost every other Friday in the office and go till about midnight or after. It really depends on the company, environment, and people. We even had non-drinkers tag along as well. Probably not the healthiest environment to be in, but it was fun while it lasted.
I can't comment much about nowadays, as I haven't worked from an office since 2020. But from what I've heard, you're correct, those times are somewhat behind us in most of the companies.
>I don't think it's ever directly hurt my chances of promotion or anything, but I do think it makes socializing harder.
From what I’ve seen (in the US), people will frame in like it will hurt, because drinkers what to drink with other people, but competence wins out at the end of the day.
Being around when decisions get made outside of the office can have an impact though, and it sounds like you’re still there for that. I used to go out with the smokers on their smoke break for the same reason. I didn’t smoke, but going out with them let me be part of the conversation that was sometimes social, but often turned to work and strategy.
Yeah, same, I would also hang out with smokers during their smoke break at a job, despite the fact that I have never really smoked [1]. At that job, most of the higher-ups smoked and I figured it might be useful to be part of the "under the table" discussions.
[1] Outside of half a cigarette when I turned 18 which I thought was pretty gross.
Strange but true: I've been to a number of professional happy hours that offered free alcohol, but didn't provide other beverages. It got to the point that I started bringing my own water bottle to networking events, just in case.
I'm a big fan of providing other beverage types. Being able to sip a soda etc from the same kind of container as everyone else goes a long way towards blending in.
>Strange but true: I've been to a number of professional happy hours that offered free alcohol, but didn't provide other beverages.
Failing to provide non-alcoholic drinks would be a faux pas even in Germany. It is indeed strange. I'd go as far as calling it worse than college-party-level planning.
At networking mixers I've attended, often there are a limited number of drink tickets per person and a set event duration. But the drink tickets only covered alcohol, not other beverages. In some cases, other beverages just weren't an option at all. ("I guess you could find a water fountain? But why?")
Also, one of those recurring events was hosted at a startup that was, to be frank, known for "worse than college" level planning all around...
Eventually events started getting better at providing options. Probably a mix of several factors: the move to another city (local culture), career growth/level of people around me, and changing social patterns. (increasing interest in non alcoholic options/ more people willing to speak up)
If you can tolerate a very tiny amount of alcohol, bitters with soda is a great cocktail substitute. There's also "hop water" beverages that I really like that have no calories.
Kombucha is my drink of choice, but it is fermented tea so if tea is out so is kombucha.
The other options I can think of are are flavored seltzers/flavored water, Mocktails/virgin cocktails/Shirley Temples, agua fresca, non-alcoholic beer, and herbal tea. Availability varies, of course.
Nutritionally, kwas is just an eccentric kind of pop marketed to eastern Europeans. The modern mass-market stuff is even made the same way: syrup and forced carbonation.
Do you think they would have a better time if they were drinking a sprite or something? Being with drunk people when you're sober is not fun for either party regardless.
There’s a big range between sober and drunk. The key to work drinks/happy hour is go for a single drink and leave. You get the best parts of being social and avoid the vast majority of the issues that come from people drinking with colleagues.
Speak for yourself. I am a fervent enjoyer of booze, and I feel absolutely nothing in the presence of people who don't drink. Partake in whatever you want to have a good time, be it a drink, or a smoke, or absolutely nothing and as long as you're happy, we'll get along a-okay.
Another part of it is that (imo) one of the biggest boons from group drinking is that it builds trust by giving people something to bond over — you’ve all imbibed to lower your inhibitions and get a little sloppy/loose, and the next day you see that you’re still accepted and part of the group.
Teetotalers might be there physically, but they’ve opted out of the shared experience of making themselves vulnerable.
> you’ve all imbibed to lower your inhibitions and get a little sloppy/loose, and the next day you see that you’re still accepted and part of the group.
In west coast tech companies with young people of both sexes, I absolutely refuse to drink due to not wanting to be accused of harassment or inappropriate behavior. I'm not a creep, but am older and not really attractive and am treated to a different standard.
Sounds paranoid but have had coworkers accused, penalized, or fired after these events.
i don't know... if getting a bit of a buzz leads to you doing things that are interpreted as inappropriate, maybe there's some bigger underlying issues about understanding what's appropriate.
Well the OP mentioned "lower your inhibitions and get a little sloppy/loose", and I mention double standards depending on the person.
