[ Post a Response | The Sublime Desire of Cigarette Smoking ]
Posted by vesperae Here's what I think: 2) Awareness of the Risks of smoking while smoking can only happen if you also maintain a certain level of denial about the reality of your personal Risk. (I tend to believe that this is the case even among many of the most hard core DSers.) 3) Awareness of the Risks of smoking is completely inescapable, unless you happen to live your entire life in the absence of smoking, or are mentally or psychologically very impaired. 4) Awareness of the Risks of smoking and a personal denial of the Risks of smoking is something that every smoker experiences for virtually all of her or his smoking career. However, either or both may exist on a purely subconscious level. 5) Our subconscious thoughts influence our behavior and our impressions of our behavior as much as, if not more than, our conscious thoughts do. 6) Certain recurrent thoughts might not even be apparent to our conscious minds, which means that we wouldn't be able to express those thoughts unless we became consciously aware of them first. 7) Certain recurrent thoughts might be apparent to our conscious minds, but are so disturbing that we wouldn't want to share those thoughts, and keep them completely private. I think we crave excitement. I think we crave jeopardy. I think we crave Risk. Even if we aren't consciously focused on thinking about these drives, or might prefer not to express our thoughts and feelings about them. * * * * *vesperae
on April 3, 2007, 4:42 am, in reply to "Re: A picture is worth a thousand words"
Hey Pete,
1) Denial can only happen once a real awareness of the Risks of smoking happens; you can't deny what you don't accept on some level.
I genuinely and sincerly believe that the vast and overwhelming majority of smokers (without a SF) wouldn't have started, and wouldn't enjoy smoking nearly as much, if cigarettes were as dangerous to smoke as coffee is to drink. Such a cigarette would have to be non-toxic, non-irritating, and non-addictive, and absolutely anyone could do it anytime and anywhere. Where's the challenge? Where's the initiation into a specific group? Where's the "Badness"? Where's the edge? Where's the fun?
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