The Importance Of Gettin’ Drunk In Romania

Analects 10.13  When attending village drinking ceremonies, he would leave only after the elderly people had left.  

    Erwan, a Frenchman, had been living on the farm for fifteen years. He built the place from the ground up. He had worked in construction in France and had decided that he would move out to Romania and live a simpler life. He had the intention of building up and restoring the community in the village which was so destroyed by the urbanization of the 21st century as well as the collapse of communism. I read somewhere once that in the last fifty years the world has gone from seventy percent rural to seventy percent urban. Anyways, Erwan didn’t drink and thus he didn’t drink with the other guys in town. A fatal flaw when trying to work with people. Especially in rural Romania. In fact, despite his noble intentions, men in the village had once threatened to kill him and burn his house down.   

    As Confucius is aware, drinking socially is an important ritual in almost every culture. It seems important that rather than abstaining from a somewhat un-Gentlemanly activity, Confucius instead chooses to imbibe. That he never drinks excessively, as noted in 10.8, is the Gentlemanly quality of his partaking and the ultimate understanding of ritual. Drinking well is such a fine line in society. The art is often viewed it as the sign of ultimate masculinity but also can be the destructor of lives and family. I think Confucius would see the ability to drink appropriately as more moral than abstaining.  




Comments

  1. Krishnan VenkateshApril 5, 2022 at 9:37 AM

    Great point. Montaigne says the same thing. Getting drunk on certain occasions might also be appropriate -- although there is surely a spectrum even in drunkenness. I think he stays to the end because he wants to make sure the elderly get home in one piece. Even in drunkenness there is ren.

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