I've seen outings in Asia where there's lots of non-sexual touching, arm around shoulders etc, and yet that would be like insta-problem between sexes on the west coast. Getting buzzed means you aren't on high alert for this sort of thing, hence I'll nope out of putting myself in this situation.
I avoid both coffee and refined sugar and then the list of alternatives really shrinks. Herbal tea is a good one of course, and in a bar one can often get pure apple juice.
Agreed. (And for some of us, whole apples also have too much sugar--as do most other fruits with whole raspberries and passionfruit being exceptions, and pureeing the raspberries or incorporating them into a smoothie is just as bad as juicing them.)
Most advice says to avoid sugar, but the sugar in fruit is OK (the advices goes) because the fiber in the fruit slows down the absorption of the sugar. Well, my experience has been that the sugar in fruit is not OK (even if the fruit has not been juiced or pureed or processed in any way). It is quite harmful to me, the largest harm being cognitive decline (Alzheimer's or such, I have yet to get a diagnosis). I have managed to stop and partially reverse my cognitive decline by only ever eating small quantities of carbs. A whole apple in one sittings is too much! (Some apples, such as the Granny Smith variety, have less than half the carbs of an average variety, but even a Granny Smith probably has too much for me to eat a whole apple in one sitting unless I'm doing a lot of physical labor that day, which is rare. It would be OK for me to cut up a Granny Smith and freeze the pieces and eat one fifth of an apple per meal, but I haven't bothered.)
Fructose seems to be the worst carb for me, but I also limit the other carbs (glucose and starch) and one of my guesses as to why I need to do that is that if I eat more than about 12 to 20 g of carbs in any meal, a decent amount gets converted into fructose (e.g., by my liver). I believe that if I had more muscle mass, I could get away with eating more carbs (because my muscles would convert much of the glucose in my bloodstream to glycogen before my body could convert it to fructose) but it is hard for people my age to increase their muscle mass much.
Note that I assiduously avoided refined sugar (e.g., molasses or monk fruit extract or any other refined sugar, by itself or added to processed foods) during the decades during which my cognitive decline was progessing, and that is was only after I started also avoiding fruits and honey (except for a few low-sugar fruits, which in my case are frozen raspberries and frozen passionfruit) and vegetables high in carbs (like winter squash, carrot juice and more than one or two carrots per meal) that I stopped and partially reversed my cognitive decline.
(People who advise avoiding carbs often extol the benefits of ketosis. I tried ketosis, but do not like it. I've seen things that say spending too much time in the ketotic state can damage the heart, and my heart starts doing funny things when I spend too much time in ketosis, so I eat enough carbs every day to avoid ketosis, which is not much carbs.)
Weird advice considering your body literally turns food into sugar anyway. I suspect folks saying that sort of thing are quacks or using sugar as a scapegoat for excess calories.
I'll answer for me and not try to answer for people in general. People's metabolisms are different, different food works for them.
Empirical answer: different sensation basically the minute it enters my body, from refined sugar. I don't enjoy that feeling it and I could feel it in a blind test. My body and brain do not feel good on such sugars, and avoiding them entirely is a good way to remove the craving for them.
Scientific answer: fruit sugars are slower to take up than refined sugars, when delivered in as juice or in fruit.
I don't really do sugary drinks, so Diet Coke/Diet Pepsi is out as well. I also just actively dislike tea and coffee, so I don't really want to go with any kind of decaf version of those either.
So yeah, if the bar has Diet 7-up or Diet Caffeine Free Coke, then I'm fine, but at least in the NYC area I've not really ever seen that at a bar. They're not even guaranteed to have them at grocery stores.
As it stands, the one thing that basically every bar is guaranteed to have that's sugar free and caffeine free is water, so that's what I end up defaulting to. It feels a bit lame but I really like being able to sleep.
Bonus, it looks like an alcoholic drink if you’re a woman and don’t want to give the idea that you might be pregnant, which is an issue which women trying to grow in corporate situations face at events, when in reality they simply don’t like drinking and/or don’t want to be around a bunch of men getting hammered who may potentially have sway over their careers.
That's actually a really good idea. I'm not a woman so there's not much risk of people thinking I'm pregnant, but I could see some kind of lime seltzer being good and people could assume it's a gin and tonic or something.
Taking psilocybin in a corporate setting sounds like a bad time imo, even at a low dose. Plus, there's always that one guy at the office Christmas party...
