When we shape matter to express our non−material self, such as with art, everybody wins; when the world shapes our non−material self into thinking, feeling and behaving like matter, such as when we betray our honesty for thirty glittering dinar, everybody loses. When we win, we become more and more free; when we lose, we become more and more slaves; and what makes us win or lose is whether we are cause or effect: we aim at being cause over the world, the world aims at making us effect, that’s the bottom line. From this stems all that part of culture and thought about defining and fostering ethical values and principles, such as honour, which is instrumental in teaching one to be proud of one’s attitude and ability to produce survival. Basically, all those values and principles are telling you is: as things are, you are here to survive and make everything and everyone survive; to make it, you have to be cause, not effect and that’s it, period. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word is… be cause. And what is addiction but hopeless effect?

Second, addiction to what: food or poison? You may say that living beings in this world are addicted to breathing, drinking and eating, but if you wanted to change that you’d have to reach and modify the heart of the laws of physics and nature. Otherwise, since nourishment brings survival to living beings, does it deserve being called addiction? There’s a clear−cut distinction here, and it is that between help and betrayal: not only air, water and food bring life and poison brings death, but in order to bring death poison disguises it as life. Suppression as usual: exploiting one’s drive to live and perverting it into a drive to die. The mechanisms of poison addiction is quite exact, and it’s, as I previously described: artificially creating and exploiting a degrading need that did not exist in the first place. It’s the swindle perpetrated with criminal protection and nicotine addiction: you damage people and force them in a lower degraded state, then you exploit their drive to regain the original state, selling them the cause of the disease as if it was its cure, selling them dearly a tiny bit of that which was their own in its entirety in the first place, while you ensure they never realize the truth but on the contrary remain sided with their torturers and fighting their rescuers.

And, both as the grease and as the irony of adding insult to injury, the whole scheme will be topped with the oppressor posing as the authority, the benefactor, occasionally even the victim of the ungrateful “beneficiaries” who dare to bite the “helping” hand, should any victim ever dare to object to sheer suppression. Is there a worse example of betrayal disguised as help?

The presence and the absence of addiction are best compared graphically: the X horizontal axis indicates time, the Y vertical axis indicates the state of the individual, so the line on the graph indicates the state of the individual at any given moment, be it more or less positive or negative. Let’s draw the trends of both an addicted and a non−addicted as they face the very same situations: first, for some time life is normal and unvarying, then some source of stress steps in and life worsens, and then that stress continues since, with life unvarying at a new lower level. The trend of the non−addicted, say, begins at plus ten, remains steady at plus ten as long as life is normal, decreases to plus five when stress steps in, then remains steady at plus five as stress continues, and that’s it. On the other hand, the trend of the addicted, say, begins at plus ten, too, because in the beginning there was no addiction; then when the individual becomes addicted, the trend changes from steady to saw tooth shape: it decreases from plus ten to minus five during abstinence, it increases from minus five to plus five during consumption, then it decreases from plus five to minus five during next abstinence, then it increases from minus five to plus five during next consumption, up and down, up and down, going around in circles in a hopeless loop. And thus far life is still normal; when stress steps in, the saw tooth trend continues, the only change being that the ups and downs decrease from plus five and minus five to plus four and minus six, to plus three and minus seven, and so on, until, say, zero and minus ten; after which, when stress continues, the saw tooth trend continues with those ups and downs of zero and minus ten. And this is but an optimistic example: in actual fact, given a steady level of surrounding conditions, addiction and its ups and downs are quite likely to slowly but inexorably worsen from zero and minus ten to minus one and minus eleven, to minus two and minus twelve… Finally, the addicted often seeks relief by increasing the dose, which only quickens the sinking, like struggling in the quicksand.

The compared examination of the two trends on the graph highlights some facts: One, the state of the addicted is always worse than that of the non−addicted, at any given time, worse than it was before the addiction, worse than it could and would be without the addiction. Two, the state of the addicted is further worsened by the stress of being never allowed to count on stability, and inexorably subject to an incessant succession of ups and downs, a little ball captive in a pinball machine, totally effect. And in the long term being totally effect is not devoid of effects… adverse effects, if a bit difficult to detect as it is the very observer the one that worsens. Three, things worsen even further when stress steps in; outer stress and stress caused by the addiction somewhat amplify one another, again worse than it would be without the addiction, based on the outer circumstances alone. Fourth, the addicted does not realise despite all such evidence. How come?

The whole trick on which the criminal swindle of addiction is based is that the addicted sees only one side of each saw tooth in the trend; incredible as it may seem, he or she sees only the increases and looks away from the decreases. Even in the beginning the individual sunk into addiction by looking away from the fact that consumption worsened his or her state, until he or she got “inured” to it – that is, the addictive factor begun to overcome the revulsion; instead, it is that fact that sunk into oblivion since then. The addicted is subject to the abstinence inducing an abject craving for relief, and such is the pressure that the addicted grasps to the increase without the lucidity and the courage to face the fact that the increase is mere relief from decrease, and decrease is but decrease; the sense of getting lost astray in the ups and downs pushes the addicted to barricade within the narrow scope of the current increase, when the immediate present looks like the only bearable time span to yearn for, and forget about before, after, and all the rest. A cage whose bars cannot help but keep on narrowing.

And the trap, the cage is locked by the connivance of the victim alone. The only limit of an individual are his/her own considerations: the only limits are those one resolves that one has. So no barrier can exist unless one agrees with it; taking it for granted is but one form of such agreement. One may even never overcome it, but who cares: one’d be up to one’s honour as long as one doesn’t bow to it. And no barrier will cage us forever as a team if we pass on the baton and the torch well. So much for what locks the cage from the inside; now, what about the reasons to get into the trap in the first place?

