Welcome to Maid Spin, the personal website of iklone. I write about about otaku culture as well as history, philosophy and mythology.
My interests range from anime & programming to mediaevalism & navigation. Hopefully something on this site will interest you.
I'm a devotee of the late '90s / early '00s era of anime, as well as a steadfast lover of maids. My favourite anime is Mahoromatic. I also love the works of Tomino and old Gainax.
To contact me see my contact page.
I recently visited a Muslim country for a short while through work, and although I was busy most of the time I did get to go out to look around during the evenings. Compared to other places I've been the thing that struck me the most was the strange atmosphere around the city at night, and by that I don't mean the hot and heavy nighttime air although definitely foreign. After a while I cottoned on to what exactly the difference was.
Alcohol has been core to Western civilization since the beginning, forming a keystone in our social system and even in our most holy religious sacrament: the holy wine and bread. During the expansion of the Roman Empire wine was used as a civilising force: where the Romans went they introduced wine; which, even before a military conquest, became prized by the local elites as a sign of status and sophistication: a notion the drink still holds today. To the barbarians of Germany alcohol came to symbolise power and knowledge, but it also more manifestly meant control. Just as the British used China's appetite for opioids to weaken the integrity of the Chinese Imperial system, the Romans used alcohol to convert the wild martial races of Germania and Britannia into civilised people (who could pay taxes). It's arguable whether the spread of alcohol has been positive or negative overall to Europe, but there are indeed many benefits as well as the obvious negatives. Alcohol breeds settled lifestyles, and, almost comically, a medium through which intellectual development can occur. Many philosophical and political movements started in the humble pub, at least before the introduction of tea and coffee during the renaissance. Socially alcohol also pacifies a populace, which may be a Machiavellian methodology but has undoubtedly been greatly beneficial for peace and prosperity in Europe and elsewhere. However one group of heretical warrior tribes from Arabia rejected the encroachment of alcohol altogether.
In a conscious rejection of the sanctification of wine by the Christians, the followers of Muhammad instead made it their mission to eradicate all alcohol from the areas they conquered, as they replaced the local elites with Arabs. Through Shariyah, Islam attempts to stave off the decadences and weaknesses of civilised society by enforcing traditions grown from a warrior caste in their elites, one of these rules being the total abstinence from alcohol. Of course this tradition has been upheld to various levels through their history, and today it is only really the petrostates of Arabia that keep it wholly, with countries like Turkey or Albania drinking levels of alcohol comparable to their Christian neighbours.
The city I stayed in seemed like one of the more strict ones, and thus the nightlife there was almost totally void of alcohol. Instead men congregate in various other types of establishment: weird cafes where you go to drink water and watch television, restaurants where you sit for 5 hours after eating, or the dark and dingy shisha bars, which is the closest approximation to an Arab pub. I enjoyed my visits there, they felt like a mix between a sports bar and a Victorian opium den; with men (no women) hanging out there for hours every afternoon and late into the evening. But I also think they're much less interesting than a European pub, with a slow and lazy atmosphere: not a place discussions of really any calibre take place, being closer in "vibe" to a university weed house. Even if abstinence has indeed kept the Islamic elites warlike and ready to fight, as seen by the nature of modern Islamic geopolitics, it has, in my opinion, simultaneously prevented development in their society through a misunderstanding of the warmth that alcohol brings to society. Hopefully the health maniacs of today fail in their mission to bring the same fate upon Europe.
