Lots of choice, but little freedom

[Guest053011]

Allow me to start this with a disclaimer: I don't smoke cigarettes, I will every few months have a cigar, or invite friends over to enjoy a nice pipe tobacco that I found.

I was walking down Melrose looking for something to do and walked by a place that had a group of gentlemen smoking and drinking coffee. Now coming from Canada - smoking is so regulated it's extremely embarrassing. You can't smoke withing X feet of a window or doorway. You can't smoke on a patio that has an overhang or if you have a patio umbrella at your table, etc... Lobbyists have over regulated our daily lives, and it's quite shameful. To be honest, if you think someone walking down the street smoking a cigarette is going to give you cancer - refocus your thoughts on all the cars driving by, because that's far more dangerous.

So I was pleasantly surprised by the smell of fine tobacco. I decided to go inside and realized I'd found a CIGAR LOUNGE! WOW! A few days later I was taking a stroll along Sunset Blv and found a Hookah lounge - EVEN BETTER!

I can't remember the last time I saw either one of those. They're EXTINCT in Toronto. The last cigar lounge was going to be shut down due to laws, and they tried to salvage it by making it a private members club. Sadly the private club didn't catch on and the last one vanished out of existence.

At the Hookah lounge I enjoyed the flawless hospitality of the Iranian gentleman who ran the place, talking about his dogs, tea, and Canada. How nice it was to sit on the comfortable chairs not feeling pressured to order food or drinks, able to relax indefinitely.

In the cigar lounge I listened to snippets of discussion, having the gentlemen running the place help me pick the perfect cigar for me (light bodied with a sweet scent)tour o while giving me a proud tour of the humidor. I was of course the only woman in the place, which was actually kind of nice. Feminism has prevented any real gentleman's areas from existing, there are almost no "men only" places, though "female only" places are considered respectful since women need their private space (it's ridiculous to think men don't). It was nice to see them milling about and just relaxing into one another's company. There was a sense of peace there, and indulging was a wonderful treat.

I think it becomes too much when you let "health conscious" people take away our simple pleasure, the ability to live in the moment for a couple of hours, and enjoy something pleasant even if it isn't good for you. If you don't want to work in a smoking environment - don't. If you don't want to smoke yourself, don't. For the love of God, leave the rest of us alone.

The trick is moderation, not elimination.

A sociologist I read once suggested that we're miserable because the finest details of our lives are judged and regulated. We try to distract ourselves with the false belief that we have lots of choice because we can choose from 20 brands of cereal, yet we cannot choose our indulgences without being shamed. We have lots of choice, but little freedom.

[Camille]

There are still a few in Boston Lauren.
There is one on Boylston which is convenient but often over-crowded.
One in the North End close to Mike's pastries (avoid when hungry!!) and one under the Millenium hotel. I believe there is one also somewhere on Charles Street. Due to the smoking bans everywhere, these places now get really overcrowded with people who want to smoke cigarettes without having to go outside...so it's a bit of a crapshoot trying to figure out a good time to go if that's your inclination. Women tend not to be overly outnumbered by men in these spots as far as I've noticed. If you stroll by the one on Boylston on a weekend, it tends to be filled in the late morning with people just kicking back and reading their newspapers..and in the afternoon the same avec a glass of wine.

C

[..]

Originally Posted by Lauren Summerhill

Feminism has prevented any real gentleman's areas from existing, there are almost no "men only" places, though "female only" places are considered respectful since women need their private space (it's ridiculous to think men don't).

mmh, i''m a guy and frankly i've never had any problems with feminism. In fact some of my closest friends have been feminists (some even hard-core femi-nazis). Most of them even knew that I'm also very close friends with escorts.

In reality it's all one big joke. getting into "female only" places so far has always worked for me -- only after you've done it once or twice it gets boring.

The opposite is also true. getting as a woman into "men only" places is also possible with strategy. (e.g. Mount Athos is "men only" but I do know at least one woman who's been there undiscovered.)

[Guest053011]

Originally Posted by ..

mmh, i''m a guy and frankly i've never had any problems with feminism. In fact some of my closest friends have been feminists (some even hard-core femi-nazis). Most of them even knew that I'm also very close friends with escorts.

In reality it's all one big joke. getting into "female only" places so far has always worked for me -- only after you've done it once or twice it gets boring.

The opposite is also true. getting as a woman into "men only" places is also possible with strategy. (e.g. Mount Athos is "men only" but I do know at least one woman who's been there undiscovered.)

I'm not really talking about "cool" factor, or suggesting there is anything particularly amazing going on. Only that it's nice to see men be able to hang out, unfiltered and unreserved as often happens when the genders mix.

[Guest042611]

Hi Lauren,
Doesn't gaining access to a traditionally male domain strike you as somewhat feminist in itself? You are glad men's only spaces exist, but your pleasure at having visited one indicates they're not really men only (and I'm assuming you felt perfectly welcome there, and not like an intruder). It's nice to visit places like that that might feel like a relic of a different era, but we should also be thankful (to feminism?) that we can do so safely. In visiting Third World countries, I obviously saw much more strict segregation by gender, and it was downright frightening to enter (by accident, usually) a space where you weren't welcome. Of course it was my race and not just my sex, but still...

To the main point of your post though, I agree completely that we've substituted real freedoms with meaningless choices. Advertisers latch on to this too, and exploit it. I remember reading in college (I wonder if it was the same writer) an essay about how our general inability to affect meaningful political change was mitigated by our "freedom" as consumers. We might only get two candidates to vote on (and dislike both), but we can choose from a myriad of cars, wines, cigarettes, televisions, etc. We can therefore feel a greater sense of control, power and freedom by substituting inconsequential decisions for more important ones.