The article engages in a bit too much overgeneralization for my taste: “Collective harmony and hierarchy are strongly idealised across East Asia,” “Americans are extremely direct,” etc. There’s a lot more social and individual diversity than statements like that suggest.
One data point: I grew up in the U.S. but have lived in Japan for the past forty-one years. I freelanced for Japanese companies for my first two decades here, and I have worked in academia for the last two. In both contexts, socializing does indeed often involve alcohol. But I have had what I consider to be two successful careers here without ever drinking alcohol in my life. I have also known Japanese men who were successful in business and who did not drink at all.
Yes, there are social situations where not drinking can be awkward. But, in my experience at least, if one just explains that one doesn’t drink, one can get through those situations without conflict or avoid them entirely without negative effects on one’s social life or career.
Also anecdotally: Some of the biggest social drinkers I have known in Japan were Americans or Brits. For some of them, there seemed to be a negative correlation between drinking and business success.
I am from the Philippines and western expats are mostly the ones who gets dead drunk here. I guess they really liked our beers here, the atmosphere, the women, the beach, the value of money.
I don’t drink too, antisocial and still having a pretty good career by ditching happy hours, and all those after work nonsense.
I also have to question the point about “direct negative feedback” quoted from Meyer, 2014. In many Indian companies, it is perfectly acceptable to provide negative feedback in public, and in an extremely aggressive way (shouting etc.) which is why people will often go to lengths to prevent others from discovering their mistakes.
Another anecdote from me too; I was working in Japan for 12 years, and a lot of it was as a self-employed IT consultant.
I don't drink and I never drank ever and was fairly well off by the end of it all. This is not a rare situation anymore either; I know a lot of younger Japanese people who simply refuse to drink. It's no surprise either; alcohol is not cheap on excursions, and the company doesn't pay the bill very often anymore.
Would you have been satisfied if the statement said "... are often strongly idealised ..."?
Aren't generalizations implicitly simplistic for the majority, while not necessarily true for the minority?
Couldn't you say that you are generalizing too much about the author's generalizations?
I found your anecdotes interesting, but I often wonder why people take offense at generalizations.
East Asian countries are incredibly distinct from each other. I'm not sure that they value drinking beer more than Germans, or wine more than the French?
But one vacation spot I know had drunk Chinese die from drunk drowning on a weekly basis. Which may suggest that some groups drink too much, and lack self-control.
My objection is less to the broad generalizations (though I'm curious what the line between a generalization and stereotype these days) and more that the conclusion the author comes to[1] is exceptionally reductive, and is completely lacking in evidence. Countries like Netherlands, Germany, and Denmark score high on direct negative feedback and confrontation AND have alcohol consumption rates that are similar or higher than Japan[2]. So what are we even talking about here?
[1] "If schools and firms explicitly encouraged more direct communication (as does happen in many international East Asian firms), maybe alcohol would be made redundant?"
> Would you have been satisfied if the statement said "... are often strongly idealised ..."?
Yes, I would agree with that statement, at least regarding Japan. I don’t have enough first-hand knowledge to comment about other East Asian countries. As you noted, they seem to be quite different from each other.
Thank you for your comments on generalization. I will reply to just one:
> I often wonder why people take offense at generalizations.
One reason, I suspect, is that generalizations about groups of people can become stereotypes, and people can resent being stereotyped, especially if the generalization/stereotype has negative connotations or if it doesn’t apply to one as an individual.
I get the impression the variable is not social drinking but social adaptitude. I do want your opinion on the matter, however. Every native Japanese person I have known is incredibly reserved. As an example, I had a Japanese coworker, and I did not even know they had a wife until they corrected me in conversation. Maybe it is the subtle aspects of the language (my Japanese is still not great)? I am looking to establish an EOR in Japan and eventually move there with the goal of citizenship, but I've been holding off until I understand the language well enough to get by without outside help.
People in Japan tend to avoid talking about personal matters in the workplace. In my twenty years at a university here, I have met almost none of the spouses or partners of my colleagues, and there have been quite a few colleagues—including ones I worked closely with—whose marital or relationship status I never knew. Faculty social gatherings never included spouses or partners, except informal events organized by the foreign faculty. My impression is that the situation is quite different at universities in the U.S.
