Long, but it's a mass of thoughts in regards to this too...
Vuldari wrote:Not all that is desirable are things that a person should have.
And so? Cars kill people more frequently than anything. Most of us desire one - if it should kill so many and yet be so desired should we not have it?
Desire and want is all that manifests by our teachings - by being human. Don't be crass and assume that judgment on what is and what is not desirable is at the whims of the right and wrong assumed by one culture, one person, or one mind.
This world - in many shapes and forms, cultures and ways, have successfully managed for decades and centuries. Only upon learning something is 'bad' (as a kid or as an adult - regardless of whether or not it is or is not 'bad') we shun these things.
These things are purely elements of culture, desire, and the ways of thought we pattern - as all humans do.
Vuldari wrote:
Having your own personal slave that will do your every bidding without question or moral restraint could be a very desirable thing.
When someone has done something that upsets you, it can be very desirable to wish to cause that person extreme pain or DEATH in retaliation and revenge.
If you have one person you care about very much who has had a very hard life, it very well could make you very happy to take away everything nice from others who have been more fortunate and give it all to that one person, making all the rest suffer as they did just so that one can know what a life of luxury feels like. ...regardless of the reasons why the others lived well, or why the one lived so rough.
...all of these things could bring Genuine feelings of Joy and Satisfaction to those on the receiving end of these desires.
But...just because a thing makes you happy...does not make it right.
Right and wrong are subjective - as is happiness and sorrow. Hence why to some smoking is a lingering plague and evil while to others is a past-time shared.
It's a behavior - loved by some, found to be hated by others. But the world doesn't swing on the hinges of how right or wrong something is in our minds. The reality is far more complex than black and white, right or wrong and so is humankind.
Vuldari wrote:
Taking whatever you want, just because you want it, and not caring about or taking responsibility for the ramifications is barbaric and uncivilized.
It is a NECESSITY for modern civilization to survive and thrive, especially in a world where living space becomes more scarce every day and people are forced to get along in mass-group settings every day, for all Human beings to learn to act not only for their own desires, but for the mutual joy and benefit of the entire social environment they live in.
Responsibility is something we find righteous - and to some is a foreign ideal. It's an abstract thought no matter how much effort and meaning you wield into it. You bring the context of your learnings - not the rest of the world into play here. Barbaric and uncivilized as it might be in your mind those words themselves imprint a line of ignorance for an overly passionate argument.
For you it is important to have responsibility - for you it is important to not be 'barbaric' or 'uncivilized'. But these are not arguments of or for the world as they are crass and indignant form of subjective name calling - what do you say to the native tribes in the jungles of the Amazon or the far reaching spaces of Kenya? Are they barbaric and uncivilized?
What of the Roman Catholic culture? Or the Hindi and the Buddist religious cultures? I could go on but I think you get my point.
Nothing is necessary in this world - survival is not necessary, it is merely something we seem to do. Throw the thought of musts and needs out of your mind. Cars and buses, houses and the very foundation by which we all live is not necessary. These are wants of a CULTURE, of a WAY OF LIFE - their necessity is in our thoughts and minds and the patterns by which we've all been raised. The universe does not bend for us and give us 'needs' - we are bare babies in a world and we make do with what we know. We want water and food and shelter and love for survival - because that's what survival is - we might need them for survival but we must have a want for them before we care to survive.
Necessity is a big word - keep it in check and tread lightly when you start defining needs and wants. You bear more context to yourself than the rest of the planet and that is dangerous. It overstates human and life's importance.
And you'll note, should you ever pick a rock up and look underneath it at all the living things that dwell that life is cheap on planet earth and there's no cosmic law that writes a necessity for it.
Vuldari wrote:
Smoking is a selfish, greedy joy, that not only does not benefit anyone besides the person doing it, and only briefly for a tiny buzz...but results in a disproportionately high level of discomfort, unpleasantness, and even Pain and DEATH that effects far more than just the one smoking for a comparatively trivial bit of pleasure.
You could name names at smoking all day - you could jump up and down about greenhouse gases and global warming in the same light too.
Pain and death happen on their own accord - my cousin's currently in the ICU due to a car accident. Pain and death by driving a car too recklessly - but what a trivial pleasure it is to drive a car. And it's not a necessity for her to have a car - for any of us to - at least not in the scheme of outright physical survival, and even then, in this case, it's a double edged sword.
