Choice, Responsibility, and Death by Cigarette

BBC: US chain smoker's widow gets $8m

A US jury has ordered tobacco giant Philip Morris to pay $8m (£5.6m) to the widow of a lifelong smoker who died of lung disease.

The jury in Florida decided in favour of Elaine Hess, whose husband Stuart died of lung cancer in 1997 at age 55. He had smoked for 40 years.


As much as I hate cigarettes and the people who produce them, I disagree with rulings of this nature. If you smoke yourself to death, it's your own fault.*

Information about the dangers of smoking are now so widely disseminated that only the most braindead (among them, not surprisingly, Rush Limbaugh) can doubt that smoking is one of the most unhealthy things you can do to your body.

No one forces you to start smoking. And once you're addicted, many methods of quitting are available, ranging from the chemical (nicotine patches) to the subconscious (hypnosis). Millions of people have gotten off cigarettes and stayed off them. It takes willpower to suffer through withdrawal, but that's the price you pay for getting hooked on something so manifestly stupid in the first place.

If smoking deaths can be blamed on the cigarette industry, then the same logic can be used to award lawsuits to obese people who, ignoring all personal accountability, blame the bloated state of their bodies on the fast food industry. Both industries use aggressive marketing, and cigarettes and junk food both have addictive properties, but if you choose to put crap into your body, you have only yourself to blame for the results.

So although I enjoy it when Phillip Morris or McDonald's loses money, I don't like that it's at the expense of properly assigning responsibility. If we blame obesity and lung cancer on unhealthful industries instead of the people who support those industries, we will view people as passive victims instead of active consumers who got exactly what they paid for.



*The subject of the lawsuit discussed here started smoking in the fifties, when cigarette companies still used flagrantly false advertising (4 out of 5 doctors prefer Camel!), and when no one appreciated the full extent of the damage tobacco wreaks on the body. So it should be noted that he and the others who started smoking back then may have a warranted complaint.

February 12, 1809

"The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country."

- Abraham Lincoln, Annual Message to Congress, 1 December 1862


"We must, however, acknowledge, as it seems to me, that man with all his noble qualities... still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin."

- Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, 1871


Happy 200th to two of the greatest minds ever to benefit humanity!

Monks

BBC: Free Trial as a Monk

Religious orders are advertising for people to try being a nun or a monk for a weekend in an attempt to slow the decline of new vocations.

In 2007, Catholic orders had just 29 novices in England and Wales, down from over 200 in 1972.


Imagine a god who wants a select number of his creatures to become professional sycophants - cloistered ascetics who kiss His Ass from sunrise to sunset and make entreaties of which He, in his omniscience, is already aware. What arrogance! What massive insecurity! What a petty little jerk!

If god did exist, and was as great as everyone thinks he is, I think he'd want you to do something constructive with your life. Become a nurse. Join the Peace Corps. Give to charity. Coach Little League. Find something more imaginative than living a repetitive life of self-denial and prayer.

As far as I can tell, the last worthwhile things achieved by monks were the brewing of beer and the preservation of ancient texts during the middle ages. Other than that, monasticism has been perhaps the most systematic and successful waste of time in human history.