The exception was children: My Japanese colleagues—both male and female—often mentioned their kids, and at the campus where I worked until COVID it was not unusual for faculty to bring their children to the office during school vacations. The faculty all had private offices, and there was no problem with children hanging out there during the day. That would be much more difficult for office workers, though.
Another reason why Japanese people you meet seem reserved could be the language barrier. If they aren’t fluent in English, they may seem less outgoing than they would in their native language.
Good luck with your Japanese studies. Knowing the language makes things much easier here.
As a Ukrainian-American (more so the latter, I've lived in the US for the past 20+ years), US corporate culture requires making any statement into a very polite, almost optional, suggestion ("would you", "it would be great if", etc). Several times I was accused of being "rude" when I made a direct statement.
So it is not exactly direct, but I don't have a good cultural reference to compare to either.
As a German-Israeli, both of which are extremely direct cultures (in different ways), I feel there’s a lot of “dancing around” in American communication culture that seems silly.
America's historic relationship with alcohol was shaped by the loonies who fled there from Europe so they could left alone to practice their ascetic forms of Christianity.
A lot of phenomena in Asia cannot be properly understood if you lose sight of the lack of Christianity. For instance, could you have a mainstream, pop-band consisting of prepubescent boys called "Sexy Zone" in the USA? LOL ...
Order a non-alcoholic drink? I do little work-related drinking these days but it is common to have male colleagues who do not consume alcohol, one assumes for either health or religious reasons. It would say for every group of 5 or more there tends to be at least 1.
For an interesting and humorous tour of drinking across history and cultures, read Mark Forsyth's "A Short History of Drunkenness". Getting hammered had been crucial, even sometimes obligatory, in many places throughout history.
"Asia" is too broad, the Japanese and Chinese are on the extreme side of this spectrum, but it's not like that in South East Asia and I'd imagine south asians to not even drink.
By this point "Asia" as the entire continent is obsolete colloquially and also not useful. There's almost nothing uniting the entire region. People nowadays use "Asia" only to refer to East Asia, and I think they have a point.
You nailed it! I didn’t stop drinking because of its negative impact on sleep and health, or how it can easily become a social crutch. I did it to make sure I don’t reveal my deep dark secrets.
Well, one topic which is covered in some detail when you are screened for security clearances is precisely how you use alcohol (and other intoxicants!).
It’s perhaps wrong of me to generalize but I’ve lived in Utah my whole life, some are clean and healthy others are unhealthy slobs, just like the general population. The whole ‘drank all the booze’ people are more often those pretending to believe in their faith because of the social repercussions of leaving it.
Alcohol actually has minimal effect on me aside from impaired coordination and feeling ill the next day, feeling a bit stupid & foggy.
I just don’t enjoy it much.
I do think my lying improves due to lack of inhibitions about lying (I’m quite good at lying but find it distasteful/onerous under usual circumstances, having to keep the lies straight).
I’m tight lipped when drunk because I know I’m drunk. I feel like people who spill their secrets when they’re drunk wanted people to know them but were too anxious to admit to them.
I don’t like drinking because it kills me and kills brain cells.
Not really. Alcohol can make people stupid, but it can't make them tell the truth. You will hear far more lies and boasts from a drunk than you will deep dark secrets.
Having a drink with the colleagues has nothing to do with alcoholism. I used to organize nights out with colleagues even if I was never drinking alcohol (I had to drive). But the point in "going for a beer" is socializing and informal communication, not the beer.
Something about this article is incongruous. Consider the passage quoted below.
(1) What could it mean to have a harmonious culture that is not inclusive? How could a culture be inclusive without fostering harmony between groups?
(2) The author does not answer the question she asks -- -- directly, but the final sentence is a quote from a Korean woman: "We care about the opinion of others." Are we supposed to infer that Koreans have a non-inclusive culture because they care about the opinions of others? Does that even make sense?
The contrast the author draws between cultural harmony and inclusive things is perhaps reliant on some specialized meaning of the terms -- the author is perhaps using them as terms of art -- but I suspect that the general reader will find the contrast itself contradictory.
Why don’t women push for a more inclusive work culture?
In societies that idealise collective harmony, challenging superiors can be deeply offensive. When chatting to two professionals in Seoul, I introduced a little role play. In a hypothetical company meeting, I politely put up my hand and said,
“I would like to propose that we end our company drinking culture. When people drink, they may make mistakes, do things inadvertently, which can make others uncomfortable”.
