Beer rules

To be honest, I'm not sure why I have ever started this sentence... To be honest, I don't know why I'm even writing in english! Some things just seem right. Sometimes people need only a loose hook just to start... But I still don't know where to start, even though I have actually started! Let's see...

Getting to know people one has actually acquainted some time ago is fascinating. At least sometimes... And nothing fits better in a good chit-chat than a keg of chill, refreshing weissbier! Even though sometimes it might be better to talk about beer than actually drink! Don't get me wrong. I love beer! Yet talking about it has also a quality of its own. You get to understand what people mean when they say "bitter". And then you are the lucky guy to bring your favorite taste to mind and somehow actually taste it. Heh... Now that's a word I'm using a lot lately. "Actually"...

It's time that people came to realize that whatever is actual for someone might not be or most certainly IS not actual for anybody else in this world. Bitterness differs from bitterness and this kind of rule applies to every possible context or concept.

Talking about rules... People LOVE rules. And rulers... Rammstein have sung about it: "[...] Und halten uns an Regeln / wenn man uns Regel lässt [...]". Rules -and rulers- tend to fulfill man's need for order, to put it mildly. Or man's illusion of order, ACTUALLY.

What's even more irritating, especially when one has had one or two more litres than his usual amount of beer, is the misunderstanding this love of rules has caused, at least here in Greece. Any anglo-saxon has a small list of nouns in his everyday vocabulary, refering to "rule" or similar concepts with meaning assigned to each one accordingly, from which he may choose at any given situation. Here in Greece we have... TWO! "Νόμος" meaning "rule", "regulation" or "law" and "κανόνας" meaning "rule", "regulation", "norm", "canon" and "ruler", the instrument. To be fair we colloquially use the word "νόρμα" too, meaning "norm", yet not quite enough and not with the same connotation as the other two. And there lies a potential misunderstanding.

Using the word "κανόνας" both for "rule" and for "norm", people tend to mix up the two meanings somehow, taking for granted that a "κανόνας" is more often than not something imposed, like a rule, instead of something spontaneous, which is followed by the biggest portion of a population only because it is spontaneous, like a norm.

Well, it seems I'm getting carried away again... Might that mean that I love rules too? Or do I love to hate them? I'll say that's enough for now. Let's get back to beer.

Beer has a unique, almost infinite flexibility. In the most general sense possible, whatever is brewed via imposed fermentation of sugars, derived mostly from cereal grains, is a beer. Even sake, the japanese beverage, also refered to as "rice wine", is in fact more of a beer than a wine. And while people would think blonde, red, or ebony, pale or stark, full or clear when they hear the word "beer", not sake or, say, vinegar -and yes, there is beer vinegar- this is kind of foolish, because they'd miss a lot of flavour out there. Kind of my field of expertise, actually... Missing flavours... That's because of my sense of smell. Or rather my lack of it...

And that's what I believe has happened to people too... They lost their ability to smell. To smell every subtly different attribute in other people, every little daydream, every chance for change. That, I think, occured somewhere along the road of overpopulation. We've become so inconceivably populous that our accumulated reek and stink of loath and delusion has overwhelmed our fragile beauty. Not that there isn't any beauty anymore. There's just no way to see it, covered in fear and chagrin. So, people can now only sense the pungent and violent aromas. Not that they aren't beautiful in their own right, but people tend to mistake intensity for beauty all the more because of that situation...

Anyway, it's been a while and I have yet to find a solid subject to debate on. Maybe I'm forcing it too much. And that's really another thing that matters... Take it as a rule of thumb: norms work better than rules. Forcing something will get you nowhere eight times out of ten. Spontaneity rules! Of course some people thrive under pressure and there are also a lot of people who need rules in their lives, lest they fall apart. But then again they are the ones who have the innate need for rules. They are not forcing anything, even though they want to be forced.

I always liked a nice play on words. But this time I really think I'm getting nowhere with this. So I might as well just stop right now... Well, untill next time we'll contemplate on rules and impulses, beauty and the beast... Drink responsively...

Edit: 13/7/2023, 12:35. Yes, I've been revisiting my old texts every now and then. Those that I find irredeemable I just let be. But some, like this one, still look like is on the right path, even though a bit pretentious. The thing is I disagree with younger Elias on a couple of things. I'll mention two, the most glaring ones in my current opinion. With hindsight and a literal decade of accumulated knowledge, I can now safely say that norms too can very well be imposed, it's just a different mechanism. I was mostly talking about trends and tendencies, not norms. Of course, I wrote that text after having more than my usual amount of beer, so a bit of confusion was in order. Funny how I was confused on the terms and the matter I was accusing others of being confused -not that what I was thinking about how the word κανόνας is used wasn't true, it's just that I too was a bit fuzzy on some details. Number two is a bit more naïve -and, I'd argue, a lot more dangerous- and that's my reference to "overpopulation". Oh, that old bastard Malthus, how influential was he through the ages to younger me, even without having heard his name at that point. Again, what I was saying about people having lost the ability to smell is true, just not for the reasons I was supposing then. On the contrary, it is true precisely because of the imposed norms of selfishness, profit, misanthropy, and general cruelty, vulgarity and cynicism. Bear in mind, future me, that my current references to "selfishness" and "vulgarity" aren't based on any equally naïve and dangerous moralisms, they are but mere representations of the decadence capitalism has imposed on society. Now, as a final note, I will say that perhaps I found this little piece of writing salvageable because I recognised that what I couldn't see clearly then I can see clearly now by connecting the dots the right way and without invoking any imaginary causes this time. Funny thing is that at first it was just a hunch and only as I was closing this errata section did it dawn on me... Let's see what I'll find out in ten years, if anything...