Smoking manners

[sartorius]

One of the fundamental difficulties with the matter of smoking and "manners" is that, whatever smokers might claim, it is usually not a question of smokers fitting in with non-smokers, but of non-smokers fitting in with them. (I know, because I used to be one of those smokers.) And of course the addict can be a short tempered and impatient fellow - often someone who finds it rather difficult to understand why anyone should object to his own daily ritual.

There is nothing prigish, dictatorial or self-righteous about objecting to something that can be noxious, distracting and unwelcome. Most of us would feel entitled to do the same if someone in our vicinity was behaving rudely (however that rudeness was manifest, as I have illustrated elsewhere). Unfortunately, the insidious effect of addiction tends to affect the judgment of those responsible.

[marcelo]

One of the fundamental difficulties with the matter of smoking and "manners" is that...

...if one takes for granted that somoking is always wrong, there is no point in talking about manners...

(I know, because I used to be one of those smokers.) And of course the addict ...

A gentleman needs manners - it is, indeed, part of his being a gentleman - but the addict needs help, not manners.

[storeynicholas]

One of the fundamental difficulties with the matter of smoking and "manners" is that...

...if one takes for granted that somoking is always wrong, there is no point in talking about manners...

(I know, because I used to be one of those smokers.) And of course the addict ...

A gentleman needs manners - it is, indeed, part of his being a gentleman - but the addict needs help, not manners.

Nice points well-taken.
NJS

[Concordia]

If we invite a person whom we know to be a smoker, we will expect that he will smoke and therefore prepare ashtrays and place them in plain sight, as an invitation for the guest to feel free to smoke. If the guest knows the host doesn’t smoke and doesn’t enjoy the smoke much, he will not abuse.

Costi is quite correct except for this point: while this is perhaps the most appropriate way for good friends to settle the issue, surely they wouldn't need so much of a guide to manners. In all other cases, where there is no history of great friendliness, there is no need for a non-smoker to keep ashtrays about. Even if one were to argue that a non-drinker should maintain a bar, the principle breaks down for cigars and cigarettes, which leave evidence of their consumption long after the ashes have been cleared away and the lights turned off.

[storeynicholas]

Even if one were to argue that a non-drinker should maintain a bar, the principle breaks down for cigars and cigarettes, which leave evidence of their consumption long after the ashes have been cleared away and the lights turned off.

Even though I have said that I believe that the days of smoking at parties etc are probably over, I am not sure that I fully follow this bit above. Drinkers leave behind certain debris: dirty glasses, sticky, empty bottles, rings on tables and maybe spillages on the floor or rugs and even furnishings; and when the guests have finished fingering the finger-food, and set down their dirty plates, scattering crumbs as they go, they might start wobbling around and begin to finger the wall paper too; a cozy log fire in the grate leaves a smell and so do candles. Even though my Brazilian cigarettes box carries the advice that there are no fewer than 700 noxious chemicals inside (for all of which I have paid really remarkably little to consume), what is so terrifyingly rebarbative about a little tobacco smoke just once in a while? The aversion of some people nowadays to a little smoke is nearly of the degree that one might expect if Satan himself were arriving with a league of fallen angels, bearing flaming torches, lit in the sulphurous fires of hell itself! Surely, there should be a sense of proportion and give and take? - maybe, at least, a conservatory for the desperate or a terrace on a balmy evening?
NJS

[Costi]

Dear Nicholas,

Did you know that in Christian culture tobacco smoke used to be called "devil's incense" and tobacco - "devil's weed" long before science studied its effects? But we are here to see if we can redeem it!
I must say that, in my opinion, since smoking in society has a potential to annoy others, from the viewpoint of a civilized conduct it is generally forbidden and only permitted in particular situations, rather than the other way round.
The debris left behind by drinking finds its equivalent in ash dropped on the floors, cigarettes extinguished in saucers or coffee cups, burnt carpets and punctured armchairs from dropped cigarettes; but among social habits smoking is quite unique in the persistant odour it leaves behind for several days if not more. It often takes washing or dry cleaning the curtains after a party before it goes away. Which adds another dimension - the host's perspective and party aftermath - to my still unanswered question: what do we do when we host a party? Smoking allowed? Smoking unrecommended? Smoking in a room only? And of course, correspondingly, what does a smoker do when he is a guest in the house of a non-smoker, assuming the latter won't hang a "no smoking" poster at the door - smoke 4 cigarettes an hour like he does at home? Is it fair to consider that, if the host invited us, they should bear the consequences? Does this not mean abusing of the host's hospitality?