Any addictive substance is plainly averted in the first place, or eradicated once introduced, unless one intends otherwise. So this is the second facet: the motivations to become addicted. Many of them exist, based on the humanoid faults in general, but I think it’s enough to roughly classify here: being conned by the criminal swindle, craving for social consideration, herd instinct, impatience, conflict, irresponsibility, apathy, and of course their combinations.

We’ve already discussed the mechanism of the criminal swindle once addicted, but it begins to operate even before addiction, when one thinks one is earning, not losing, by playing with fire and getting into the trap. Earning what, exactly, well… that more or less falls within the next motivations.

Many individuals crave for other people’s consideration (the consideration of themselves is built on that of other people, too): their admiration if possible, their dread subordinately, and at least, and anyhow, their attention; so first they target some social environment, and then they hunt for what’s “cool” – what gets such attention and consideration in it. I’m “cool”, therefore I am. As I said, in my humble opinion, the entire scope of human misery boils down to this common denominator: “winning” personality and “losing” personality overriding self. So guess what gets humanoid consideration, and thus what humanoids elect as their target? The “winning” personality.

And how do humanoids know one? By its distinguishing features from their viewpoint. So they seek it, survey such distinguishing features and put them on in order to attract either admiration, dread, attention. Unfortunately enough, “winning” personalities often play the tough, so that’s what gets imitated. Even more unfortunately, our evolution in this respect may stand some improvement: when we were cave men in an unconquered world, young warriors were put to the test of real dangers; now that we’re civilized in a tame world, prevarication supplants courage and young warriors short of real trials make do with asking for it; lacking a hostile environment to tackle, they turn against their fellows, and even against themselves, too, with antisocial behaviours, degrading of both others and of self, both destructive and self−destructive – addictive poisons being the perfect case in point. That’s what gets imitated. The more one puts oneself in abjection and jeopardy, the more one is “cool”. In the eyes of the unprepared, champing at the bit to be “cool”, the coolest are always the addicted.

Then the “winning” personality merges with the herd instinct. If one craves for consideration, then one probably abhors ostracism. The herd ethics is simple: right is what the herd does, wrong is what the herd abhors, and usually not just regardless of its real outcome, but rather inversely to it. History provides the percentages of how many times lemmings drowned themselves compared to how many times they rescued themselves, but history is a perennially endangered subject because of this very fact: after all, isn’t the majority the “winning” entity within a herd? In other words, a sort of herd within the herd, its quintessence. So much so that even if the herd within the herd commandeered the herd to destroy all food, it would nonetheless remain the “winning personality” in the eyes of the herd until the last one of them starved to death. This tends to endanger history as the truth of facts just a tad but… never mind; instead, let’s put on some of its distinguishing features; how? Being part of it, dissolving self into it. And history is paved by herd rituals one would slap oneself for if only one had the guts to break the spell and look at oneself in the mirror. But it takes courage, and it’s been often reminded that ganging up as a herd within the herd is quite its opposite.

Perverting the impulse to revolt against something into a Trojan horse is another suppressive textbook tool. Regardless of whether it is the revolt or its target that is fair, and regardless of whether the revolt is genuine or instigated, the impulse of the insurrectionists can be steered into a trap, out of the frying pan into the fire. That is the case with the crime against humanity perpetrated by a certain Edward Bernays, famous for his 1928 book, Propaganda: Bernays, among the fathers of the current point of view and ensuing studies and activities to manipulate people from behind their backs, when his customers in the Tobacco cartel saw a downturn in consumption about a century ago, since at that time this plague was a prerogative of men alone, orchestrated and staged a media campaign aimed at associating smoking to the emancipation of women. The women’s push to assert their independence against a conformist society was betrayed through a shocking demonstration, when during the New York City parade a “group of women’s rights marchers” lit cigarettes as “Torches of Freedom” before the conveniently informed press who eagerly broadcasted it as a “gesture of Freedom”. The criminal, blasphemous and fraudulent association of poison with freedom stabbed in the back with a clear message: those nonconformist and independent cannot but smoke. A message that still spreads suppression a hundred years later: those wanting to be sure they are on the “cool” side of life, whatever is currently in vogue as “cool”, cannot but be addicted to shit. United States politicians as well as Nazis are in debt to this Mr. Bernays, accused by a Supreme Court Judge to be “a professional poisoner of people’s brains”, and as a result today addicted women are often trapped in a doggedness even worse than that of addicted men. Such is the power of lies when packaged in a Trojan horse. One more example of how betrayal is effective to the very degree the wrong is great and the betrayal complete: the fuller of hope the torch, the more profitable its infiltration and perversion.

If you research rates of smoking, you find an inverse correlation between the social conditions, both material such as wealth and opportunities and non−material such as culture and the human qualities it fosters: the lower the social conditions, the highest the rates of smoking. That the less one can afford an addiction the more one is likely to be addicted is a well−known paradox. And this inverse correlation spans across both space and time: while industrialised nations, led by their highest cultural levels, break the spell, the developing world falls for that same spell; so much so that the World Health Organization has begun a Tobacco Free Initiative in order to reduce rates of consumptions in the developing world specifically. The very same scam starts to look worn−out in the presence of the human qualities fostered by culture and claims new victims in their absence; this shows how that between the highest human qualities and the manipulations of Bernays and his partners in crime and disciples is a head−on clash. Lucidity, consciousness, presence of mind and “winning” or “losing” personality are incompatible; after all, they cannot occupy the selfsame space: self.

