I’ve been discussing (here and here) a very destructive syndrome that continues to unfold in our culture. As each decade and perhaps even year goes by, we find ourselves becoming more and more the slave of fear. Of both individual fears – which steadily multiply – and fear itself, fear as a way of life. By now I don’t think we even realize how far down the road we have travelled, but increasingly simply take it all for granted.

Fear has a thoroughly crippling effect upon freedom of thought and activity. It distorts reality by forcing it through its own unacknowledged filters. Of course, when a particular manifestation of fear is sufficiently powerful it achieves the status of taboo. At that point, we can no longer rely on a straightforward rational approach to relating to it. Instead, we find ourselves needing protection from the protection, as it were – ie, since creating any kind of rational protection requires looking into the fear, and we’re unable to do this, we need an additional layer for distance. But sometimes even that isn’t enough, and we end up with a whole construct, each layer distorting the actual nature of things more and more, stifling more and more human autonomy.

The recent revelations about Orwellian NSA activity are one prominent demonstration of this, but the syndrome is endemic now. It can be seen perhaps at its most expansive and fully hysterical in the realm of sex and relationship more generally, but that requires its own series of posts at another time. For now, I decided to focus on a simpler, more compact topic to illustrate the dynamic, namely our laws regarding the purchase and consumption of alcohol (please see previous posts).

Here is the next layer we’ve created – and this is where it gets rather interesting. Again, we’ve already raised the age, nationally, at which we might purchase even so much as a glass of beer, to five years beyond the age at which we are allowed to drive a car. And we are one of the very few countries in the world with a drinking age so high (the vast majority have set 18). One would have thought it sufficient then, with such a high age to begin with, that enforcement involve a straightforward assessment of whether or not a prospective purchaser of alcohol indeed seems to be at least 21.

In other words: a liquor store employee simply has a look at the person who has next approached the counter (while warmly greeting them, it goes without saying…), and if it appears as though they might be under 21, she/he requests proof of age. Easy, right?

Well, it doesn’t appear so. Because we seem to have lost any discretion here whatsoever. Someone who looks 21 might actually be a mere 20, or 19, or at a pinch 18 even! And how dare such a person, who is trusted with driving an extremely dangerous vehicle, trusted to marry and raise children, trusted with the ability to vote for their political representatives, trusted with the option of joining the military of their country where they might have to make genuine life-and-death decisions, and as it happens trusted in virtually every other country of the world to decide what they would like to drink – how dare somebody so terribly young conceive of buying an alcoholic beverage! Now if only they were a mere day over 21, all would be fine. But a day under? Better that all possible danger of mistake be eliminated than that one … single … person under that literally magical number ever succeed in … purchasing a couple of beers.

So here’s what we now do: in virtually every store I’ve been to that sells alcohol, there is a house policy – often posted – of requiring anyone who appears as if they might not be over 30 to prove their age. Now think about what this is really saying for a moment. An employee of a liquor store takes a look at someone and thinks: “ah, that person’s definitely old enough to drink, he looks 30, 32 or something.”

But then they stop and ponder: “although, come to think of it, they might actually be more like 29, or even 27. And in fact, despite their looks, it’s at least conceivable that they might be 24, 23.” So, because the employee’s best guess is 30 or 32, that’s not good enough, because that person might just – one time in 50 or so – be ten or twelve years off.

And if they’re wrong, that one person in however many might just be someone who not only drinks that night but also drinks to impairment and then drives a car. Forget about the inconvenient fact that the next person in line, a completely acceptable 22, might well do the same thing of course. No, all we care about is that absolutely nobody, at no time and in no place, noways and never, who is a single day under the magic Number, ever evades that almighty number and gets to … buy a drink.

Again, I can’t even be sure I’m being understood here because we have gone so far down this particular road. But in any event now let’s continue even further down this path of reductio ad absurdum. I would argue we’ve already reached it with such a policy, but clearly even this isn’t good enough, because in a large number of stores which sell alcohol I have seen signs which state that anyone appearing to be under 40 will be asked to prove their age. Forty! Is there, honestly, a single human being in this country who genuinely appears to be 38 or 39 but is actually 19 or 20? A single one? Well, who knows, just maybe there are one or two, but…

So we can see what has happened. The penalties against having served a “minor” are so crippling to a small business that they have decided all discretion has to go out the window, and we are left with a hysterical policy that has left all common sense behind. Again, remember, the law itself is only indirectly connected to drunk driving in the first place. Drunk driving requires three components: alcohol, enough alcohol to cause impairment, and then the act of driving. The original law was passed to reduce a percentage of a percentage. A certain percentage of all people will combine those three components – and we can’t do anything about it if someone decides to do so. So we simply raise the drinking age as a measure far more politically acceptable than raising the driving age.

Finally, three times now I have come across 50 given as the arbitrary cutoff point – as per my photo in the previous two posts. And you know what? If there actually does exist a single human being in this country who appears to be just barely under 50 but is in fact 19 or 20 … then please give that person a drink! Just do it, on the house, absolutely! Because clearly they’ve been through way, way too much…