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bngbuck
SFN Addict
USA
2437 Posts |
Posted - 08/28/2011 : 00:15:46 [Permalink]
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To any skeptic here who professes to be a humanist, or at least has a humanistic orientation whilst being atheist/agnostic with respect to religious faith.....
Is it hypocritical to be a humanist, with real consideration for the welfare and successful pursuit of happiness for other human beings, not needing the command or authoritarian demands of a God, or a Jesus, or any other superstitious delusion to force you to "do unto others as you would have others do unto you"; and to genuinely bear goodwill toward others as simply the right and logically sensible thing to do ----- and at the same time continue to commit slow suicide condemning one's own body to a slow and horribly painful death?
Should you not strive to do unto yourself as you do unto others and would have others do unto you?
If one's own well-being is as least as important and useful and worthy of survival as that of any other member of the human race, to which you bear no ill will; is it then not hypocrisy of the first order to slowly and deliberately inflict irreparable damage to your own body in the process of committing an extremely painful form of suicide?
Any young smokers care to respond?
Or, by demurring response, does one admit of being a blatant hypocrite? |
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Dr. Mabuse
Septic Fiend
Sweden
9688 Posts |
Posted - 08/28/2011 : 03:03:45 [Permalink]
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I'm not a smoker, but here's my view on it.
I suppose it's a question of weighing in conflicting conclusions of your philosophy.
On one hand, the humanist in me prompts me to comment "you shouldn't smoke...", on the other hand I need to respect my friend's free will and respect his choice to continue smoking.
If I start nagging, my friend will quickly tire of my nagging, and don't want to socialise with me: then I lose the opportunity to be the moral support he might need when/if he makes the decision to quit.
As for a friend of mine, his smoking is keeping him from doing other more unhealthy things to his body. I'd rather see him smoke. |
Dr. Mabuse - "When the going gets tough, the tough get Duct-tape..."
Dr. Mabuse whisper.mp3
"Equivocation is not just a job, for a creationist it's a way of life..." Dr. Mabuse
Support American Troops in Iraq:
Send them unarmed civilians for target practice..
Collateralmurder. |
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bngbuck
SFN Addict
USA
2437 Posts |
Posted - 08/29/2011 : 11:34:38 [Permalink]
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Dr. Mabuse......
| ....on the other hand I need to respect my friend's free will and respect his choice to continue smoking. |
Mikeal, you sound like you feel that this vicious, deadly addiction was simply a minor personality trait of a friend that you are too polite to offend - even though he is seriously and permanently damaging his body.
Would ypu have the same "respect" for your friend's free will if she had chosen to be a heavy heroin user? --- or to indulge in habitual and frequent use of cocaine? In my view, a true friend has enough genuine concern and affection for a friend to be strongly proactive when the friend's life and health are in danger. If a friend of mine is seriously hungry, I am going to buy him a meal without concern for whether or not I am embarassing him because he happens to be broke.
If the "friend" in question was yourself, would you still feel that you should not risk offending yourself by recognizing that you were suicidal and consequently make no effort to obtain professional help to avoid further harming and ultimately killing yourself?
Does genuine compassion for others not transcend the artificial dimensions of social propriety? It does in my philosophy, and I attempt to live my life accordingly. Nor do I believe that I am holier than thou - I truly believe in the validity and social efficacy of the Ethic of Reciprocity. And I strongly feel that every human being should have the same degree of respect for himself that he holds for his peers. |
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Hal
Skeptic Friend
USA
302 Posts |
 Posted - 08/29/2011 : 12:07:28 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by bngbuck
Dr. Mabuse......
| ....on the other hand I need to respect my friend's free will and respect his choice to continue smoking. |
Mikeal, you sound like you feel that this vicious, deadly addiction was simply a minor personality trait of a friend that you are too polite to offend - even though he is seriously and permanently damaging his body.
Would ypu have the same "respect" for your friend's free will if she had chosen to be a heavy heroin user? --- or to indulge in habitual and frequent use of cocaine? In my view, a true friend has enough genuine concern and affection for a friend to be strongly proactive when the friend's life and health are in danger. If a friend of mine is seriously hungry, I am going to buy him a meal without concern for whether or not I am embarassing him because he happens to be broke.
If the "friend" in question was yourself, would you still feel that you should not risk offending yourself by recognizing that you were suicidal and consequently make no effort to obtain professional help to avoid further harming and ultimately killing yourself?
Does genuine compassion for others not transcend the artificial dimensions of social propriety? It does in my philosophy, and I attempt to live my life accordingly. Nor do I believe that I am holier than thou - I truly believe in the validity and social efficacy of the Ethic of Reciprocity. And I strongly feel that every human being should have the same degree of respect for himself that he holds for his peers.
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I think you're confusing the obligations of "compassion" and "social propriety." Compassion makes me care about my chain-smoking friend, perhaps even enough to encourage him to stop. Social propriety both inhibits action (it's his business, not mine), and compels (don't stick me with your medical bills).
Another way to think about it: in the (admittedly rare) absence of social obligations, is mere self-interest (I don't want to lose someone close to me) sufficient rationale for aggressively intervening in someone else' behavior? I'm happy to say No, safe in the knowledge that "social propriety" almost always shows up, in one way or another: if you don't want to wear a motorcycle helmet, that's fine for you, but since someone else will be stuck cleaning your brains from the road, then no, you don't have that right.
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Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
Martin Luther King Jr.
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| Edited by - Hal on 08/29/2011 14:46:00 |
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bngbuck
SFN Addict
USA
2437 Posts |
Posted - 08/29/2011 : 17:07:59 [Permalink]
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Hal......
| Compassion makes me care about my chain-smoking friend, perhaps even enough to encourage him to stop. Social propriety both inhibits action (it's his business, not mine), and compels (don't stick me with your medical bills). |
We do have highly dissimilar views of both the morality and the practicality of intervention in the behavior of irrational people.
Short of exposing myself to the risk of injury or death, I would definitely elect to intervene in any way I could in any act of overt suicide I might witness. This is because I view people who purposely choose to injure or kill themselves as mentally unstable and possibly capable of recovery if they can be prevented from completing their chosen form of self-destruction. Death does not allow for second chances.
I believe that mentally disturbed folks who are prone to suicide are properly restrained and hopefully prevented from taking such action by legal authority in most states. I also believe it is correct and proper for laws to exist that make suicide a criminal act, because it empowers anti-suicidal action by proper authority. I strongly disagree with the viewpoint that "it's his business, not mine" when the business is murder - of which suicide is one example. No one has the right to murder any human being, including himself. Social propriety may have it's place in human interactions, but not when matters of life and death are involved.
People who intentionally smoke (particularly heavy smokers) are mentally aberrant because of their addiction, and also are not logically consistent in their behavior or beliefs, if they are not, in fact, psychopathological.
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marfknox
SFN Die Hard
USA
3739 Posts |
Posted - 08/29/2011 : 19:35:41 [Permalink]
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| bngbuck, I think you are exaggerating things quite a lot, especially comparing smoking to suicide or refer to heavy smokers as possibly psychopathological. No one disputes that smoking damages one's health and is likely to shorten one's life. However, it is also clear that many lifetime smokers live to be pretty old. So where do we draw the line on what behaviors are considered not rationally worth the risk (and therefore those who partake are "mentally aberrant"), and what behaviors pose a moderate enough amount of risk? How much are we allowed to drink alcohol? How much can we overeat or eat foods which are full of excessive fat and sugar? Desserts have pretty much no nutritional value and cause all kinds of health problems, so if someone habitually runs out to the grocery store for some Ben and Jerry's are they mentally aberrant? Perhaps I'm a psychopath because I regularly eat cheese even though I know it is entirely bad for my health, and do it anyway. |
"Too much certainty and clarity could lead to cruel intolerance" -Karen Armstrong
Check out my art store: http://www.marfknox.etsy.com
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bngbuck
SFN Addict
USA
2437 Posts |
Posted - 08/30/2011 : 00:31:35 [Permalink]
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Marfknox......
| bngbuck, I think you are exaggerating things quite a lot, especially comparing smoking to suicide or refer to heavy smokers as possibly psychopathological. |
Permit me to suggest that you read this article and review the footnote sources.| it is also clear that many lifetime smokers live to be pretty old. |
How many lifetime smokers out of the total population of lifetime smokers live to be "pretty old?" On what authority do you base that statement, other than your own opinion??
I flatly do not believe that "many lifetime smokers live to be pretty old" I will categorically state that a large majority of liftime smokers die of smoke-related disease much earlier than their normal life expectancy would predict. I refer to this 50 year study. There are many more.
Marf, I could literally fill several pages with links to statistical studies demonstrating the highly adverse effect that smoking has on life expectancy, but if you will take the trouble to review the two links I have given, I think you will get the idea. It is simply not true that "many" lifetime smokers live to be pretty old. A few statistical anomalies could be cited, but the numbers are very small compared to the number of smokers that die early and highly unpleasant deaths due to their addiction. This subject has been intensively investigated for many years and the combined data of many studies overwhelmingly demonstrates that smoking shortens one's lifespan by a very considerable margin.
I can personally attest to the pain and debilitation that heart bypass surgery causes. It takes many months to recover and is damned unpleasant. In the last fifteen years five different cardiologists have told me that a lifetime smoking habit (from age 14 to age 50) was the primary cause of the heart damage that I have suffered. Being in complete denial, I did not consider that my behavior was suicidal.
Smoking is extremely likely to cause a painful and highly premature death. These are facts known to anyone who cares to investigate. That being the case, I don't understand why you do not consider it a form of suicide. Certainly excesses of alcohol, many common foods, etc. are also prone to affect life expectancy, but not nearly to the degree that smoking does. And the fact that there are many other substances that can be abusively ingested does not in any way lessen or even have any relationship to tobacco's proven lethal effects. So why make statements like | How much are we allowed to drink alcohol? How much can we overeat or eat foods which are full of excessive fat and sugar? Desserts have pretty much no nutritional value and cause all kinds of health problems, so if someone habitually runs out to the grocery store for some Ben and Jerry's are they mentally aberrant? |
Of course people who consistently overeat unhealthy foods suffer from serious cognitive dissonance, if not genuine pathology. Intentionally damaging one's own body is at the very least pretty damn stupid. A majority of medical practicioners agree with these conclusions. The fact that unhealthy nutrition can also shorten one's life in no way diminishes the harm of smoking. Directing a bullet at it's designed muzzle velocity through one's head or heart is admittedly a much faster form of suicide, but that fact in no way changes the fact that you can also kill yourself wirh various poisons, tobacco being one of them.
Do you smoke?
[Edited to fix first link - Dave W.] |
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Ebone4rock
SFN Regular
USA
894 Posts |
Posted - 08/30/2011 : 04:25:29 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by marfknox
| I'm a psychopath because I regularly eat cheese even though I know it is entirely bad for my health, and do it anyway. |
What?! Cheese is bad for your health? Nu Uh! It is one of the three major food groups. You can do many things with it. You can put it on anything, eggs, salad, hot dogs. My favorite is deep frying it.
I am in shock, shock I tell you! |
Haole with heart, thats all I'll ever be. I'm not a part of the North Shore society. Stuck on the shoulder, that's where you'll find me. Digging for scraps with the kooks in line. -Offspring |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 08/30/2011 : 04:45:56 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by bngbuck
I flatly do not believe that "many lifetime smokers live to be pretty old" I will categorically state that a large majority of liftime smokers die of smoke-related disease much earlier than their normal life expectancy would predict. I refer to this 50 year study. |
"Almost half" is not a majority of any sort, certainly not a "large" one.[The researchers] found that almost half of all persistent cigarette smokers were killed by their habit... That article also categorically states that young people who smoke aren't being suicidal, in denial, mentally aberrant or psychopathological since if they quit by age 30, they will have the same life expectancy as non-smokers (in other words, any early damage done by smoking is not "irreparable," as you claimed).| Smoking is extremely likely to cause a painful and highly premature death. |
If by "extremely likely," you mean "slightly less than 50%."
You also wrote:| No one has the right to murder any human being, including himself. |
So you're opposed to terminally ill people killing themselves in order to avoid languishing in misery during the end stages of their diseases? |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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marfknox
SFN Die Hard
USA
3739 Posts |
Posted - 08/30/2011 : 05:46:03 [Permalink]
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bngbuck, yet another issue taken out of a larger socio-economic context.
I swear, it's like people are allergic to talking about class issues in a deep and meaningful way in this country. It's like the elephant in the room.
From your own links: "smokers die 14 years before nonsmokers." Of course nobody should be surprised by this. The stupidity comes in thinking that those 14 years of lost life are entirely attributable to smoking. WHO is more likely to be a smoker in the first place? Poor people are more likely to be smokers in the first place, and they are less likely to quit. We are well aware now of the difference in life expectancy between more affluent and poor in America, and we are also aware that this is caused by a whole myriad of factors, which include lower quality of health care, worse diet, and different types and levels of stress.
Dave already pointed out the other problems with what you've said - the risk is actually less than 50%. If you throw in that less educated/poorer people are also less likely to be fully aware of the full risks of smoking and also less likely to afford or otherwise have access to aids which help smokers kick the habit, and that better educated/more affluant people are more likely to have access to therapies and other treatment, or simply can afford to trade their smoking habit in for other less-taboo bad habits, like eating Ben and Jerry's. Oh, and let's not forget the fact that because of economic segregation, poorer smokers are much more likely to be around other smokers, while more affluent smokers, especially older ones, are more likely to be around people who've quit or never smoked and will encourage them to quit.
But, let's just ignore the role that socio-economics plays in smoking just continue saying this is a simple matter of logical reasoning and conclude that smokers are mentally off and perhaps "psychopathological." *rolls eyes* |
"Too much certainty and clarity could lead to cruel intolerance" -Karen Armstrong
Check out my art store: http://www.marfknox.etsy.com
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| Edited by - marfknox on 08/30/2011 05:48:08 |
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marfknox
SFN Die Hard
USA
3739 Posts |
Posted - 08/30/2011 : 06:12:19 [Permalink]
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| With regards to laws about suicide - if it has already got to the point where someone has a gun to their head, so to speak, most of the damage has already been done. This is why I'm a big believer in universal health care. The disparity in access to health care and quality of health care in this country is deplorable. Most people, especially women, who attempt suicide fail, strongly suggesting that most suicide attempts are cries for help. Most people who have attempted suicide need and want help that go far beyond being "properly restrained." Unfortunately, just like with many other health problems in America for the underinsured and uninsured, mental illness that leads to suicide is just one more of those things that people only get help for once they are ready for the emergency room. And then walk away (if they walk away) in debt (or more likely, deeper debt) which will just exasperate the problem they had in the first place. |
"Too much certainty and clarity could lead to cruel intolerance" -Karen Armstrong
Check out my art store: http://www.marfknox.etsy.com
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Hal
Skeptic Friend
USA
302 Posts |
Posted - 08/30/2011 : 07:07:20 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by marfknox
With regards to laws about suicide - if it has already got to the point where someone has a gun to their head, so to speak, most of the damage has already been done. This is why I'm a big believer in universal health care. The disparity in access to health care and quality of health care in this country is deplorable. Most people, especially women, who attempt suicide fail, strongly suggesting that most suicide attempts are cries for help. Most people who have attempted suicide need and want help that go far beyond being "properly restrained." Unfortunately, just like with many other health problems in America for the underinsured and uninsured, mental illness that leads to suicide is just one more of those things that people only get help for once they are ready for the emergency room. And then walk away (if they walk away) in debt (or more likely, deeper debt) which will just exasperate the problem they had in the first place.
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Not to mention, the fact that treatment for depression may affect ones' subsequent access to life & health insurance coverage.
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Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
Martin Luther King Jr.
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Valiant Dancer
Forum Goalie
USA
4826 Posts |
Posted - 08/30/2011 : 07:09:41 [Permalink]
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OK, here goes.
I think that Doc's post needs a little color to really explain the situation. As I have gone through a similar situation, I can explain the reasoning (flawed that it may be) for it.
In 1997, I was dating a young lady who had a 2 year old child. March 15, 1997, that child died from meningitis. I took that pretty hard and I had few support mechanisms because I was a loner. These support mechanisms were inadequate and I sought professional help. That professional help was likewise inadequate. I acquired a drinking habit (self destructive) and since alcoholism runs in my family, I had a relatively high tolerance to alcohol. I also had examined my justification for drinking and discovered a predelection towards depression drinking. I then had to quit drinking. The stress was quite unbearable and thoughts of harming myself had been cropping up with alarming frequency. I then acquired cigars. It provided the stress relief without impairing my driving. While self destructive, the harm done was cumulative. Got up to a seven cigar a day habit. I then quit cold turkey because I had dealt with the underlying issues which I felt necessitated the habits. I also discovered that I no longer wanted the cigar, I needed it. That was 1999. Quit after 18 months of smoking.
Second brace was in 2003-2005, again stress related this time to a failing marriage. 18 months and then out.
While damaging, it was preferrable to actions that endangered others.
My choices. This explains the choices. It does not excuse them. Nor does it undo the damage done. I also fully understood the actions I was taking was doing damage to my lungs.
bngbuck, walk a mile in your neighbor's moccasins. At the end of it, you'll be a mile away and have his shoes.
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Cthulhu/Asmodeus when you're tired of voting for the lesser of two evils
Brother Cutlass of Reasoned Discussion |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 08/30/2011 : 08:11:39 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by marfknox
Dave already pointed out the other problems with what you've said - the risk is actually less than 50%. If you throw in that less educated/poorer people are also less likely to be fully aware of the full risks of smoking and also less likely to afford or otherwise have access to aids which help smokers kick the habit, and that better educated/more affluant people are more likely to have access to therapies and other treatment, or simply can afford to trade their smoking habit in for other less-taboo bad habits, like eating Ben and Jerry's. Oh, and let's not forget the fact that because of economic segregation, poorer smokers are much more likely to be around other smokers, while more affluent smokers, especially older ones, are more likely to be around people who've quit or never smoked and will encourage them to quit. |
Well, to be fair, the study that produced the "almost half" result had only medical doctors as study participants.
And to be even more fair, bngbuck is really targeting the skeptics here as being lunatics for smoking. Some of us may be poor, but we're generally pretty smart.
What bngbuck is really trying to do is pass off "one needs to live as many years as possible" as a sort of universal moral standard, and then complaining that people who may not share that standard are failing to live up to it by engaging in a behavior which can considerably shorten one's life. But he's downplaying the risks of some behaviors while embarrassingly overplaying the risks from smoking, so there's a clear bias and the whole argument doesn't seem well thought-out. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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Hal
Skeptic Friend
USA
302 Posts |
Posted - 08/30/2011 : 08:48:38 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Dave W.
What bngbuck is really trying to do is pass off "one needs to live as many years as possible" as a sort of universal moral standard
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Ah, yes, the "Misery loves company" axiom.
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Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
Martin Luther King Jr.
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Skeptically quitting