I spoke softly and gently; I really endeavoured to be placid. But my Korean friends were shocked. Sang-hee grimmaced, “It lacks nunchi”. Minjun (her male friend) was equally puzzled,
“I would be amazed. I mean this positively. But why is that person imposing their views on others? Why don’t they just drop out?” (translated)
To ease their discomfort, I suggested a more sympathetic story. “Let’s suppose her boss was drunk and put his hand on her thigh. She doesn’t want to confront her boss, but wants to solve it indirectly”. Sang-hee was still displeased, adding
American, not Dutch, but lived in the UK for nearly a decade, and can attest to the [general] accuracy of the first two columns of the table, down to the precise phrases given.
I lost one job, early in my stay, exactly because I hadn't yet figured out those social nuances. The "exit interview" there was rough: as directly as I've ever been spoken to in my life, to the point of verbal abuse. (Among other things mentioned: my habit of saying "sure", in place of "yes", was interpreted as tremendous rudeness.) Those people were mad as a box of frogs - many years later I worked, quite successfully, with a (British) person who'd likewise been employed by them, who concurred, and commisserated - but differing social expectations didn't help.
Looking back, I think I alienated myself, though not nearly to that extent, in several other work / social situations for some of the same reasons. I learned, though (having a British romantic partner to "translate" was helpful), and became quite comfortable navigating things there, to the extent that eventually moving back to the US came with some culture shock. (Seriously, why do Americans talk SO DAMN LOUD in public?!?)
Still, I'd prefer (even over the US defaults) to operate in cultural milieus as far to the left of all of those scales as possible.
at one place i worked (big 6 accountants, back then) the final interview for new hires took place with the whole (small) team down the pub. no need to get drunk, or indeed to drink at all - just see how we got along. seemed to work well.
Bit of an aside, but that "low-high" context scale with the US proudly at the "tell it like it is" extreme left instantly reduces the credibility of any article where I see this.
"That's an interesting idea and we should totally do lunch sometime" is Silicon Valley for "that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard and never want to see you again".
> Bit of an aside, but that "low-high" context scale with the US proudly at the "tell it like it is" extreme left instantly reduces the credibility of any article where I see this.
Read further. Low context is not "telling it like it is." The U.S. is in the middle on direct-indirect negative feedback and in the middle on confrontational-avoids confrontation. The explanation of the meaning is the article too.
Meyer's scale claims that low-context means, and I quote, "Messages are expressed and understood at face value". The TFA goes on to say that "Americans are extremely direct, they say what they think."
Which is bullshit. Sorry, I mean that's a great insight and I'd love to double-click on that, but in the interest of time let's take this offline.
I’m about as anti-woke as it gets but I want to give the author credit for a well thought out article. If I discount any writing from “the enemy” I’ll just reinforce my filter bubble.
Are there specific things you didn’t agree with here?
> The Dutch and Israelis are famously direct. They don’t mind confrontation, so usually speak their mind and take no offence. By contrast, East Asians are more likely to value collective harmony. This means that they avoid direct confrontation, so artfully use be more subtle and diplomatic language.
I don't see how speaking your mind is confrontational or at odds with "collective harmony". Intention is all that matters in my opinion. If you go in aiming to upset, then you're a dick and no amount of "diplomatic language" is going to make you not a dick. In fact, it will only make you more dickish, because now you're hiding behind word manipulation.
In cultures where direct confrontation isn't accepted, intention does not matter , you simply can't do it - if someone believes that intention is all that matters, speaks their mind directly with e.g. some not-properly-veiled criticism (no matter how justified or needed), and justifies it with "I didn't aim to upset", even if they genuinely didn't aim that and everybody understands that they didn't aim to upset, they have still "been a dick" and behaved socially unacceptably. In the professional world in such cultures it can cause customers to break cont(r)acts, request that your company never ever send you to the customer, or if you speak your mind in public to (or about) the boss, firing you - it's behaving in an unacceptably insulting way that can't and won't be tolerated in the society.
I have limited experience with this, but have started to wonder whether the harmonious interaction culture tends to be paired with extremely hierarchical "just find a way to do exactly what you were told to do, even if you know it will destroy the company" worker mindset.
So that, if someone comes in and calls out nonsensical, self-destructive organizational behavior, not only are feathers ruffled up the hierarchy, but workers can get upset as well.
