Aimlessness as the group's binding agent
A group can be held together by the shared absence of direction rather than by a common goal. The same lack of purpose that keeps the members together also keeps them from moving forward.
Phan Ma Ba
3 ideas
Casual work as a way of avoiding commitment
Read small, temporary jobs as a way to keep life uncommitted, not as a step toward a career. Each job earns just enough to pay for the next stretch of leisure and drinking without tying the worker to any identity or future. Seen this way, informal labor is less an economic fact than a way of refusing to settle.
Shared drinking substitutes ritual for purpose
Repeated collective drinking gives an aimless group a daily structure and a sense of belonging that its members otherwise lack. The ritual sets the rhythm of time, marks membership, and fills the space where plans would be. That same structure keeps the drift going, because the ritual never asks anyone to change.