By impatience I mean all those humanoid faults preventing one from having the full data base needed for sound evaluations and decisions. And this is not limited to youngsters’ impatience of adults, that leads them out of the frying pan into the fire: it is true that previous generations act as potential trouble sources by relaying against next ones all the suppression they received and identified themselves with, but they are also the depositaries of the scope of work already done, of the state−of−the−art whose ignorance leads the next generations to waste their precious energy in reinventing the wheel instead of using it to move further ahead out of the mud; moreover, the temporal dimension is fundamental in a data base to isolate similarities and differences, detect common denominators as well as their disguised instances, and in order to get somewhere one never knows enough, as demonstrated by the average calculus whose accuracy improves as the number of samples increases. What I call here impatience is a far more widespread scourge then merely among the youngsters, as previously described. And it opens the door to the ensuing scourges – and keeps it wide open, too. A bespoke door for the addiction mechanism, based on poor – false, biased, insufficient – information.

When it’s enough to hear someone say “Don’t do that!” to adopt it as a “Do it!”, this may be or may even be not the consequence of mere impatience and poor information and evaluation, alone. Afraid this may stem from conflict, too. If one reacts with the contrary, one is opposing, and one probably considers that which one is opposing somewhat of an enemy. And to think that individuals are born cooperative and willing to help and share in… the tragedy begins when they are refused. When it comes to one’s loyalty, to whom: to those who let you feel welcome or rejected? There’s more than meets the eye in accepting help: the world, the individuals in it, are falling to pieces for lack of someone to listen to them, and accepting help is a form of listening. You have to treasure and foster the drive of a child to help you and cooperate with you, because it is not only moving; it’s priceless: it’s almost the only thing you will ever have. So you had better invest in this the additional responsibility of seeing that you notice when he or she is trying to help you, of unlocking that willingness if stalled, of granting and allowing him or her to find his or her own way to help and share in, and of ensuring he or she is safe while doing it. Why? Because of the repayment for not doing it… Woe betide those you once wanted to help and failed! Woe betide those you once wanted to be with and refused you! So much devastating is our failure to help, to get our help accepted, that we can slide towards hating those we failed to help; so much devastating is our failure to share in, to be accepted within our fellows, that we can slide towards fighting those we wanted to be with. Here’s where too many of our children get thrown out with the bathwater: behind the barricades of hostility no one will sift through the words of the “enemy”, so whatever hard won wisdom and truth will be wasted: fought, forgotten, lost. If suppression conceals betrayal as help, stupidity mistakes help for betrayal.

Conflict may take the form of irresponsibility, too. Once resolved to be hostile, one doesn’t necessarily fight. At least, not openly. Pretty humanoid, and rather effect an attitude: whatever you choose, be assured I’ll choose the opposite. You busy trying to get through? Well, to hell with getting through: I am not. You cause, me effect! After which plenty of variations on the theme come in handy, from couldn’t−give−a−damn attitude to philosophical constructions to the effect that psychedelic ethics, bottoming out, cupio dissolvi (Latin for: crave for destruction), death wish are the cool way to go about it: from it’s no big deal to I didn’t ask to be born, I refuse to share in the responsibility of protecting and ensuring survival, of preserving the torch of life, and therefore I refuse the responsibility to preserve my own integrity as the basis for that, and I feel free to abuse myself in any irreversible way just for the fun of “seeing what it’s like”, as there’s no accountability whatsoever; not only I don’t care whatever happens tomorrow, to me or to anyone else for that matter, but if it ever happens it will be in spite of that life I could not share in… that sort of things, you get the idea. See whether all this really means not fighting those trying to get through, or just not fighting them openly.

Another form of irresponsibility is that crave to get high regardless (as “high” as the criminal swindle of addiction can take, for that matter) that reminds of the ant and the cricket. Any manager worth the title knows that the relationship between the output demanded of any machinery and its routine and emergency maintenance costs can be graphed, and the graphs prove that the optimum is around 80 percent of its potential: underneath it there is wasted potential, above that level maintenance costs snowball, because things start to fall to pieces, and sooner or later they will.

It has been said that the common denominator of dope is that all drugs are but poisons and all poisons follow this same scheme. A poison is an aggression against the body, thus the body reacts in self−defence, and the effect depends upon the balance of forces: a dose which is small for the defence capabilities of the body is perceived as a stimulating effect, due to the counterattack response; a dose large enough to throw its defence capabilities into crisis is perceived as a sedative effect, as the body begins to succumb; a dose large enough to defeat its defence capabilities is perceived as a lethal effect… by anyone except the subject. Taking into account only the spikes in the saw tooth trend of the addiction swindle, forgetting about the rest of the trend which is the most part of it and stays even lower, and that the “high” is only apparent after all, anyone “high” deep inside knows to be escaping rather than reaching. That highness may be straining the machine, not only above the optimum around 80 percent, but even well beyond 100 percent: it is comparable to extreme car tuning by fuelling their engines with nitrous oxide instead of air: more fuel gets burned so more power is reaped from the same engine, but it is at the cost of proportionally increased wear. The more above 100 percent and the more longer you put the squeeze on the engine, the sooner, more heavily and suddenly it will present the bill. But “cricket” individuals in such conditions couldn’t care less, or crave for just that.

Why does one start? Ever noticed how many report that in the beginning it was disgusting, until they got “used” to it? This means that in the first place it was disgusting, not good, and a rejection had to be overcome, when finally humanoid idiocy defeated common sense. Why doesn’t one quit then? Ever noticed the expressions, gestures, attitudes of the addicted before during and after the consumption? It’s abstinence, not elevation; it’s not from zero to plus something, it’s from minus something to zero… actually to still below zero. It’s irritation, frustration, conscience of a compromise with the lesser evil, it’s the nervous, obsessive, psychotic stride of a caged animal, venting against the cage bars the anger of the prisoner and the despair of seeing no way out in a vicious, hypnotic, robotic loop. And we do know how people are inclined to spend whole lifetimes in such hamster wheels, starting a new cicle every few seconds as if that new one could bring them where all the previous did not, don’t we? So, why? Because one is humanoid enough to side with one’s apathy.

