The Perfect Humanoid Symbol, 16

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.