The car, even in it's awesomeness as a car, still has blinded my cousin and brought her to face death and unknown brain damage. Yet I don't jump up and down on the hoods of cars today and call them evil. Even if it was that she wanted a car, that she filled it with harmful pollutants, and drove around aimlessly - only to then, hurt herself in a car crash.
Pain and death are brought on by so many things we have and we do - it's that perspective that is something few address.
Vuldari wrote:
You state the fact (and yes, I don't deny that your story about her regretting nothing was likely true) that your Grandmother did not regret her actions as VALIDATION for repeating her choice of self destruction.
That is a laugh.
No, I harbored ill will still for many years - even after understanding my grandmother's lack of regret. Then I turned eighteen and decided to stop preaching, and I went and bought a pack of cigarettes. Terrible things they were I didn't smoke more than one.
Upon going to school I tried smoking Hookah at a friend's house. They are Indian and practices Hinduism and the Hookah is an old-time thing but they still enjoy it. I also was given some Indian cloves and began smoking them. It was a relaxing cultural thing we enjoyed and I continue to enjoy.
My grandmother would not have validated me smoking - no parent validates their children driving most of the time due to the choices they make could be their last on a roadway. But it is not for them to decide or for my memories of them to validate even.
They made their choice and I'll make mine. Validation is not a course, and my actions - laugh and judge as you may, are my own.
Vuldari wrote:
Saddam Hussein died for his crimes against humanity, and he did not regret killing all of those innocent people. He likely took great pleasure out of much of what he did, because he believed he had the "RIGHT" to do so.
Your Grandmother Died as a result of the crimes she committed against herself, and as a result you, your family, and all of her smoking buddies have had her stolen away from you sooner, and more painfully than she should have been.
Taking pleasure, and having no guilty conscience about committing such Evils against oneself, and those around you is absolutely despicable.
Yes, I can find correlations between my grandmother and Saddam Hussein too. They were both people, they both made choices.
I totally see how that makes complete sense.
If you're going to create correlations understand that that can be done a million times over in a stretch of far greater relativity - this, however, is not relative. And to have a correlation to make sense you need to not pluck genocidal criminals from the shelf and arrange them to fit every smoking old-timer on the planet.
Also, to clarify - my grandmother's death was not too soon or too late or too painful. She died the way she did, regardless of the thump that she died too soon or too something else. That's anti-smoker propaganda: you die due to whatever causation there is - there's no manifestation of destiny that she failed to meet or fate gone awry - the woman just died. The process happens. A lot, actually. Don't drum on it like it's more than something - she wasn't stolen from us as life involves death and is an action that plays second fiddle only to life itself. Hence the idea that she was 'stolen' from us is only for those trying to point fingers at something in life rather than letting the dead be as they are.
Evils against one's self is also a subject of opinion. Don't morph that into something as calling my grandmother Saddam Hussein - that's asinine and presents no real rationalized argument.
Call her a spokesperson for the average cigarette by smoking and you might be finding a correlation of behavior. But the slaughtering of hundreds of thousands compared to a few packs of cigarettes alone in her house - that's a misrepresentation of correlating subjects in reality.
And you, as an intellectual and apparently responsible person from what I've seen, ought to be ashamed of such a bizarre attempt at tackling an irrelevant subject matter.
Vuldari wrote:
Being "CIVILIZED" means taking responsibility for your own actions, and being a positive force within the community.
It is your moral and civil responsibility to make intelligent and beneficial decisions whenever possible.
To 'Deny' that responsibility is the foundation of "Benefitless Selfishness" ...aka EVIL. Tiny Evils are still Evils. ...and Evil can feel good...but it's still Evil.
IMHO "Smoking is EVIL"
Don't be crass! Responsibility is not inborn and being 'civilized' is a word used to downgrade other humans and is purely bred from higher-status people kicking anybody viewed 'less' human. Both are manifested by the world and cultures we live in. Communities make up what we owe and we give what we are patterned to give to the community - it's not a necessary thing. These things are not branded into the soul of humanity as some righteous uplifting of how we must be slaves to other humankind for justification of our lives.
Those thoughts might exist due to how we all manage to live our lives and access the internet but they're awfully fundamentalist in my book when taken so literally. A person is responsible for themselves and only for their actions should they infringe on others -
If a smoker smokes alone at home, or with smoker friends - fine. Be it as it may it's not the 'responsibility' for the rest of the world to run their lives.