All in all, all these points of view float in the same stream and in the same direction, and that stream flows into the sea of full−blown apathy. Have you ever mulled over apathy? It probably could be summed up in a definition, a concept, a common denominator: “Nothing can be done about it.” Or: “No one can do anything for anything and anyone whatsoever, never and no matter how; no chance, no hope and that’s it.” The initial short one applies to apathy circumscribed towards something specific; the ensuing longer one applies as things worsen and the epidemics of apathy propagates. Apathy is even far more dangerous a threat than the hostile passivity of the material universe. Because apathy is not inaction. The apathetic is actively being passive. The apathetic is causing his or her own being effect. The stillness is the result of hidden force applied, not of absence of force, and that hidden force is more than just a liability to others. Woe betide any sacrilegious infidel who dares to insinuate that something can be done about it. The apathetic is going to unleash all possible invisible weapons to destroy – that is, reduce to apathy – him or her, too. The heretic will be sent to so concealed a stake that he or she will soon be dust without even noticing it, because by then utterly convinced that everything, him or herself included, is but cold dust. Infected dust. A guy once said, “God is dead, everything is possible.” Well, it could be said, “hope is dead, anything wrong is possible.” Since in the realm of apathy nothing is possible and the defeat is complete, therefore nothing matters anyway so either anyone will do anything or will not do anything at all, as it makes no difference anyway. Who cares? Why caring since it is useless anyway? Apathy is the basic behind many human gaps even long before they become humanoid: it makes the infected shrug while sitting on the rail watching the incoming train. If that underlying basic remains unresolved, hardly the gaps above will unlock. And if apathy is giving up hope, then its cure is restoring hope in the individual’s eyes. That much hope restored in a given direction, that much apathy relieved and that much of its contagion circumscribed. That much under zero the state of the individual, that much mud there is to shovel up to merely have any chance to dig up any way out. Since ways out are all hidden above zero; the more one is above zero, the less hidden and more numerous they are.

Finally, as the appropriate pinnacle on top of it all, smoking is the addiction enjoying the most incredible impunity – that is, the most wrongfully advantageous ratio between the assault perpetrated and the resistance encountered: it is utterly incredible, even if not at all surprising, how the addiction having the widest filthy and abject social impact is the most tolerated, the most accepted, the most blanked. And it could be said that just as apathy constitutes a basic for any humanoid faults long before they kick in, smoking addiction and its spreading, impact, filthiness, abjection and tolerance not only begun long before the current carefully planned overall tolerance of any drug addiction, but most likely paved the way to it. So, while we analyse both aspects, bear in mind their ratio as well.

George Orwell had us notice how eventually one fine day the pigs hung a single commandment on Animal Farm: “All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.” Now let’s take stock of how all pigs – pardon – all poison addictions are equal, but smoking is more equal than others. There is no such thing as a better poison addiction, but there is such thing as a worse one: smoking.

In fact, it is easily ascertained whether smoking deserves the title of poison: you just need to research “substances contained in smoke” to dig pure poisons up, thousands of them, so I consider this aspect as understood. The point here is, the following aspects are peculiar to smoking, they are in addition to anything previously mentioned about poisons and addiction in general, and they exist as themselves, and they would haunt us even if paradoxically smoking did not harm.

Another shady side of smoking I consider here understood, as you can research it personally, are its particularly criminal implications tying up addiction, health and dirty profits: once ascertained the amount of money turned over by tobacco corporations, you may want to guess how much of it may be invested in making smoking more and more addictive, and all this keeping an eye to health in the background. And I consider understood as well that taking this side as implied here certainly doesn’t make it less shady.

Smoking is the addiction whose consumption, as an action in itself, is the foulest. Swallowing a pill, drinking a liquid, inhaling a powder, injecting through a needle, irrespective of what poison is being consumed, are rather harmless actions in themselves; a very circumscribed stink or bad taste or upset for the shot, the same that would occur for a medication, is as far as one can get. Quite not the case with smoking. In order to survive, a living body has a need even more basic and vital than water and food and rest, and that is breathing; without water or food or rest it can resist for a day, without breathing it can resist for a minute. That basic is the vital line assaulted by smoking, and smoke is so blatantly an assault in itself whatever poison it carries, that even a child avoids suffocation instinctively, and protests against the absurd of adults doing the very opposite. Sure, men and women alike, youngsters as much as adults, from the heights of their “know best” look down on the little child that tells them, “quit it!” Just as one reaps what one sows, and just as one accuses others of one's own wrongdoings, so the smoker reserves for those who stigmatise him or her that look of pity he or she deserves. Usually, while they pretend to be listening, they also have the nerve to continue doing just that very consumption, undismayed, shameless, and almost automatically as if they were hypnotised, which may well be the case. And sure enough, an individual hypnotised by addiction is the last to know what it’s like to be torn apart by the grief to see a loved one turned into such a hypnotised monster that turns against you to protect the horror as if it was nothing.

Indeed, those capable of smoking in presence of children or pregnant women, not to mention pregnant women and fathers−to−be themselves, demonstrate the extent addiction can distort and subvert awareness, common sense, importances, priorities and the sense of decency and of right and wrong. Incidentally, smoking in the presence of others is a vile act, but smoking in the presence of children is an absolute vile act, for a number of reasons: children are the most unaware, the weaker, therefore the most defenceless as well as the most receptive, looking at adults for models to learn, and the most liable to unwittingly absorb models of “winning” personality to surrender to in the future without even realizing what is really going on, or even unwittingly and innocently trying to keep alive a betrayal as if it were something good. If there ever was a case of setting a bad example, well, this is it. In my humble opinion, regularly smoking in front of one's children ought to be considered as reasonable grounds for suspending or losing parental responsibility. Should this appear excessive, what would you do if it was any other addiction instead of smoking? And if it also had the peculiarities of smoking listed here? Whether they do it out of hubris or helplessness, the truth remains they completely fell for the addiction swindle, and it is the “little child” the one completely right, the one they ought to learn basic wisdom from. But in spite of plain common sense, with an inverted Midas touch, the smoker turns into sickening infected filth everything he or she touches, beginning with self. Not to mention one’s deepest inner self some may want to call one’s immortal soul, this contagion proceeds from the vital basic of one’s breath, carrying on with one’s mouth, throat, lungs, fingers and hair, a degrading tide will expand endlessly and flood the whole universe: from one’s clothes, personal possessions and spaces, to those of any other, to everything and everyone, everywhere. The smoker, left alone and unrestrained, will not stop until the whole world will be turned into a perennial gas chamber and a packed ashtray. Ever noticed for instance how smoking accounts for a good 50 percent of filth on roads, pavements and the like?

