[ Post a Response | The Sublime Desire of Cigarette Smoking ]
Posted by M G F on May 29, 2012, 10:31 pm, in reply to "Re: Three main supports of the smoking requirement?"
Hmmm. . .
Are you saying yo can conceive of a time when smoking is no longer damaging, or when the harmful effects can be completely negated?
If the former, how would that affect your enjoyment of smoking? If it was no longer risky, if you could no longer feel the effects of relentlessly fouling your lungs with smoke, if you no longer knew that with every lungful of smoke you inhale you are increasing the chances that you will die of a smoking-related disease; would you still enjoy it? I'm pretty sure I wouldn't.
If the latter, if you still felt the effects, but knew that, ultimately, it wouldn't get you, would you still have the same desire to smoke? I'm not sure I would.
While I would love to have the stamina of a physically fit non-smoker my age, I get off on the Risk of smoking, and without the occasional reminder of it, I'm not sure I would appreciate or enjoy it. I have previously equated the pleasure I derive from the Risk of smoking with the pleasure a rock climber derives from the risk she takes knowing that the wrong move could send her to her death. To take the analogy a little further, I don't think the climber would enjoy climbing nearly as much if she knew that even if she fell from some ridiculous height, it wouldn't really be a big deal.
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