Smoking and the Cult of Health
Smoking or not smoking isn’t the issue. It never really was, since as every non-smoking New Yorker knows, he inhales the equivalent of two packs a day just by breathing. What concerns me is the picture of who we perceive ourselves to be: self-involved children pretending that we can escape death by playing God the Doctor and Personal Trainer.
He’s got more on smoking and the cult of health; I recommend reading the thing. I think this is complicated by a growing embrace of the totalitarian impulse...we are no longer content to live our lives as we see fit, but feel compelled to force everyone into our version of the ideal life. I suspect that this has as much to do with the failure to forcefully reject socialism as anything. We’ve always had busybodies, but it does seem like they’re legislating a bit more lately, with the excuse of misuse of public monies as an impetus.
But I’m wandering far afield from the sweet lament offered up by Mr. Blecher for a time I was lucky enough to see before it ended. It isn’t purely an ode to the days of smoke-filled bars...it is, I think, a remembrance of a culture that lived more much more in the present rather than being obessed to the point of sickness with the length of its future.
Via Jaboobie, who misses smoking sometimes, too.
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