Getting inured to degradation is a matter of graduation: from a limited scope to a wider scope, from intimate to public, from material to spiritual, every time it’s a short step and therefore not an insurmountable one. And then each step, once taken, crystallises; because while things worsen, the humanoid sees them bettering. Yesterday self and one’s clothes stinking of smoke were disgusting and unbearable; today one’s house soaked with smoke is the norm; tomorrow a world turned into a gas chamber will be welcomed and sought after and catered for if ever missing. Little by little, the hell becomes barely noticed norm, and then actively pursued heaven. And the smoker appears not to be appeased until this final stage is reached and maintained. Little by little the banality of evil creeps in.

Of all addictions, the smoker is the only direct plague−spreader: no other addiction assails the others directly. All addictions affect other people indirectly: the addiction degrades the addicted, then the others have to go through the fallout of degraded behaviour; colleagues get hurt, pedestrians get run over, relatives get beaten up, partners get ill, esteem and respect, trust and hope, break down and vanish. But no heroin addict, no cocaine addict, no alcoholic ever puts the poison in a sprinkler and forcibly irrigates others with it directly. Smokers do just that, though. Prior to the last couple of centuries, tobacco was chewed and spit into spittoons; its addiction was already a degrading and sickening plague, but the fallout others dealt with was still indirect, and nothing compared to the final weapon it became once set fire to it. Some of them initially revealed a remnant of decency by asking, “do you mind if I smoke?” The sensible answer, “I DO mind indeed, shouldn’t even need saying!” was never to be heard, overwhelmed as it soon was by the flood of blind beastly arrogance of the many usurping the whole atmosphere. Give them an inch, and they’ll take not merely one mile but all the miles of the world. What smokers commit is called coercion, subjugation, abuse, tyranny, theft, robbery. Clean air belongs to everybody, nobody must be allowed to usurp what belongs to everyone, but that’s exactly what they do to all of us.

There is something called passive smoking, but there is not something called passive drinking, sniffing, shooting up, is it? 100 percent of any other poison ends up into the body of the addicted; on the contrary, only minimally smoke does, while 100 percent of it affects others. And afterwards 100 percent of smoke lingers indefinitely in the world it infected, once again directly, while this is almost never the case with other poisons. Ever noticed any personal belongings such as one’s own clothes and spaces, but also other people’s and everyone’s such as closed and open spaces not one’s own, impregnated with heroin, cocaine, alcohol on a global scale, that is to say to the same degree of saturation that is the norm in many public places where smoking is allowed? And the degradation is such that the addicted utterly blanks both committing it and duly respecting others.

So much for the smoking’s peculiar aspects of qualitative nature; should it still look like a minor sin blown out of proportion, its further peculiar aspects of quantitative nature enter the balance now.

Should any heroin addict, cocaine addict, alcoholic or any other addict consume their poison with the frequency the smoker does, they would almost instantly end up in a straitjacket. It’s so disproportionate that no sane society would tolerate it with any other poison, but strangely enough they blank it when it comes to smoking. No other poison addiction extorts such a continuous toll; no other existence is more heavily haunted by the burden of poison consumption than that of the smoker and of those having the bad fortune of being around him or her. Just count how many times the smoker consumes the poison in a single day and compare them to any other poison; just count how much time within any 24 hours the smoker devotes to officiating the poisoning of self and others, and compare it to any other poison. As a result, smokers are guilty not only of turning themselves into monsters, regardless of their being such monsters or not in the first place, but also and consequently of turning life and the world and the existence into an abject nightmare, and of either ignoring or blanking or even valuing what it means to live in one while committing this crime.

That they are disrespectful towards others out of getting inured to degradation is not an extenuating circumstance, but on the contrary it is an aggravating factor. Oblivious or careless culprits, smokers are not aware of – or just blank – what it’s like to live constantly forced to breathe carefully, under the sword of Damocles of being stabbed in the back at any moment, and indeed being continuously stabbed in the back of your lungs. Not aware of, or blanking, what it’s like to live a life which is a continuous alternation without relief between enduring the torture while aching for its end, and then fearing for the beginning of the next torture, sure as hell in a hellish vicious circle with no way out. Not aware of, or blanking, what it’s like to live a life of apartheid, forced to choose between public places reduced to gas chambers and segregation from social life, monopolised and poisoned by them, out of despair, suffocation and loathing. All of these are abuses, period. It’s about a couple of centuries now that smokers usurped and abused the vital basics of clean air to breathe and clean places to live in, basics that belong to all of us. And the same two centuries it took us for the current laws banning smoking from public places; but in exchange for finally getting rid of some gas chambers, we now have to run the gauntlet at their doors. But even that is not a stable social achievement; on the contrary, we are subject to a creeping and relentless pressure as the smokers, left alone and unrestrained, will little by little but inexorably claw back everything they can usurp.

The peculiarity of smoking as to the amount of life absorbed by consumption itself applies to a less evident facet, too: the humanoid fault I previously nicknamed “impatience”. Behind every addiction there is the inability to confront something – that is, stand comfortably in front of it in order to perceive it for what it actually is in its entirety, and thus act as cause over it suitably, without re−acting and becoming effect of it – and the addiction is a way to blow one’s fuses to escape this having to confront it.

