Healthy living and elegant living.

[Costi]

Because smoke is harmful and annoying to OTHERS? However, if a smoker asks whether he or she may light up a cigarette in my house or car, or at my table (sometimes while I am still eating, because I eat slowly and others often finish before me) I always say "yes" to keep the balance in their favour. It is a subtle matter of manners to know WHEN you can ask permission to smoke. As I wrote before, I know quite a few very considerate gentlemen who behave like perfect hooligans when it comes to smoking, because they simply can't help it! I think I already wrote somewhere on the LL about the anecdote with Bismarck travelling in the same first class compartment with an old lady. At a certain point of the trip Bismarck produces a cigar out of a coat pocket and, just before lighting it, asks the old lady politely: "Does the smoke bother you, madam?". The lady candidly looks with interest and curiosity at his cigar and replies: "My dear Sir, I have absolutely no idea: so far no gentleman ever thought of lighting a cigar in the same room with me!"
I swear to God that I am not in the least tempted to smoke. A little bit of smoke doesn't bother me much (except when I eat) and a lot of smoke makes me rush out the door at any cost. I often return home after a dinner out with friends while they continue their evening in a bar, simply because I physically cannot stand the level if smoke in those places. Similarly, I will leave early from any private party where the level of smoke begins to annoy me.
Before quitting I would avoid going anywhere I could not smoke. A two-hour plane flight was a nightmare to me. The cold sweat and permanent need to cough copiously kept me from enjoying a concert or a play. That's when I bought a home cinema system! However, going to the cinema is a different experience alltogether and I'm glad to have rediscovered it (I know a couple of cinemas in Bucharest where the titles usually keep the popcorn eating and mobile phone speaking "general public" away).

[storeynicholas]

Yes, I don't like other people's smoke right in my face much but, as I say, here (and owing to the climate), I smoke mainly outside. However, maybe I am privileged not to have to have gone into crowded, enclosed spaces and, in the places that I used to go no one's smoke was much of a problem. But even there the ban is in force - and I heard a rumour that there were plans afoot to ban it in certain London streets! This is, surely, getting out of hand.
NJS

[koolhistorian]

Sorry that I had opened the Pandora's Box with my example, but I see a certain degree of paradox in the Dutch legislation - the fact that you are allowed to smoke pot (marijuana and hashish) in the "green coffee shops", but you are forbidden to smoke tobacco. Yes it is an extreme case, but is also a good "reductio ab absurdo" example.
Going back to the original posting, I frankly think that there are two measures regarding tobacco consumption and other "harmful" things - for example alcohol - never saw written on a cheap booze bottle "the prolonged use of the content of this bottle will bring you cirrhosis, make you beat your wife and kids and loose your job", things that are more linked to the alcoholism than what is stated in the messages on cigarettes packs.
What bothers me is a society that tells me what to do - keep fit, be healthy, etc. - and does not trust me, and my intelligence as a human being, to choose what is fit for me. If you look at the photos or documentaries you will see that the most controlling regimes, left or right, are very fond of healthy living, because they owned you - going to another very extreme example, suicide was a crime in the Socialist world because your life was the propriety of the state! (BTW, I am no emo, and dont have suicidal drives).
About the debate on smoking, I think that a gentleman can, and will abstain from smoking when that will bother someone (regarding ladies, here my french education goes, if a lady wants to do something, a real gentleman will do his duty to assist her, sorry). Ok, I still smoke, but I can handle that in confined spaces, airplanes, etc. On the other hand, yes I am bothered by the constant propaganda about how harmful is smoking, but the lack of message about chemicals in my food, drinking water or the air I breath. Speaking yesterday evening with a friend who is an archaeologist, he was telling me that bodies starting with the 70's have totally different patterns of decay than those before that. Even if we cannot link that totally with the chemicals in our food - there are significant changes in burial habits round that time, I do not see why my smoking is more harmful than the fumes of a 5 liters engine on a SUV in the middle of a town in hot summer. And there is no government policy on banning 5 liters engine SUV's!
A good day!

[storeynicholas]

koolhistorian - I agree with what you say. The trouble is that people are being brainwashed and tend to believe all the propaganda. I wouldn't be surprised if Orwellian Big Brother-style subliminal messages were going out in the TV soap operas throughout the 'great western democracies' of the world - "do this; don't do that; believe this; don't believe that and, of course, buy this; don't buy that". On tobacco smoking - there is a lot of hysteria - depending on the extent of the habit - as you say, in moderation it is no worse than many things that we are exposed to - you're quite right about alcohol too. What I find most ironic is that the medical men and women that I know smoke like engines and drink like fishes. I like your reference to the totalitarian State demanding healthy living because the State owns the Comrades body and soul - pretty much like modern Britain then - maybe they will soon start victory parades with tanks and a goose-stepping march-past Garden Broom, standing there in white tie with his waistcoat hanging down to his knees - and, maybe a plastic-formed topper! Ah!! - do people indeed just get the governments they deserve?
NJS

[pvpatty]

What I find most ironic is that the medical men and women that I know smoke like engines and drink like fishes.
NJS

Reminds me of an old Dean Martin line:

"A doctor told me to stop drinking; I switched doctors. As Joey [Lewis] said, he's seen more old drunks than he has old doctors, so he's going to continue to drink."

[Costi]

With all these kinds of pollution surrounding us, smoking is a severe aggravating factor and perhaps the worst pollutant on an individual level. If all pollution suddenly disappeared, do you suppose smoking would become any less harmful?
Unlike many other polluting factors mentioned, smoking is a matter of choice and therefore the easiest to elliminate.
The gov.t does not regulate what we do with our own health, it regulates what we may NOT do to others' health, which only seems fair to me. My freedom ends where your freedom starts. There is no general smoking prohibition in force that I know of.
Those who don't like the death messages printed on cigarette packs may do like the chap in the joke who buys his morning pack and reads "Smoking leads to impotency"; he returns to the tobacco shop and asks: "Could you please exchange it for one with "cancer", please?"

