Posted on 02/12/2005 3:18:52 PM PST by withteeth
Eating in a Manhattan midtown restaurant the other night, I happened to glance over at the bar area. People were perched on bar stools, leaning into each other's ears, making conversation; you could hear the pretty bartender's husky laugh halfway to the kitchen. I flashed on to a feeling direct from my teenage years - a longing to be part of that group of cool grownups connected to each other by faint but unmistakable sexual electricity.
But then I realised that something was missing: smoke. It used to unwind from the tips of our cigarettes and tie us together, then spread into a sheltering haze that made the tricky acts of flirting or making new friends a little easier. Without cigarette smoke, the people at the restaurant bar that night seemed a little too separate from each other, a little less relaxed than they might have been if the right to smoke in public places hadn't been taken away. Sharing a love of smoking used to unite us in a slightly illicit club whose members all took pleasure in doing something naughty; and now that our wings are clipped, a part of that camaraderie feels like it's lost forever.
We always knew that smoking was bad. You didn't need to be a cancer surgeon to feel the shortness of breath, see the stains on your fingers and teeth, the burn-holes in your Izod shirt - not to mention the horrific photos of rotting lungs. But in a way, that was the point. In part we smoked because it was bad - and gaining the right to choose between good and bad, and to know both sides in ourselves, in some sense represented the demarcation line between childhood and adulthood. Children had to be good; adults could choose to be. The fact that teenagers are still the largest group of smokers makes perfect sense: instinctively they know that being grown up involves exploring, and accepting, the good and bad parts of oneself.
That knowledge of good and evil was reflected in some of the great moments in smoking, especially the American film noir classics of the 1930s-50s, and in the great smoker/actors like Humphrey Bogart, Edward G Robinson, Jimmy Cagney, Tallulah Bankhead. Surrounded by a comforting, mysterious fog, these people were a complex mixture of good and evil, fear and bravery, arrogance and wisdom. All were capable of cruelty, but also of tenderness. You couldn't exactly call them heroes or villains; they were just people. Indeed, getting past their less honourable qualities and discovering their inner kindness was the arc of most of the movies they made. But whatever qualities they shared, there was one that they all lacked: innocence. They weren't kids. Good or bad, they knew what they were doing.
You could extend the adult/smoker theory a bit to understand some of Shakespeare's characters on the basis of who might or might not smoke. Lady Macbeth definitely would ('Out, damned spot!'); Macbeth wouldn't. Polonius wouldn't even allow smoking in the family chambers, but his daughter Ophelia might sneak a few puffs each day in back of the castle; and of course Hamlet wouldn't be able either to enjoy the habit or quit. Iago would smoke and like it; Desdemona would smoke on the sly but never with Othello, who - poor dear - must have had terrible asthma. Shakespeare himself? Undoubtedly a pipe-smoker.
But cigarette smoking wasn't only about good and bad; it was also about the awareness of death. (Clean-air fanatics might go much further and insist that smoking isn't about death but murder and suicide. That feels a little overwrought to me.) Though I gave it up years ago, I still miss it, and certainly don't hate those who continue to smoke. Partly thumbing one's nose at death, partly flirting with it, part defiance, part acceptance - each breath of smoke was all of these, and when we smoked together in bars and clubs, at parties or at home, the consciousness of our mortality may even have coaxed us into making the most of the limited time that we knew we had.
If smoking was about being grown up, the new Puritanism is about being a perpetual child And now the offices and restaurants of Europe will soon be as smoke-free as those in the USA. In terms of health, of course it's a good thing. A few people may live a little longer (if not necessarily more happily), and some of the nasty side-effects of smoking will be history. It's actually nice not to have to breathe stale cigarette smoke or to empty piles of butts out of ashtrays after a party. And I don't have any problem with the alleged threat to civil liberties: we live with a thousand ordinances, from traffic lights to forced vaccinations to fluoridated water that the state hands down in the name of public health and safety.
What worries me is the hum of panic that I sense underneath the public ordinance, a panic engendered by a cult of health that's taken so many forms over the past 30 years that it's become the single religion of much of Western society. You run across it everywhere: in our preoccupation with diet and exercise; the endless ads in the media - in the US at least - promoting new drugs for an increasing number of exotic diseases; and the inclination to turn all eccentric behaviour into a 'syndrome' that can be treated medicinally. While none of these is alarming in itself, they add up to a new Puritanism that turns the old paradigm on its head: now instead of tempting the Fates by being bad, we put all our efforts into being good. If smoking was about being grown up, the new Puritanism is about being a perpetual child, and living in a protected world that has never existed except in fantasy.