But while with other addictions this inability to confront remains somewhat confined within a private and circumscribed sphere, in that the addicted consumes the poison in some kind of secluded nook, and then gets out to try to face life and the world, the peculiarity of smoking as to consumption allows this inability to infect every moment and every minor issue in the smoker’s everyday life, so that he or she ends up unable to confront anything without grabbing on to poison, incessantly – a stage of degradation even more abject –.“Impatience” is usually not merely the inability to confront something isolated, but tends to spread everywhere in one’s state of being, and conversely it could be said that the basic ability to confront is that to be there at one’s ease and observe, decide and act as cause instead of effect, period – where “period” means not just toward any specific item or issue, but as a basic general and permanent ability and attitude in one’s existence –. And no other humanoid irrationality more than smoking and the share of life invaded by its consumption is the head−on opposite of this basic requisite of life, and demonstrates its absence in the addicted. As I previously said, all poison addictions are equal, but smoking is more equal than others.

Something comparable to smoking in terms of spread can be found, if ever, certainly not among other addictions but rather in the realm of Floods, cataclysms, plagues and curses; smoking deserves being considered one of them in its own right, and it definitely is, as testified for instance by the fact that a certain World Health Organization issued a report entitled, “WHO Report on the Global Tobacco Epidemic 2008”. Anyone can easily read up far and wide on the prevalence of tobacco consumption; far and wide meaning in time and space: the statistics of this prevalence through different times in history and different societies in civilisation. Alas, the statistics of prevalence of smoking are unequalled, and, alas again, unequalled at the dreadfully highest magnitude. So much so that, irrespective of whether you’re looking at the statistics or lifting your eyes to look around, the far too recurring and dejected thought remains, “But… hardly anyone escapes this nightmare at all…”

As a consequence of such a massive and oppressing siege, combined with our humanoid faults, our culture, our inner world, the basic scene we take for granted as normal and thus as a starting point for our points of view, are infiltrated, conquered, colonised and contaminated by the apologia of smoking and its addiction and of anything associated with it in every field, aesthetics and philosophy to begin with. Ever paid attention to what degree cultures are composed of merely assembled items? We usually expect some kind of logic connecting things, some may even appreciate it when particularly sophisticated, but our humanoid, associative side will accept as a perfectly valid logic the fact that things are just forced together no matter what, and that’s it. Some like to indulge in discoursing about the daring combinations of tastes, some gobble down anything as just the way it is. All of our whats, hows and whys are at risk; after all, commanding such a large part of the everyday life of the smoker and his or her victims, smoking does have all the time to do it and all the chances to succeed. Sooner or later, the amount of time, energy, attention – both aware and unaware –, of life absorbed by poison consumption has a vast fallout with many facets, on the life of the addicted and of the lives of others. Just like spittoons were elevated from foul garbage cans for rotten spittle to precious, meaningful and cherished objects, sooner or later anything connected to smoking undergoes the same “elevation” – and all this always out of that same simple humanoid cycle of bowing to what conned and overwhelmed us into effect – aside from the suppressive interested bad faith of addiction traders profiting from our degradation –. All our ideas of concentration, speculation, study, work, toil, pause, rest, relax, reward, distraction, relationship, discomfort, comfort, support, elation, emotion, serenity, appeasement – of any state in life, you name it – have been infiltrated and contaminated by associating them with consumption of this degrading filthy poison as the norm, or as the “cool” thing to go about it. This is stabbing not only in the back, not only where it hurts more, but stabbing almost everywhere.

When you look around, you can hardly find something not associated with – or rather not infested by – that nearly hypnotic and definitely subliminal association with the scourge of smoking; and this is not limited to the world itself, but it extends beyond the looking glass: whatever form of art and of media sends back to the world a questionable reflected image of it, and indeed the relentless omnipresence of smoking in that reflected image contributes heavily to multiply its obsessive presence, and to enrich it with irresistible connotations, in the eyes of the target public. The addicted to other poisons tend to hide and to be portrayed as hiding, too; the smokers on the contrary tend to usurp every possible private and public time and space, and to be portrayed accordingly, too, thus multiplying their invasion. As a result, not only the choreography of our lives, but that of those around us and of the models we’re all fed by media and artists as well, are all ruthlessly and uniformly shaped with no escape by the hypnotic ritual of smoking−related gestures, attitudes, behaviours and abuses usurping, perverting and degrading our lives, so that the capitulation of our besieged humanoid weaknesses is just a matter of time. Sure enough, considering how, as previously mentioned, artists have a leading role and are prone to that form of potential trouble source, of being effect, of shifting into the “winning” personality and side with the evils they – maybe – once detected and denounced, “artists” bear a heavy responsibility in the state of what they call “collective unconscious” – a fact which ought to persuade us to investigate the show business and its puppeteers behind such “artists”, incidentally –.

Each and every smoker, and particularly both smoking parents and smoking children, are betrayers of self, betrayers of one another, and betrayers of the community, in that they are being accomplices to the infiltration of poison instead of defending against this creeping enemy themselves, the community and its building block, the family. They are plain potential trouble sources relaying and amplifying suppression instead of detecting and stopping it. They are all betraying their duty, and particularly parents did not give life to children only to teach them to be addicted to filth, and children did not receive life from parents only to taint it with that addiction.