[sartorius]

sartorius wrote:
One of the fundamental difficulties with the matter of smoking and "manners" is that...
...if one takes for granted that somoking is always wrong, there is no point in talking about manners...

I didn't say (and I never have) that smoking is always wrong. I was making the point that smokers tend not to consider the feelings (or indeed the well-being) of others. That in itself is tremendously ill-mannered. What is worse (not to mention somewhat hypocritical) is the suggestion that objecting to smoking in public places is priggish, dictatorial and self-righteous.

sartorius wrote:
(I know, because I used to be one of those smokers.) And of course the addict ...
A gentleman needs manners - it is, indeed, part of his being a gentleman - but the addict needs help, not manners.

I agree that a gentleman needs manners. My point in mentioning addiction was simply to illustrate that manners tend to play second fiddle when one's body is craving nicotine. That is why there are those who still insist that regardless of the social and health related consequences of smoking they absolutely must be entitled to smoke whenever and wherever they like. These people probably do need help - if only of the educative variety. The first lesson should perhaps be entitled "Etiquette".

[storeynicholas]

Dear Costi,
Dear Costi,
Yes, I agree that it has, for long, been acknowledged that smoking is hazardous and might be offensive - otherwise, it would not have attracted these names and no one would ever have had to ask for permission to smoke in the presence of others.
I have suggested that social norms have swung so far that smoking has become just about taboo at parties.but I think that the general reaction to smoking now is a little extreme. However, there is no getting away from the fact, even for the most inveterate smoker, that it is largely an unwelcome exercise in the company of most people. Therefore, smokers should: smoke only outside; abstain - or stay away. Even smoking outside might soon be frowned upon: my parents used to smoke. My mother smoked maybe 5 cigarettes a day and my father might have smoked 40 a day, sometimes. They gave it up 30 years ago. On visits home, my sister and I were, after this, allowed to smoke in the house; then it became a single room and then it was outside only and now, even from outside, my father complains that it wafts in and irritates his throat!! It all just goes to show that there is no zeal like that of the converted!!
NJS

[Concordia]

Apropos of nothing much: great-aunt of mine once had a needlepoint cushion made saying "If you must smoke, please don't exhale."

[storeynicholas]

Apropos of nothing much: great-aunt of mine once had a needlepoint cushion made saying "If you must smoke, please don't exhale."

Some smokers are fascinating in that they don't seem to exhale any smoke at all. I suppose that they could still smoke at parties!
NJS

[marcelo]

sartorius wrote:
One of the fundamental difficulties with the matter of smoking and "manners" is that...
...if one takes for granted that somoking is always wrong, there is no point in talking about manners...

I didn't say (and I never have) that smoking is always wrong. I was making the point that smokers tend not to consider the feelings (or indeed the well-being) of others. That in itself is tremendously ill-mannered. What is worse (not to mention somewhat hypocritical) is the suggestion that objecting to smoking in public places is priggish, dictatorial and self-righteous.

sartorius wrote:
(I know, because I used to be one of those smokers.) And of course the addict ...
A gentleman needs manners - it is, indeed, part of his being a gentleman - but the addict needs help, not manners.

I agree that a gentleman needs manners. My point in mentioning addiction was simply to illustrate that manners tend to play second fiddle when one's body is craving nicotine. That is why there are those who still insist that regardless of the social and health related consequences of smoking they absolutely must be entitled to smoke whenever and wherever they like. These people probably do need help - if only of the educative variety. The first lesson should perhaps be entitled "Etiquette".

Dear Sartorius
I do apologize if I have suggested you meant something you did not explicitly say. But I had understood that the great battle between smokers and non-smokers (and, true, I am a non-smoker) was going on in another thread, to wit “Cigar bands - on or off?”, being NJS and Costi et alia the main contending parties, I think. Then, Costi initiated a new thread which I had understood took for granted that smoking, not being an immoral practice in itself, might be ruled by some basic principles of etiquette – or manners, if one prefers. But, again, even here the debate seems to concentrate on a sort of intrinsic immorality of smoking.
Once more, I do apologize if I implied something you did not mean.

[storeynicholas]

even here the debate seems to concentrate on a sort of intrinsic immorality of smoking..

