the meaning of male vanity is to make good decisions and brag and boast about them and lecture others on them.

so why do you NOT DO IT then? Your answer to that is a personal thing, not applicable to anyone else.

vanity does not discount a good decision

im not asking anyone for anything. and i also do not need to be talked to about my individual choices over and over again as if that makes them more real.

never said it was futile. just that it does not help his personal ciscumstances and personal cig addiction

that's overly reductionist.

if life was that easy, we would have no addicts, everyone would be rich, and we'd always have nice weather.

Your choices are only as real as you choose to see them

wrong, I was being specific to one individual, not the whole of society.

because the sequence of words that (does not) constitute me is only an expression of a brain that is doing things on its own. the words come after the brains "decisions", which is just a description of its processes.

but you're enshrining the "personal" above all which is very culturally american and probably more so exacerbated in texas.

if you were in p.r. you'd probably be thinking more about the family. "smoking is bad for me but lets me work harder which is good for my family."

my brain is addicted. the cigarettes are there. the brain and the cigarettes are linked by smoking.

the brain and the body and the cigarettes are all linked in a commodity structure. people who are designated the job of producing profit use the cigarettes to access the brain and make it exchange money for them. the whole things a loop. the brain "craves" the cigarettes in so far as
smoking and the inhalation of the chemicals cause it to be physically altered. both objects are attracted to each other because of the death drive i suppose.

i do not need to smoke, i do not want to smoke. but people want me to, and the company that sells the things needs me to to continue existing.
all of us exist in a society that organizes itself so that i smoke and they collect the profit. it goes on and it causes disease, misery etc. it wastes lives and potential. it makes things worse for all of us.

we know that a brain like mine works in certain ways. we statistically measure what happens to it, and we find that it smokes. we are learning about how the process of addiction works - what causes and conditions make the smoking continue, and what would make it stop.

of course, finding out how to cure addiction is not in the interests of any company, because selling drugs is a faster way to make profit. r&d for cures for addiction is expensive. you need profit to try. and if you succeed, it only happens because someone thinks that this cure can become profitable. but if it fucks with the profit of loads of other industries, which are way more profitable, well then you're gonna have a fucking problem.

the ultimate irony would be them hiring an assassin that was also a junkie. quite likely really.

why the fuck would our society cure addiction? its just not as profitable as engineering new products to addict people to. which is what we are LITERALLY DOING. fucking burgers are engineered scientifically to addict us now! this is fact and not some conspiracy theory!

talking about free will is literally doing freelance work for these assholes!

talk about free will all you want. at the end of the day the statistics describe what really goes on. we can use the statistical data to free the addicted brain from its miserable trap.

it IS possible.

Don't diss animals like that, haven't you ever had a dog or a cat? They are not mechanical, they are sentient beings. They make willful decisions based on their own cognition and consciousness. Elephants can paint imaginary pictures. Apes can express complex emotions through sign language. Parrots can learn to do algebra. How is it that humans continually forget that, duh, WE ARE ANIMALS, so any traits we see in ourselves logically must also exist in other animals. We share the same physiology. Further, animals have skills we couldn't fathom. Echolocation? Thermal imaging? Sensitivity to electromagnetism or gravity? Sometimes animals make us look all the more stupid and helpless really..

That is also not entirely true. Smoking must be definition be more than just physiological addiction to the chemical of nicotine because if that were the case, then simply taking nicotine gum/pills would solve addiction, YET folks still crave CIGARETTES even when ingesting nicotine. Smoking is matter than of culture as much as biology.

you are right, but culture is not the whole picture. its a small contributing factor, but simply talking about culture keeps the idea of free will alive.

the neurological reality OVERPOWERS culture. you can hear all the bullshit about free will and positive thinking blah blah blah but the fucking addicted brain does not get such an intense sensation from that that its addictive pathways are deactivated.

the society is organized so that consumers live in pens that are like experimental labs allowing profit seekers to maximize the techniques used to get all the fucking cash in your hands into their pockets.

this is, believe it or not, a problem for all of us, even the people making the profit.

culture is the superstructure which is determined by the base constituted by the relations of production.

-alvin toffler (ha ha ha ha)

--

actually if you tell him that BLACK PEOPLE ARE TARGETS OF THE SMOKING INDUSTRY he'll see it better (and it's true, anyway).

or: the old sugar/rum/slaves triangular trade.

"you have free will, you can choose not to be a slave"

industrial capitalism is what really freed the slaves

agricultural capitalism created the American slave trade.

and there are still plenty of slaves in America. they are just hispanic immigrants sequestered in 4 bedroom houses with 90 others.

yeah.

the chinese slave labourers will eventually be replaced by machines.

these processes are not ugly and brutal, but they are real.

addiction is also slavery. 1st worlders are enslaved in this way more easily. the more money you can get at the more of a junkie you can become.

neurological slavery! thats what it is.

slavery of the brain to substances engineered or naturally capable of ensnaring the brain in systems where it is programmed to get money then buy the drug. the unwitting "self" - the vocal chords that take social responsibility for this brain are blind to whats going on inside their head. they are enslaved, and then the society acts as slavemaster through the individuals, hectoring and chastising them to both quit and enjoy at the same time. they pay to be hectored in this way. pay for the fantasy of overcoming with supernatural win that they are supposed to consume and then embody.

the slaves dream of quitting, so they can have that money in their pockets for a little longer, live in slightly better conditions, in a bit less savage chaos and squalor. meanwhile the companies engineer new drugs, their dealers await new shipments and supplies.

but they have free will! they could just walk away! decisions! no???

a dog will eat until it barfs from overeating, and it will do so over and over and over again. the only dogs/cats I have known that seem sentient and that seem to make actual decisions are the ones that people got high.

(I have a theory that primates ingested psychotropic substances which forced them to confront the mind/self duality, thereby creating the mental structure that humans use to such varied ends)

anyway db, you need to join the underground railroad and escape! then you can be free to march on your enemies.