The Perfect Humanoid Symbol

The perfect symbol of humanoid unworthiness is smoking. If by humanoid I mean all those inner pitfalls we so jealously explain away as “human” (some of whom I tried to discuss above which I invite you to detect at work here as a revealing exercise), by unworthy I mean: first, not up to the minimum decency requirements expected of any individual; second, not up to the responsibilities one is assigned for the very fact of existing; third, thus undeserving of help due to lacking the first requisite to be helped: a sensible self. Unless one can gather enough self to stay or raise above that below−the−bottom humanoid state, there is no hope because there is no self, no mental alertness, no common sense, no will on which to found it.

First, smoking is an addiction. Being addicted is a betrayal of one’s honour and duties. Ethics consists in the individual bringing about the highest level of existence for the longest time for anyone and anything, in a world governed by the laws of physics, where brute force plus randomness result in chaos, and it so happens there is a sort of undeclared war between the two of them. The world is material and tends to chaos, while our highest self and values are non−material and bring order: even the humblest life form takes haphazardly scattered molecules and organizes them in orderly structures and flows, and we are assigned the responsibility to see that things are organized and working so that everyone and everything can flourish and prosper and continue to do so. The more order, the more life and potential; the more chaos, the less.

Human beings respect a flag of truce, physical laws do not; but if that rudeness wasn’t bad enough, the world fights this undeclared war not only by the unavoidability of the physical laws, such as when stumbling means falling each and every step we take without exceptions, but it fights it chiefly in an underhand manner: by making us more and more like it.