[storeynicholas]

I like the Dean Martin gag, I have to say. I am also not sure that I want to live such a careful and joyless life that I end up still alive but immobile and dribbling into my gruel in a 'care home' at the age of 96 because, although life will have become, by then a total bore, I am too afraid to die. Another thing, though, on which I am not yet convinced: X's smoke annoys his friend Y who asks X not to smmoke. Out of politness, X extinguishes his smoking material. Now X is annoyed because he wants to smoke. All even so far, as I see it. the wquestion then arises as to the effects of 'passive smoking'. In 1986 I recall that they said that there was no reliable evidence that 'passive smoking' had any discernible direct link with heart and lung disease. What is the advance in technology which has changed all that in so short a time? Moreover, one of my grandmothers lived with a very heavy smoker for 40 odd years (OK he conked out at 63) but she went on to 84 - which is quite old enough - and died of natural causes. I know of many other examples. It might well be that if you cage experimental rats in an intensive tobacco smoke laden environment, they develop all sorts of ailments and enough to frighten the wind out of many gullible enough to be intimidated by body fascists - but, for example, I choose to live 40 metres from high water mark on an unbroken 20 mile stretch of oceanfront over which blows ozone and I am quite happy to take my chance on smoking a little in the evenings, after dinner - and if guests like the ones who raised an eyebrow at me smoking my cigarette on my verandah in the ocean breeze don't like it, then they must seek other company!! So far as you city dwellers are concerned - you pays your money and you takes your choice as they say.
NJS

[Costi]

There used to be a certain "hygiene" of smoking in times when people still had respect for each other. Perhaps your grandmother's longevity was also due to your grandfather not surrounding himself in a thick fog in the bedroom in the middle of winter with all windows shut. I must say your smoking habits are admirable, NJS - your cigarette on your verandah after dinner; anyone who raises an eyebrow to that must be insane. I therefore see no point in complaining about not being able to do it in confined public spaces. I also have an uncle who is almost 80 who never put a cigarette in his mouth, but has been suffering of asthma for the past 30 years or so because he worked in an office where everyone smoked (cause diagnosed by physician). The exception confirms the rule and we cannot take chances with others' health just so we may pursue our pleasures whenever and wherever we fancy.
As far as the state's business is concerned, I suppose the vast majority of smokers is not privately health insured, so they expect their smoking related diseases to be cured on the state budget when (not if) they appear. Now, if I want to build my house 40 mts from the high water mark, that's my business. But if I expect the municipality to rebuild it for me free of charge when the ocean washes it away, my neighbours could argue that it's their tax money that pays for my choice to build house there.

[storeynicholas]

Costi - on your latest - tobacco tax is a tremendously important source of revenue for the NHS in England and Wales - at least until recently the largest employer in western Europe - smokers pay not just for their own treatment but also for that in relation to (inter alios) those injured in drunken car accidents (their fault and others injured too) and those who are injured participating in dangerous sports as 'hobbies'. Secvondly, if our house were washed away anywhere in the world, I would not expect the local authority to rebuild it for us. However, the proximity to the ocean was not the point of my story and I do assure you that we are up a good slope (DV)!!!!!
NJS

[Costi]

I was hoping that! The house story was, of course, a parable aimed at illustrating the condition of smokers when they receive treatment. There was a series of "if"s there that made it a hypothetical case both with respect to it actually taking place (God forbid!) and to what you would do if it ever did.
As for smoking, I continue to think it deserves to be generally discouraged and only forbidden where it may harm non-smokers. Beyond that, however, I agree that what one does on one's own verandah is nobody's business, be it the state or anyone else.

[storeynicholas]

Costi - more often than not, we seem to reach a common ground!! as I say, I don't like other people's smoke in excess and don't expect them to suffer mine lingering in the air about them - and smomig in the house produces a sickening smell in the morning! Having said that the house seems safe, thesea often makes the verandah doors rattle, despite the fact that it is a steel-framed and concrete-floored and capped affair indeed, occasionally it sounds like artillery fire. I notiv=ced that you mentioned satin opera hats elsewhere - and I have just recalled that I once saw sometime racing driver Prince Tula's Lock hat of this type - very small and moth-eaten though it was. Anyway, this thread wasn't just suposed to be about the delights or dangers of smoking and there are other aspects - dangerous hobbies maybe - the question whether leading a wholly risk-free life is elegant?
NJS

[Costi]

I suppose the elegant life needs to be circumscribed to some higher ideals than one's own wellbeing. An egocentric life in which one is obsessed with one's own health and looks and cares little about others can hardly be elegant. Idem a life in which one struggles for posessions and riches more than one fights for ideas and ideals. In that sense I agree with you that ours are not heroic times.
To return to out top hat story, I think your silk plush weaver's ancestor (Goethe's, not the ones before who literally went to hell) is a good example of dedication to a noble cause, for which all human "sins" or shortcomings are forgiven. If we live for ourselves, we cannot live elegantly. Therefore, as long as the fact that we put our health or even life in danger is less important (to us) than the good cause for which we do it, I think the risk is perfectly acceptable.

[storeynicholas]

Costi! - so you think that the Weaver's Tale was mine, did you? You might think that - I couldn't possibly comment.....

As for the rest, I think that we agree on the essentials - all the rest are just trappings - nice to have - but ultimately just this and that really.
NJS.