[ Post a Response | The Sublime Desire of Cigarette Smoking ]
Posted by vesperae Also consider that much of your current Personal SF “Mythology” centers on the idea of smoking “sneaking up” on the smoker and punishing her for what you like to think are her foolish rationalizations and arrogant denial of the Risks. The concept of a smoker having not only some awareness of the Risks that she is taking by continuing to smoke, but also experiencing some motivation of pleasure in taking those Risks, runs counter to the comeuppance that you enjoy fantasizing about. My motivations in discussing an alternative to your current nonsmoking, DS SF viewpoint are in no way to reduce the pleasure that you take in your SF, but are rather to explore some concepts that I suspect might alleviate some of the subtext of guilt that I read in some of your remarks, and perhaps to even increase the pleasure you take in your GF’s smoking, and in thinking about smoking in general. I’m offering these ideas in the belief that, if you are willing to consider them, they will almost certainly give you some new psychological “sex toys” to play with as you think about smoking. And I also believe that, if you accept these ideas, that they will ultimately take nothing away from your original Personal SF Mythology. In fact, I believe that these alternative ideas might even enhance and extend your original Personal SF Mythology, and again, ultimately give you even more pleasure! But…again, denial is utterly dependent on awareness of that which is being denied. And again, subconscious considerations… And even if there were real doctors who believed that one cigarette was “better” for you than another, doesn’t this implicitly acknowledge that filling your lungs with cigarette smoke can’t possibly be good for you? Given that cigarettes of that era were two, three, and even four times more toxin yielding than current brands, it must have been even more difficult to start smoking. How could any new smoker not be fully and completely aware of the toxicity, and therefore of the Risks and Dangers that they were subjecting themselves to? Older members of the SF Community often talk about starting smoking as being the quintessential step to a young woman seeing herself and being seen as an adult. Glamour and sophistication are adult concepts, as is the notion of the Femme Fatale, which is all about Danger and sexuality, all rolled up into one. But WHY is smoking associated with, and somehow symbolic of all these things??? To summarize my last…because there is this collective understanding that smoking itself is Dangerous, and in order to do it with poise, you have to overcome your body’s innate revulsion to embracing this reflexively recognized Danger, which is rife with all sorts of Dark implications and indicates mastery of the Will over the flesh. The not so subtle implication is that a woman who can do this can also probably do all sorts of other provocative things with her body. But the personal experiences related to smoking that every smoker experiences throughout her or his life haven’t changed. There might have been more collective social rationalization and denial of the Risks and Dangers of smoking, and this may have shored up the personal denial of individual smokers much more strongly than happens today, but it never changed the evidence of their own senses and instincts, or the memories of how they had to work to change the natural functioning of their bodies to become smokers. I believe that ignorance of the Risks and Dangers of smoking cannot be honestly claimed by any new smoker of any generation. I believe that claims of ignorance are really nothing more than expressed denial begging to be relieved of personal responsibility. Of course, among those living in the contemporary era, filled with ubiquitous AS public health campaigns, the elements of denial and awareness take on much more conscious and complex implications. So it makes sense that we have seen smoking rates drop as these AS messages have been increasingly prevalent over the years. Obviously, being forced into a fuller conscious awareness of the Risks and Dangers of smoking is something that many smokers and prospective smokers cannot comfortably deny, and have chosen to avoid. But what of those who continue to smoke? And especially, what of those who start smoking anyway?! Addiction to nicotine can explain only a part of continuing to smoke, and I believe that it is the least significant part, as M G F and I are discussing elsewhere in this thread. What I think is that, regardless of era and social level of conscious awareness of the Risks and Dangers of smoking, there will always be a certain segment of the population for whom smoking will present a Sublime Desire. And in our time, the potential for this appeal is especially strong and perhaps inescapable, and has to factor into the thoughts and feelings of many smokers, especially those who actively enjoy smoking. Understanding the “Sublime Desire” of cigarette smoking is perhaps a little bit like being able to visualize one of those computer generated 3D dot pattern forms that were a bit of a fad about 15 years ago. These 2D picture planes looked like a random collection of dots, unless you viewed the image at just the right distance and angle, and focused on just the right spot, allowing our stereoscopic eyes and brain to recognize the embedded pattern, revealing the hidden 3D form. While this is an admittedly imperfect analogy, it illustrates an important idea that I am trying to get at here, which is that we are wired to reflexively recognize and make sense of our world based on our own personal experiences. But when we lack certain experiences (like being a smoker), we can easily miss certain patterns and the significance of those patterns, because we simply haven’t had the opportunity to see them yet. I suppose that I am ultimately attempting to get you to look at these ideas in such a way that the equivalent of a 3D pattern pops out at you, because I believe that if you do, what you see will give you a great deal of pleasure. * * * * *vesperae
on April 5, 2007, 9:30 pm, in reply to "The Result of Different Levels of Awareness"
Hey Pete, 
”Some interesting counter views to be sure. On some points we are always going to differ”
I think that most of the difference in our thinking about this stems from the fact that you are a committed nonsmoker, and I am a smoker who really enjoys her smoking. It is hard enough for most average smokers (without a SF) to wrap their heads around these seeming paradoxical ideas, since they are complex, often purely subconscious, and since most people don’t take the time to really reflect fully on why they feel as they do about smoking. (But again, I believe that subconscious motivations are just as, if not more, important than conscious motivations.)
”but thats always what makes it interesting to explore.”
Agreed!
”But here is one other consideration to take into account in your hypothesis. If you consider risk, and danger as a prime motivation or even a subconsious one in smoking, then what of eras gone by? If we head back to the forties, fifties and even sixties, very much golden ages of smoking. Many many women and men smoked and of course in these eras the health message was virtually unknown,”
Ah yes, “The Golden Age of Denial”!
”in fact in some cases cigarettes were even endoresd by Doctors.”
Paid by tobacco companies for their “opinions”, which were featured in advertising. And how many weren’t even real doctors, but actors in lab coats?
”Cigarettes were percieved in a very positive light, indeed for a woman of those eras it was entirely natural to smoke. Smoking was very popular and this danger risk element wasn’t really part of the equation and yet in those eras smoking was still associated with sophstication, glamour, femme fatale etc etc. Yes of course even without the hard sell anti message in those times a smoker would feel the effects of their habit of that I don’t deny,”
Your last sentence supports an essential point that I think is very important to consider.
”but bare in mind in those eras smoking was just as accepatble as having a cup of coffee is today. You could smoke everywhere and anywhere. Smoking was very appealing and that was without any relation to associations of danger, risk and the stigmas that we have today. Do you see where I´m going with this? Smoking was just as appealing even when the danger and risk element of today was unknown or at the very least severly downplayed in society unlike today. In those eras smoking wasn’t percieved as it is today with all the negative health associations etc but if anything was even more popular.”
I think that the only difference between becoming a smoker in “The Golden Age of Denial”, and becoming a smoker in the era of AS public health campaigns, is the extent to which smokers have the opportunity to be fully conscious of the realities of the Risks and Dangers of smoking.
Responses: