I don't want to ramble on in abstract terms (yet) regarding the ultimately relative nature of social trangression in general, but smoking is obviously a good example. When I was a kid, there were plenty of other little sub-cliques who forswore cigarettes and weed for whatever reason, yet nevertheless considered themselves just as hardcore as the rest of us in their own particular brand (and feel free to invest that term with its full array of ironic connotations, here) of 'rebellion.' I'll be honest: I started smoking simply because it was what we all did at boarding school. It was one of the most heinous Breakings of Rules imaginable... and therefore we lit up, in groups, when- and wherever we could realistically get away with it. Definitely, from my perspective at least, more an issue of conformity with peers than an individual choice to rebel against authority. I don't think anyone ever went off for a fag on their own.
That said, what kept me smoking for the next 18 years (and what got me up to the 40 or 50-a-day mark by the time I first, um, 'quit') was definitely the sheer weight and ferocity of anti-smoking propaganda with which I was bombarded as an adolescent. Smoking was one of the few things that every Authority Figure agreed I must never, ever do-- and therefore clearly something that was worth persevering with at all costs.
And folks: enter smoking is cool and you know it into Google, and you get approximately 23,900,000 results. Entering smoking is NOT cool, on the other hand, yields only a paltry 14,000,000. The numbers, I think, speak for themselves.
Yeah, a desire to rebel against all kinds of authority would probably be the reason I started too. There is; however, one aspect of the 'desire' to smoke on which we haven't really touched. Unfortunately, it's not a very palatable one either. Could the act of smoking be a subconscious desire to be closer to death? Depression and mental illness seem to have a link with nicotine dependency. A line from The Smiths song 'What She Said' has always stuck in my mind because of its bleak ferocity; 'What she said: "I smoke because i'm hoping for an early death and I need to cling to something."' The depression/smoking question; however, seems to be a chicken and egg one.
ReplyDeleteFrom another angle, a brush with death can certainly provoke profound emotions. People often seem to say they have found a new lease of life after a near-death experience and fans of extreme sports regularly chase this feeling by putting themselves in peril. There is a quote which goes something like (help me out people) "It's when we are closest to death we feel most alive." I definitely think there is something in that.
Hmmm... I kinda see what you're getting at, but it's important to contextualise the theory-- it wouldn't really have been an issue, say, 100 years ago, when practically everyone smoked and there was no real public awareness of the associated health hazards (or at least, certainly no undisputed link with terminal illnesses such as cancer).
ReplyDeleteIn terms of contemporary smokers, though, yeah: there's no use pretending that the health/lifespan issue doesn't play into it in some respect, and I agree that it can't always be as simple as straightforward aversion or else, hey, nobody would smoke.
From your views both out of lecture and in I knew what I was in for when it came to smoking and yourself and as I guessed you raise many good points.
ReplyDeleteSpecifically the belief that one of the main reasons to start smoking is to rebel. I would definately agree with this point as generally many people who choose to smoke do it to either spite their family, their friends, their partner or the government by breaking the rules.
As always your choice of images was impeccable and were a joy to look at.