Posted on July 15, 2008 - by Lance Ong

Clubbing Culture: The Pleasure Poison

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I am an anti-clubber, meaning I disdain the clubbing environment. Clubbing is often portrayed as a cool activity, and anyone who doesn’t club is ‘un-cool’. I disagree. I think clubbing is a breeding ground for a sizeable chunk of society’s problems. And the people who get sucked into the clubbing culture are helping to spread the clubbing disease which is infecting more youths every year.

This extract from an academic essay I once wrote explains this potent cultural poison…

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Party Culture and the Pursuit of Pleasure
Dance clubs, trance clubs, discos; karaoke night clubs, pubs and bars; casinos and gambling dens; strip clubs, brothels and other seedy entertainment. These are the usual venues for people seeking an escape into the sense pleasures. It is also where youths get exposed to the damaging vices of society – alcohol, casual sex, drugs, gambling, and violence.

Friday night in Melbourne is also known as party night. Youths stay out till the wee hours of the morning shaking their heads in trance clubs or downing pints of beer at a bar. If they’re lucky, someone attractive of the opposite sex makes eye contact and casual chit chat begins. This follows with some non-intrusive touching to indicate sexual interest, and lots of whispering in the ears, the loud music being the excuse for this entrance into personal space. The combination of alcohol, loud suggestive music, and someone whispering in your ear is enough to give the average youth a high. But someone may offer to take them to the next level by offering some ‘dance drug’ like Ecstasy (methylenedioxymethamphetamine), which causes euphoria and hallucinogenic effects.

Youths exposed to such a culture without good grounding in moral values and principles are likely to find themselves swept away by the party culture and its plethora of vices. Overindulgence in any form, always damages health. Youths taken to extremes in their pursuit of pleasure, may find themselves with alcohol, gambling or drug addictions, unwanted teenage pregnancies, sexual infections, injuries from fighting, depression and thus suicidal thoughts.

Poison at Your Doorstep
The culture evolved to entertain metropolitan youths is the very one which is hurting them the most. These hangouts are the venues for the indulgence of vices and transaction grounds for people with criminal intent. In a culture designed to reward impulsiveness and promote instant gratification, are youths developing the necessary qualities to lead fruitful lives?

The world outside the home is not a bed of roses. Without proper guidance and role models, youths are likely to be seduced by a hedonistic culture, where money is the key to pleasure. Ultimately, youths are just seeking to better their position in life, striving for ideals they believe to be worthy. The problem comes when they are taught to believe in the wrong ideals; to have desires which are meaningless; to search for fulfillment where there is none. Risking health and well-being in their pursuit of pleasure and instant success, metropolitan youths are in grave danger of entering a culture they may never escape.

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Clubbing comes with a lot of smoke, alcohol, head-bashing music, and raucous individuals… but why are so many people participating? The driving force for the clubbing culture appears to be (1) sex drive, (2) the need to appear cool and be one of the in-crowd (peer pressure), and (3) love of attention from the opposite sex (vanity and attention-seeking).

In our last article, The Clubbing Trap, we learn about people who go to a club thinking they can find love, but are disappointed time after time.

If you still decide to be a proponent of clubbing, you better know how to do it right. Let’s take a lesson from Uncle Chin and Uncle Same about Clubbing 101…

Clubbing 101 (Warning: Coarse Language)