Maybe all this wouldn't be so terrible, if it weren't also profoundly anti-social. In a society obsessed with personal health, altruism takes a back seat to solipsism, risk a back seat to caution, generosity a back seat to the hoarding of wealth for a rainy day. In such a society, it's less and less likely that people will risk any sort of self-sacrifice to help each other - to help a homeless person out of the gutter, for example, or climb a tree to rescue a neighbour's cat.
There's also a grandiosity about the cult of health, which seems to imply that if one stops smoking, eats fruits and vegetables, and slims down to one per cent body fat, one can live forever - or at least until science figures out a way to successfully regenerate us in time for Judgment Day. What's missing is humility, the kind that the attack on the World Trade Towers or the recent tsunami might evoke - a realisation that no matter what we do, most things are out of our control.
Smoking or not smoking isn't the issue. It never really was, since as every non-smoking New Yorker knows, he inhales the equivalent of two packs a day just by breathing. What concerns me is the picture of who we perceive ourselves to be: self-involved children pretending that we can escape death by playing God the Doctor and Personal Trainer. Though smoking may not have been good for us, the camaraderie that went along with it made this journey more fascinating, and its end perhaps more bearable.
George Blecher is based in New York, and reports for a number of European publications about American politics and culture. A version of this article will appear in Voltaire, a new Swedish cultural magazine, in the spring.
Thought this was a provakative article, anyway...
Tobacco won't ever be outlawed because the state and federal governments have too big of a stake in tobacco sales. Well over half of the cost of a pack of cigarrettes goes to pay various federal, state and in some places city taxes.
Not that I want people to keep smoking, of course, but I sense a major cultural shift taking place. I do worry that in ten or twenty years I won't be allowed my reflective smoke in the privacy of my home. Hell, not even outside.
My late uncle who weighed over 350 lbs. dropped dead of a massive coronary at 55, leaving a wife and two children. He was miserable in his job and used the food to compensate. His story might have had a different ending.
A neighbor of mine has high blood pressure, high cholesterol etc. and has been warned by her doctor that she's at risk for a major stroke, but she disregards the warnings and heads off for her bacon/egg/sausauge/pancake breakfast every morning. Another neighbor, a woman who just turned 40, weighs over three hundred pounds and was diagnosed with Type II diabetes five years ago. A typical nightly meal for her: a half-gallon of ice cream, fried burritos, chocolate bars and pizza. I wouldn't call that evil, but I would call it a reckless disregard for life and a terrible waste. She will likely die of heart disease, but in the meantime we will pay for years of prescription meds, treatments for complications of the diabetes and life-threatening episodes in the ER. As a society, we can't afford this.
In short, if there is a certain amount of resentment directed at fat couch potatoes, I think it's well earned.
bttt
And for some people, food is their only pleasure.
People who get up to a certain weight really struggle, and it is hard for them to go months and only see a loss of 10-20 pounds. Kudos to those who keep at it, but that is a LOT of delayed gratification, and not all people are strong enough.
Aside from the resentment of couch potatoes, I still maintain that there is a fairly large number of health nuts who think that ANY eating of meats, sugars, or alcohol is flat-out evil. Moderation in everything is a good idea, including those who pursue a healthy diet.
We are all going to die someday. I for one see us surviving into the early hundreds for most of us at exorbitant costs to the next generation in a selfish attempt to cling on to dear life! (Maybe that is why the boomers having enjoyed all the nifty sinful lifestyles are now pondering if the new generation will be up to the task of paying their confortable retirement. Hence deny the next generation those very same lifestyles they enjoyed-smoking drugs, alcohol, sex, etc in order to have "healthy, no cost contributing workers" to their social security needs (Even if the next generation has to be poorer as a result!) But are we truely living? I for one do not want to live in a future where I have to show a health card to a bartender or waiter before ordering a meal or a drink. Imagine a world like that, "Sorry sir, but your blood pressure is a little too high according to health care standards, you must go home and refrain from drinking!!"
This Brave New World scares me. Does it scare you as well?
So, basically you are saying that people that don't know HOW to live, are trying to get people who don't WANT to live, to live the way they think life should be lived? :^)
I don't.
I don't think it's anybody's business what people do with their health.
For all you or I know, these folks have health insurance through their company, and they have paid for it their whole lives. When they prematurely drop dead, their social security will go back into the Treasury.
So, in effect, everyone is happy.
I'm tired of people harassing others for their personal habits, but not their morality.
It's f-d up.
You can't cure death.
I don't worry about it.
One UNDENIEABLE fact...smotkers stink!! It reeks off their breath and their clothes.
Smokers are nasty.
Going to go after those people, too?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.