If you want to call something 'evil' call the invasiveness of others 'evil'.
I have no problem with not smoking at bars or restaurants - I smoke with only those who smoke with me and are willing to stand there. Nobody's handcuffed to my side.
Be careful publish a hold on something you're so passionate about but cannot seem to manifest an idea that's wholesome. I understand and admire your passion - but put it into an argument not a crusade to make the world more 'civilized' in your eyes.
Vuldari wrote:
It is essential for "FREE WILL" to exist in its truest and most just form to allow anyone at any time to choose between actions of GOOD and actions of EVIL at their own leisure.
So...on a fundamental basis, YES...you do have every right to choose to smoke. As a citizen of any self-respecting nation that provides itself upon supporting the rights of "Free Will" to all its people, your actions are your own to choose.
However, this remains a double-edged sword.
For...just as you have the right to commit acts of greed and evil as you choose, it is also the fundamental right for the people around you to act in retaliation and defend the better interests of the populace as a whole, and to do so by whatever manner is deemed most appropriate.
Regardless of how much you may enjoy "Lighting Up" with your smoking friends, it has been a time proven fact that smoking has a disproportionately negative effect on all cultures, communities and people involved with it...which is why the majority fighting for the benefit of the community and the Human Race as a whole have made "Smoking Ban" laws increasingly popular year after year.
What is not a double edged sword? What is not as back and white as the cover might call it out to be? Pumping gas is an evil to some - using DDT is an evil to some - but you're naming an enemy as if though good and evil are standing in a lineup.
Evil and good are fabrications of humankind's thought - not essentials of being. It's like defining 'they' and 'them' but giving no real name to the enemy and friend in an argument.
Yes, there is culturally negative basins that exist - defined as interruptions to the cultural whole. The list is wide and long and varies culture to culture. In some culture's it is very evil to name the names of the dead - and upon death those people are to be forgotten and never spoken of.
Now, is that an evil? It could be. To you or me it might seem deliberately awful. To some people, especially Christian folk, it could sound revolting - we place gravestones out to mark and signal our dead - but for those that practice such a culture it is very real to those people. Though, for you they might be 'uncivilized' folk and need not be thought of as human communities should live. Ahem.
Regardless, smoking itself is not a detriment to a culture - and how would you obviously know? I spend my days studying culture - smoking can be used to prep for a multitude of things: an action before war, a relaxing element to bring about culturally induced hallucinations, a spiritual thing, and one of personal pleasure. Something shared only between friends, something used by lovers after intercourse as a sign of pride and satisfaction.
It's not by your standards that these cultures suffer - many of them today survive and thrive. Some are natives or 'the uncivilized' and some in today's Gotham.
Nothing is so black and white as good and evil - this world is far more complex than such an old ideal.
Vuldari wrote:
Yup...you have the right to act in disgusting, selfish and harmful ways...and I have the right to say, "Fine...but not in MY house...not in THIS restaurant...and not in OUR City. Go be stupid, gross and suicidal somewhere else. ...or get smart and learn to live better WITH us...Without Cigarettes."
And THAT is what you are right about - you are the ability to CHOOSE. Not in your house, not in certain places to harm others. That I utterly respect beyond a notion of a doubt.
But by that you should revel in the choice as yours - and you should respect the ability to not be so viciously judgmental when a choice is made by other's.
It's so easily to find faults in one another rather than respect the people around you - and that's all I am asking.
It is, however, not a necessity - as barbaric as it might seem to me.
Take this not as in a harmful attempt at correcting or judging you - I simply meant to key in my thoughts. I respect your way of thinking - I admire the fervor in which you place it. I understand where you're coming from - but I am tired of people sharpening a sword and shutting their ears and mind to the thought of accepting fellow man for their free choices - regardless of our personal judgments.
I want people to not demand other's change because we feel it's necessary for them to be changed - I want people to understand each other and respect that.
I know some of this is brazen and sassy - but I admire you're passion, I really do - and I have my own as does everyone else.
No harm is meant, and I am merely setting forth what I have to say - even if I am interrupting the seduction of ideal criminal activity in this thread.
And with that I say end-note - if you want to discuss this more I'm up for making a thread about it. It might be fun - and sassy - but I honestly don't harbor any malice about a good and passionate discussion.
