‘We are inveterate pleasure seekers, promiscuously grabbing little jolts of ecstasy whenever and wherever we can,” believes Edward Slingerland, a professor of philosophy at the University of British Columbia, Canada.
Drawing on evidence from history, anthropology, literature, genetics, cognitive neuroscience, psychopharmacology and social psychology, Slingerland argues that our desire to get drunk “played a crucial role in sparking the rise of the first large-scale societies. We would
