This article, in my opinion, makes an incredibly important point. And yet, does it in an incredibly boring manner. I'm not sure if its purpose is supposed to be a literary analysis, or a point about american social values and the taboo placed on drinking. If it's the latter, though; the literary analysis is a distraction.
That said, I do agree with the sentiment—teaching responsibility would be much more effective than abstinence.
I'm cringing at your comment. If you'd paid attention to the literary analysis, you'd realize that the author's point is a lot more nuanced than something as obvious and basic as "teach responsibility, not abstinence".
Any college with a non-religious/ideological bent already teaches "responsible drinking" and has done so for decades. But as the author notes, it's a lesson that's taught outside of the context of classrooms and professors, and is instead usually relegated to a cheesy hour-long seminar and accompanying workshop at the beginning of the fall semester.
What colleges fail to do, in the author's eyes, is address the deeper questions about intoxication. He's not talking about teaching freshmen to "never let a stranger pour your drink", or "limit yourself to one drink per hour", he's talking about teaching students to think about what it means to be intoxicated, why we do it, what we're seeking from it, and how it affects us.
Liberal arts curriculums ask students to ponder these questions in the context of socioeconomic structures, race, politics, religion, art, literature, and history, but not intoxication.
The reason the author digs into the symbolism and themes in The Bacchae isn't so he can have a pretentious backdrop in arguing for a realistic approach to college drinking; it's to show us what it looks like when someone really tries to stop and think about humanity's relationship with intoxication.
For what it's worth, I think your comment did a better job of explaining what the author had to say than the author did.
I wouldn't go as far as "incredibly boring", but the article strikes me as having its priorities mixed up. Is trying to use Euripides to talk about society, or use society to talk about Euripides?
Maybe the intention was the former, but I came away thinking "that sounds like a neat play" and not particularly closer to any insight on the nature of intoxication.
"Incredibly boring" is a bit harsh from my reading, but I mostly agree with you.
I am about to graduate from college. I think it is sad and a bit weird that the majority of people I know here don't seem to see intoxication as similar to "being on the edge of a knife". I think most people (who are sociable and drink) view alcohol as an always-positive thing. Only when people have close personal experiences to the dangers of alcohol (or any other drug) do people seem to understand the magnitude of what intoxication can do to a person.
The article resonated with my personal experience. Drugs effect people differently, and while alcohol is nice to me I have seen it do bad things to people I care about. It really bugs me when people think "x is harmless", for any drug (including weed but especially psychedelics), because in their experience they've only seen the good outcomes.
In any case, slow articles and drinking wine pair well.
I can only imagine it's hard to enjoy this article if you haven't also read - and enjoyed - "The Bacchae" (I did and have - and did - respectively).
There was another enjoyable article from The Chronicle about alcohol which was posted here recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8683034 (No knowledge of Greek tragedy required.)
> incredibly boring manner. I'm not sure if its purpose
I very much miss the style of writing in which the entire point is given in the first paragraph. The remaining paragraphs then expose the story. I was taught that way and it makes it easier to understand what to pay attention to.
Writing in this style has come into vogue. It begins like NPR stories, with no foreshadowing, just a large number of mysterious statements like, "It's 3 am. I'm hearing tinkling sounds. John Wayne had several unusual hobbies. 80s arcade games had references to screen doors." Then, they pile on details until eventually, you hope, a point emerges.
I have no idea what parts are relevant and which parts are merely building suspense!
I recently went on a "business writing course" and about the only thing I can remember was endless repetition of the expression:
"Tell them what you're gonna tell them, tell them, tell them what you told them"
I think that style of progressive writing was designed primarily for print journalism. It makes it easier to chop the story to size and fit in the space available during layout.
It is a very authoritarian cognitive style, however.
This kind of distinctly academic writing is bewildering and nauseating. I felt that the author turns phrases just to hear how they sound, not because he believes what he is saying. Maybe spending the majority of his adult life in the confines of the college system instinctively makes him pander to what he believes the Chronicle wants to hear, as if this is one more test and by adding overbearing Greek allusions he just might make the grade.
Some people (like me) actually prefer this style of writing. I find the factors that you find nauseating to be stimulating. I get bored too easily reading common prose. So, when I find something like this (or others on the chronicle) it energizes me. I need something like this, occasionally.
So, while I'll agree that this article isn't the best-written one I've read, I do like its style. But, since yours is currently the top-most comment, I'll assume that I'm in the minority. And, that's ok.
The writing in the essay is considerably better than your average college essay, which is typically written to a very specific rubric and intended to communicate nothing less than that the author read and minimally processed the material.
I would classify the piece as slightly overwrought. The author could have done just a bit more to rein in the flowery language, but as is, I found it thoughtful and engaging. The key insight is buried at the bottom of the essay, but once you can pull it out, the rest of it makes sense.
One should learn how to read this stuff. The Internet has kind of forced everyone to adopt specific writing practices that suit the ephemeral nature of the medium, and that's really a shame. I remember when I read Pride and Prejudice, once I was able to get used to Austen's style, I really enjoyed it. I certainly would not have wanted to read a modern rewrite that just got to the damned point already.
Somewhere, buried deep inside this overwrought and pretentious article, is a much better and more insightful story. That story is probably The Bacchae by Euripides.
"overwrought and pretentious?" I felt jealous for the deep insights and the ability to communicate them so clearly. This was beautiful thinking and beautiful writing.
Perhaps Euripides is an even better thinker and writer. But I wouldn't have known it without the author's explanation.
Some people do not take drugs to avoid reality. They take them to explore it. What one has to realize is that the experience we call "reality" is only a subjective image created by our minds. There is a chain of filters applied to everythings our sensors (eyes, ears, skin and so on) register. Drugs are able to influence those filters. Hence one might be able to see "reality" from a different point of view.
Agreed. When in my 20's I had a huge epiphany while having a high fever. The fever had changed my brain in some way that allowed me to see something about my life that I hadn't seen before. After the fever was gone, the thoughts remained and it was still obvious that it was true, so it wasn't just delirium and crazy thoughts produced by it.
Drugs are part of reality, so I find your statement to be incredibly ironic. You're deliberately avoiding an entire class of experience under the guise of not avoiding reality!
(Disclaimer: I've never taken any drugs besides light alcohol and caffeine use and some medical stuff, but that doesn't mean I can't spot the obvious contradiction here.)
I can only assume that this article is much better after having read The Bacchae. Because I thought it sucked without. I couldn't really fish out the point, and the synopses and quotes were confusing and jumbled.
That said, I do agree with the sentiment—teaching responsibility would be much more effective than abstinence.