With the precious splendid talent of artists to hit the target and get a punchy message across, a recent public interest TV advertising campaign has recapped it so: “A smoker is a fool!” If only it were all; the smoker is not only a fool, but an arsehole too: one that dares to shit in the face of others, that offends as a divine right and as if it were nothing. Some say one ought to sympathise with the addicted as he or she may be so due to his or her troubles. Not at all. Because the non−addicted endures the very same troubles without usurping the air breathed by others and shitting in it. Smoking is an inhuman act based on a subhuman state. The smoker is a poor thing whose misery doesn’t deserve any simpathy, though, as it entails harassing others, other than self, to the extent of such misery. Therefore, in personal terms, the smoker does not deserve any mercy, because what he or she is capable of places him or her below any minimum requirements to deserve it. The only chance to give him or her is not personally deserved and it is that last glimmer that cannot be denied to anyone solely in the interest of society, to prevent it from facing the fatal consequences of the total and final loss of hope. But this does not imply in any way that society must confine itself to a passive attitude.

The smoker, whether suffering from “winning” personality or not, behaves as a poxy plague−spreader anyhow: wherever he or she passes by, the smoker fouls, infects, and then it’s up to the others to endure, to clean up if they wish, and it’s their bloody business anyway. So all these others should enforce on the smoker the discipline he or she deserves: first, it is up to the one who dirties to clean up where he or she has dirtied, and second, even earlier, it is up to the one who dirties to stop dirtying; hence, first, it ough to be the smoker to mind about avoiding contaminating and fouling, and instead he or she behaves as a poxy “winning” personality anyway; second, he or she ought to quit and redeem self from that degradation at once, and instead the smoker protects it with his or her, and those of others, life and honour.

Not unlike any other injustice and abuse, society must stop to suffer it and must refuse to do so. If someone pees in the well where everybody drinks, if that someone does it again, if that someone then keeps on doing it time and again, anyone is not only entitled to stop him or her from doing so, but has to, and at any cost, period. One thing is shitting in one’s own crapper and then leaving it filthy, another thing is shitting in the shared toilet and then leaving it chronically filthy, quite another thing is scattering one’s shit across the whole world like a farmer manuring fields. With just the negligible difference that the farmer is scattering fertilizing manure across his own fields, while the smoker is scattering poison all over the lives of others and the world, until turning it into a perennial gas chamber and a packed ashtray. One of the aspects of taking whole miles when given an inch is taking offence when stigmatised, which reveals the development being allowed of a typical aberrational mentality whereby oppression is a vested right. But smokers do not have any right to take offence; on the contrary it is us the ones deservedly entitled to claim and demand our right to breathe and that our fellows are trustworthy as members of society, and not weak points easily penetrable by trickery, degradation and suppression. Despite smoking being a full blown addiction, despite being a sickening action in itself, despite the smoker being a direct plague−spreader, despite its psychotic frequency of consumption and despite its epidemic social spread, all adding up to make it unequalled a plague, smoking enjoys an as much unequalled freedom−to−assault to resistance−encountered ratio – second only to debt money –. Again, you can detect it by comparison: just as much carefully as you should observe and study how the past and present world is working and doing under the weight of debt money and compare it to how it would without that lethal burden, you should observe and study the presence of smoking in it, and then imagine any other poison addiction having that same presence. Take each and every cigarette in the world and replace it with a bottle, a syringe, or something, and then estimate what the social response would be. Unless the social fabric, the average condition of the individuals, is equally degraded.

In fact, aside from the ethics level of the smoker, which needs no further comment, the very existence and persistence of such a scourge indicate and prove the inadequacy of another ethics level, too: our own, as individuals, as a group, as a society. Ethics is the alignment of intentions, of actions, to a purpose. Whatever the purpose – good or bad, sensible or insane – a group with a high ethics is one whose members ensure their intentions and actions are aligned to that purpose; a group with a low ethics is one whose members don’t give a damn. In addition to this fact, though, another fact is that good purposes and high ethics tend to align: many things like politeness, education and commitment are taken for granted in a high ethics group, while in a low ethics one their absence is; committing to meet high standards is the norm in high ethics groups, committing to lower the standards is the norm in low ethics ones; bad behaviour in a low ethics group is met with shrugs indefinitely, while in a high ethics one it is met with immediate dissuasion. Some call it discipline versus apathy, some other totalitarian versus libertarian, fact is a high ethics group has a chance to achieve the purpose, while a low ethics one does not, regardless. Ethics is an inescapable requisite, the quality of purpose too, and the place of things like freedom, justice and well−being is in the second; survival requires both sensible purposes and high group ethics; a group lacking either one goes down the pan.

And then I ask you: what kind of individual can do that, can go that length of degradation and abuse? What kind of person is one who not only allows self to be addicted, but to be addicted to a poison, and even to commit all the filthy abuses demanded by the addiction? What kind of an individual can do such a thing, and do it as if it were nothing? Or, what kind of condition an individual capable of doing such a thing, and of doing it as if it was nothing, is in? Capable of such an unwillingness to confront, of such self−harm, of such agreeing to be subjected to extortion, of such agreeing to be made effect? One who gave up one’s common sense even long before one’s wisdom, and humanity for that matter, and to that extent?

What are we going to expect of one who is holding tight to one’s coffin through nightmare and hell, holding tight to the very scam bringing about these very nightmare, hell and coffins to us all as well as to themselves? Do you think that kind of individual, or an individual in that kind of a condition, can be enough aware and cause to be up to the duty of constant alertness and constant willingness to fight back, expected of each one of us if we're to survive suppression and ptsness at all?

I think that consciousness, awareness, self control include how much attention one can master, how good, and where. Observe too many of those around you, both those totally absorbed by their airs and graces of being on the “cool” side of life where “things happen” and the planet revolves around them, as well as those on the abject side of life, rags and bones and souls dehumanised by intangible undernourishment: don’t they look strangely similar in some respects? What is it that is surfacing in their determinacy to do it all backwards in the face of common sense, decency, orderliness? And, in particular, don’t they let you think that if you take nicotine and alcohol away from them, you’ll have nothing left of them? Not only confusion is the lowest condition one can find oneself in, and this is the conditions they’re in; furthermore, there exists a state called sub−apathy, and this is the state they’re in. It is the state where one is sunk so deeply underneath apathy, where any hope to do anything worthwhile in any direction is so long gone, that any attitude, any social façade one puts on is totally fake, because underneath it one is long gone. Or maybe, even worse, one has swopped self for that fake façade, and now believes to be it, and here’s where one ends up siding with one’s vacuum. Every time a cigarette is taken, a being is blackened; every time a cigarette is lit, a being is blanked. Are we Men and Women, or ashtrays and plague−spreaders?