This is it - smoking in public has suddenly become illegal, without any preceding immorality, as such (contrary to the case in relation to many serious criminal laws) but because it has been criminalized, the practice of smoking at all is now castigated as demonstrating moral obliquity instead of just attracting mild deprecation. It is an unusual example of morality following the law.
NJS

[marcelo]

...It is an unusual example of morality following the law.
NJS

“Law alone can accustom men to bow their heads under the yoke of foresight, hard at first to bear, but afterwards light and agreeable.” (Jeremy Bentham)

[storeynicholas]

...It is an unusual example of morality following the law.
NJS

“Law alone can accustom men to bow their heads under the yoke of foresight, hard at first to bear, but afterwards light and agreeable.” (Jeremy Bentham)

The faithful application of the Bentham idea here must surely depend on an objective judgment of the nature and the degree of the ill to be avoided and of the percipience of the foresight claimed and tends, in any event, to a rather paternalistic doctrine. I prefer this passage, from chapter 4 of J S Mill's On Liberty (Of the Limits to the Authority of Society Over the Individual:

The acts of an individual may be hurtful to others, or wanting in due consideration for their welfare, without violating any of their constituted rights. The offender may then be justly punished by opinion, though not by law. As soon as any part of a person's conduct affects prejudicially the interests of others, society has jurisdiction over it, and the question whether the general welfare will or will not be promoted by interfering with it becomes open to discussion. But there is no room for entertaining any such question when a person's conduct affects the interests of no persons besides himself, or needs not affect them unless they like (all persons concerned being of full age and the ordinary amount of understanding). In all such cases there should be perfect freedom, legal and social, to do the action and stand the consequences.

This principle perfectly applies to smoking in public, in my view. It should be in all a matter for each individual's sense of courtesy and consideration and for the application of social sanctions, for breach of the rules of courtesy. When a law interferes with the rights of a cigar smokers' club to smoke together in their own club, much worse is done than the offering of a discourtesy, the very heart of Liberty suffers a grievous blow and, once the hacking away at it starts, as we learn from Costi's other post today, it is not long before we will have to watch whether our underpants' elastic is visible above our Daks tops.
NJS

[marcelo]

...It is an unusual example of morality following the law.
NJS

“Law alone can accustom men to bow their heads under the yoke of foresight, hard at first to bear, but afterwards light and agreeable.” (Jeremy Bentham)

The faithful application of the Bentham idea here must surely depend on an objective judgment of the nature and the degree of the ill to be avoided and of the percipience of the foresight claimed and tends, in any event, to a rather paternalistic doctrine. I prefer this passage, from chapter 4 of J S Mill's On Liberty (Of the Limits to the Authority of Society Over the Individual:

The acts of an individual may be hurtful to others, or wanting in due consideration for their welfare, without violating any of their constituted rights. The offender may then be justly punished by opinion, though not by law. As soon as any part of a person's conduct affects prejudicially the interests of others, society has jurisdiction over it, and the question whether the general welfare will or will not be promoted by interfering with it becomes open to discussion. But there is no room for entertaining any such question when a person's conduct affects the interests of no persons besides himself, or needs not affect them unless they like (all persons concerned being of full age and the ordinary amount of understanding). In all such cases there should be perfect freedom, legal and social, to do the action and stand the consequences.

This principle perfectly applies to smoking in public, in my view. It should be in all a matter for each individual's sense of courtesy and consideration and for the application of social sanctions, for breach of the rules of courtesy. When a law interferes with the rights of a cigar smokers' club to smoke together in their own club, much worse is done than the offering of a discourtesy, the very heart of Liberty suffers a grievous blow and, once the hacking away at it starts, as we learn from Costi's other post today, it is not long before we will have to watch whether our underpants' elastic is visible above our Daks tops.
NJS

Bentham’ quotation, it seems to me, draws attention to this otherwise invisible aspect of every law: laws not only compel us to do something – or to abstain from doing something, as the case may be – by means of power, they have also the power to affect our identity, to modify our sense of what is “light and agreeable.” New, draconian laws regulating the public consumption of tobacco, the chewing version of it being left aside, may well have contributed to the emergence of an unreasonable sense of repugnance towards smoking (and smokers, by extension). Bentham’ quotation, however, does not taste of paternalism, for it seems to me that he does not mean that laws should be enforced in order to change individuals’ sense of what is agreeable or repugnant. This would be a downright un-Benthamite position. As for Mill, the passage you quoted supports your point, but remember: Mill committed himself to a very unreasonable understanding of the diversity of things which may count as “agreeable”. There are for Mill forms of pleasure which are intrinsically superior to other forms of pleasure. This is a quite un-Benthamite position, for Bentham assumed that push-pin was no worse than poetry. Now, for our discussion in this thread, it would be a matter of uttermost importance to discover: (1) whether Mill smoked; (2) whether he counted smoking among the superior forms of pleasure, (3) whether he wore a smoking jacket or something sartorially equivalent.