I wonder whether calling out a problem is a double offense towards the workers: (1) disrupting the workers' beliefs that doing what they're told is how they do a good job; (2) the upsetting fact that someone is behaving disharmoniously in calling out a problem.
There definitely is a practical organization need for a way to call out nonsense - but this article is about the widely used workaround process (namely, honest talks during after-work drinking) that does enable this valuable feedback to happen despite the "harmonious interaction culture" in the default environment.
It matters as in each culture the communication style is interpreted in some way, but not necessarily your way. I lived a while in the Middle East and being very direct was considered to be rude; it may be not rude at all for a Dutch, but it is for a Saudi.
People don't really understand diversity. Instead of understanding that diversity of cultures means different cultures view the world in different ways and in some cases they may be right, we transformed diversity into an internet meme.
So your direct way to speak your mind is fine for you and your culture, but it may be the other way around for other people.
I'm what you might call "multi-cultural". I've lived in a few different cultures for significant lengths of time, and co-incidentally, am middle-eastern.
At the risk of sounding arrogant, I think that qualifies me to make this statement more than some: I think there are objective rights and wrongs in cultures, and knowing that culture itself is subjective doesn't get you a free pass on objectively bad behaviour ("bad" here meaning something closer to "incorrect", and not a moral judgement).
My theory is that many white people feel they can't be critical of "ethnic" cultures, because that's racist. You absolutely can, and it's not!
Dawkins probably thought he couldn't say it as a white person when he said that religion shouldn't get special treatment from criticism, but I'm not white so here it is: Cultures also shouldn't get special treatment. It might be your culture, but that doesn't mean it's not wrong.
> I don't see how speaking your mind is confrontational or at odds with "collective harmony". Intention is all that matters in my opinion.
Even in Western cultures, if you try saying something at odds with the "room" or the current bandwagon, like here on HN for example, you will feel the frowns coming your way.
> In a business setting, the room should bend to facts, not group-think.
It should, sometimes, but ...
Different people often have different beliefs about the facts.
Sometimes there are higher priorities than the facts of the immediate issue.
And most of all, in reality it doesn't work that way. Someone who acts as if it does is as incompetent as a developer who insists there's no such thing as platform constraints. We're dealing with humans, which includes all the constructs of human nature, culture, and personality.
Your 'facts' may threaten someone's job, for example, or the CEO's reputation; do you expect they'll just go along with that?
> Sometimes there are higher priorities than the facts of the immediate issue
I'm with you! Of course there are many factors at play, but they are all part of "the facts" of which I'm speaking. I'm not talking about saying things like "No no, we have to do this the correct way, not with a shortcut". Sometimes a shortcut _is_ the correct way, given the circumstances.
> Your 'facts' may threaten someone's job, for example, or the CEO's reputation; do you expect they'll just go along with that?
It's not my job to hide other people's mistakes, even the CEO's. _However_ I'd like to emphasise that I don't think there's anything wrong with making mistakes. If you work in a culture where mistakes are seen as part of getting things done, it's not an issue. If you don't, I'd recommend finding somewhere where that's true, and you can call bullshit out without getting people fired, or hurting the CEO's feelings.
I've noticed this is very much the case when working with Americans. There's a real weird vibe where dominance needs to be proven at every turn. Some European cultures have this a little too, but not to the extent it's evident with Americans.
It is (or will be perceived as) a display of power, or a challenge to the powerful. So a challenge to the status quo, thus a challenge to the "collective harmony".
https://longnow.org/ideas/drinking-10000-years-intoxication-...
> Drawing on evidence from archaeology, history, cognitive neuroscience, psychopharmacology, social psychology, literature, and genetics, Slingerland shows that our taste for chemical intoxicants is not an evolutionary mistake, as we are so often told. In fact, intoxication helps solve a number of distinctively human challenges: enhancing creativity, alleviating stress, building trust, and pulling off the miracle of getting fiercely tribal primates to cooperate with strangers.
My experience was before lived in Asia (USA only) I thought drinking was bad (bar fights, drunk driving deaths, etc...) After living in Asia my entire attitude changed because I never saw a bar fight and I wasn't driving. Instead, drinking around food was a place to get to know people. Drama's showed people getting in arguments at work and then settling their differences at drinks after work. A recent anime had a line "drinking is healing" meant that's where you let go of your worries and you heal relationships.