That the nicotine addicted sells his or her own mother for the next dose is proverbial; that he or she tramples on and abuses him or herself, his or her own humanity and decency, the whole humanity and the whole world with the abjection of addiction is the proverbial scourge; that he or she sides with his or her own torturers and fights against his or her own friends and rescuers to the last breath is the proverbial nightmare; that he or she does all this for the privilege of being betrayed twice and screwed twice, by swindle as much as by degradation, corruption and injury is the proverbial paradox; that he or she does such enormity as if it was nothing is the proverbial monstrosity; therefore, first among all drug addictions, that is, poison addictions, all sharing in such ignominy, smoking is the perfect symbol of humanoid unworthiness.

There’s another reason as well for the presence of smoking addiction as the perfect humanoid symbol on the scene of global suppression. The two most unbalanced balance sheets in the world, the two more criminally unbalanced exchanges that exist, once seen clear through the deception, are the debt money−infinite debt trap and smoking. In both cases, everytihing good in exchange for nothing good and everything evil; absolute betrayal disguised behind a curtain the victims refuse to tear. In my humble opinion, the debt money−infinite debt trap is the worst scourge hidden behind the scenes, and smoking is the worst scourge in plain sight on the stage; hence one’s attitude towards both is quite liable to be the same. So, in my opinion as well, anyone implicated in and responsible for the existence, use and spread of any drugs, any and all drug supporters and traders, first of all those implicated in smoking due to its topmost combination of characteristics exposed here, deserve a fate which is both of the same kind and but an inkling of the fate that the puppeteers at the top of the pyramid, those responsible for global suppression and its root tools, moneypulations, debt moneys and infinite debt traps, deserve, for the very simple reason that basically they are all perpetrating the same type of suppression. Addiction traders, and smoking traders first among them, are soul usurers; banksters, and their puppeteers first among them, are global usurers, of body and soul, of life and Earth.

Immediately under the top level of instigators – puppeteers, owners, boards, stakeholders –, all small employers, managers and employees of businesses operating in the area of tobacco industry down to the last labourer and tobacconist are much like nazi or communist soldiers: they are those who materially push people toward hell, gas chambers and extermination and pull the final trigger. As such, if they have a conscience awake at all, they hang in the balance of “mors tua vita mea” – “your loss is my gain”: shoot or being shot; even if only in terms of following orders and eat or refusing to comply and starve, they hang in the balance of having a conscience or burying it and, quite in addition and whether in search for justification or hiding or just out of humanoid misery, shift into the “winning” personality and saying, “that’s the way it goes, it’s the customers that crave and beg for it, if I didn’t sell it to them someone else would, and there’s no other way to make a living these days than selling abjection and death to my fellows anyway”, and the whole gamut of justifications within that well known riddle of the leeway left when surrounded by evil.

Smokers are the shame of mankind. Euphemistically speaking, the smoker is an idiot, a bully, and a betrayer. The ideal travelling companion. Especially in the presence of suppression. Smoking is inhuman and one has to be in a subhuman state to do it; it is the most stupid, abject and filthy thing one can do to self and even worse to others; it is the perfect symbol of humanoid unworthiness, and any hope is inversely proportional to its existence. A humanoid capable of such an absolute betrayal and infinitely stupid abjection is not only capable of anything – as anything is equal or lesser than the infinite – but will be committing it actually, infinitely and indefinitely; and such is exactly the case with ignoring, overlooking and tolerating the existence of suppressive intentions and actions and omissions of individuals being either suppressive or potential trouble sources – the basic cause –, of debt money – the basic suppressive foundation –, and of the infinite debt trap – the main resulting suppression –. When it comes to being serious with the real basics, the value of the addicted as a fellow freedom fighter is that of his/her addiction: much less than zero. The amount of hope, chances and ways out is inversely proportional to that of smokers and smoke in existence.

As I said, smoking is the perfect symbol of humanoid unworthiness. It is the perfect case in point of how much blindly, stupidly, ingenuously, and how stubbornly, arrogantly and faithfully the humanoid sides with his or her enemies and against his or her friends, and against self in the first place, and turns into a potential trouble source relaying and amplifying degradation and suppression. Can you imagine Jews captive in the concentration camps strutting, showing off and bragging about the numbers on their forearms? Can you imagine us all strutting, showing off and bragging about the “numbers of the beast” branded on our foreheads, hands, identity−and−credit cards, or implanted RFID chips, in an imminent future where we would not even be permitted to breathe without it? They say the number 666 is the mark of the beast, and perhaps it is; but smoking certainly is. And the infinite does exist: it is humanoid idiocy.

In my opinion, equating drug use with staying away from them is ethical relativism, and in view of the fact that our survival in this world is a concerted effort whose outcome is not a foregone conclusion, then ethical relativism is betrayal. But if that weren’t enough, considering the additional factor of the presence of suppression on the scene, such betrayal grows even worse. We happen to live in a world that does not allow for mistakes due to physical laws; if you throw yourself you crash, and there’s no return. But if that wasn’t enough, we happen to live in a world that does not allow for mistakes even worse due to the presence of suppression, PTSness, humanoid faults, non−ethical intentions, concealed or corrupted information. In such a world there is no such thing as a right to idiocy. No one has any right to be stupid. And no one has any right to be an asshole.

So what about the order of magniture of the impact of such a “right to idiocy”?