Why We Party

I had a conversation with a good friend this week about the legitimacy of going to parties when it seems like there are so many more productive things we could be doing with our time. The question had been raised by her younger brother who is a Stanford-bound engineer and is obviously critical of the hedonistic lifestyle which all of us ASU students doubtlessly lead.

So why do we party? What is it that causes people to want to consume positively unsafe quantities of alcohol which leaves them hopelessly hungover and often regretting things they said/did/ate the night before? And what causes to do this week after week after week?

A lot of people justify week-end partying with tried-and-true excuse of “just blowing off some steam,” and while I think that this is a legitimate aspect of the desire to party, it definitely doesn’t explain away all of the habits we see.

What makes humans human is their capacity for language. Not tools, not walking upright, but the ability to communicate ideas verbally: this is what makes thought possible,  art possible. Everything that we have built around us depends upon our capacity for communication. And, it’s what makes us human. Without language a man is just another animal, so a man apart, a man without language is no man at all. I think most people recognize this; they recognize that our social existence is what makes us who we are and shapes the way we see ourselves and the world around us.

For this reason I believe that one of the most important exercises of our humanity lies in gathering communally to share thoughts, ideas, and to a mutual recognition of coexistence. So that’s the framework the party provides: a common gathering place for people to share their ideas, to define themselves, and to be with other humans embracing the sacred social obligation implied by language. But, many of you may ask, why so much alcohol? It would seem that the presence of alcohol inhibits the sharing of ideas and does everything but facilitate communication.

The presence of alcohol plays an important social role in that it helps to ease the social stigmas, the rules for communicating, and allows people an excuse for breaking out of the shell of “who they are” while “trying-on” other types of action and attitudes. It let’s people say what they think (in vino veritas) with substantially reduced repercussions, and allows people to communicate themselves in a way freed from the constraints which they place on themselves when interacting with sober society.

Without the alcohol, people might as well be at the office. Alcohol gives people the excuse they need to shed their masks, to embrace a part of themselves which they are forced to hide most of the week. So partying is important for people in so far as it provides a social stage in which people can share themselves without the constraints and judgments of polite society. They can try out new ideas, new actions, new personas without being severely critiqued.

As human beings we are obliged to communicate who we are, to share ourselves with others, and to embrace our language as a tool for shaping each others’ worlds: late nights and lot’s of beer allow people to do that in a sense much more real than anything that occurs otherwise.