San Francisco has some great hookah bars; it's something I really never do unless I have an out-of-town guest though. I believe there are even a few bars where you can still smoke cigarettes indoors here, if they are collectively owned and all the employees agree to allow smoking.

For anyone interested, here's a list of places you can smoke in San Francisco, not including hookah lounges: http://gridskipper.com/archives/entries/062/62609.php

[hemingway7]

I am in Toronto this weekend and can find places to buy Cuban cigars but not smoke them. In the Dallas area where I live there are plenty of places you can still smoke them although in the city limits you can not smoke in bars or restaurants. The cigar clubs don't have to be male only, just a comfortable place to relax with a cigar

[Laurentius]

Well, Ms. Summerhill, I must say you have an impressive way of encapsulating many general and wide ranging matters by using a single issue as illustrative.

The major issue you've nailed, IMHO, is the equating of consumer choice with freedom in the public mind, followed by the substitution of consumer choice with freedom. People think they are free because they can choose which store from which they buy their clothes; but it never occurs to them that the fact I can't allow people to smoke in a piece of property that I own is an abridgment of both my freedom and that of my guests.

This also, tangentially, hits upon the regarding of humans from the sole perspective of homo economicus; thereby ignoring a vast array of non-economic human values and needs. In a world of homo economicus, one's value is measured in purchasing power. As this is the range of his choice, it is also the range of his freedom -- understanding that consumer choice takes the place of true freedom. Under conditions such that purchasing power is the predominant -- if not only -- measure of our homo economicus; human endeavors that do not enhance one's purchasing power will be sidelined in favor of those that do.

You have also brought up the relationship between freedom and responsibility; particularly within the context of what happens to freedom when we surrender that responsibility to government.

You have also, albeit obliquely, quite appropriately attacked the establishment line on tobacco. There are many many problems with the establishment line.

I'm going to address the second issue first. Freedom and responsibility are intertwined. Furthermore, I want to distinguish between a natural right and a civil right because the distinction is important.

A natural right is a right that you can exercise without causing someone else to pay for it or initiating force (or threat of force) against someone else. Your right to free speech falls in this category, as does your right to defend yourself from violent attack. Neither of these rights depends on anyone else to take responsibility for your actions by paying for them, or initiates force against another. These rights exist to you just by virtue of your having been born; and all that various laws may do is recognize their existence. You also cannot be compelled to exercise these rights against your will.

A civil right is a right that can only exist in the presence of government by virtue of government decree. Voting, for example, is a civil right. And the mechanisms for enabling voting, albeit to only a small degree, require that others pay taxes to pay for its infrastructure. Employment free of discrimination is a civil right.

Let's look at that for a moment. Without disputing the underlying premise of anti-discrimination laws; fundamentally, such laws mandate that I, as a business owner, MUST do things a certain way in order to protect the civilly granted right to employment sans discrimination. Please notice that for one person to have gained a civilly granted right, someone else has to have lost a right -- in this case to do as he pleases with hiring and firing with his own money. However, if a person with a civil employment right has a problem asserting that right, the avenues under which that right may be asserted are governed by law.

In nations that have decided to make medical care a civil right, this represents a shifting of the responsibility of payment for one's healthcare from himself to others. When someone relinquishes responsibility for one's health to others, he also relinquishes the freedom to make choices with which those who have assumed that responsibility may disagree. (And here in the U.S. even though we lack official socialized medicine there is a very extensive public healthcare infrastructure.)

Thus, we might be required to wear motorcycle helmets, wear seatbelts, remove trans-fat from foods and endure restrictions on other activities with possible negative health effects. One such example is smoking.

Now to address smoking, I will be very politically incorrect; but as an independent scientist who doesn't depend on government grants for my sustenance, I can afford to be so.

Tobacco is treated via legislation in various ways as though it is a uniquely evil and deadly substance when, in fact, the science does not objectively support doing so.

Unlike such substances as dioxin, PCBs, organophosphate nerve toxins, metabolic plant poisons, organic mercury compounds and artificial nicotinoid systemic insecticides for which our regulating bodies recognize the common sense that the degree of potential harm is proportional to level and duration of exposure; regulations pertaining to tobacco recognize no such principle -- acting on the idea that even the smallest and most incidental of exposures might be deadly.

This is voodoo with an agenda, not real science -- even though they pay scientists to give their voodoo a blessing.

So while our FDA gives its blessing to certain residual levels of systemic neurotoxins in cucumbers and tomatoes; and allows the controlled use of some of the most deadly substances known to man in medicine; their official party line on tobacco is that there is *no safe level of exposure*. This is, again, voodoo.

Tobacco is not uniquely dangerous. Anytime you burn anything that contains amino acids -- that is, anything from the plant or animal kingdoms -- highly carcinogenic substances will be produced, most notably nitrosamines. Thus, even burnt lettuce is carcinogenic, as is the smoke from a wood stove or the smoke in a kitchen after dad burned the roast.

Likewise, background radiation that naturally exists is carcinogenic, as are many plants all by themselves -- such as comfrey and sassafras.

Our bodies, given proper nutrition and exercise, were designed to cope with the smoke from a wood fire and the carcinogens created by cooking (we have been cooking for 100,000 years). There are amazing mechanisms that cells use to induce cellular death in those that go awry, or to isolate and destroy. Even within cells, there are amazing mechanisms for preventing harm and detoxifying poisons.

Most people would be horrified to know they have been eating a deadly poison such as cyanide; yet the compound is common in rutabagas and other cabbage-family crops as well as the seeds of certain fruits (such as apples) that may be eaten occasionally. But the body has mechanisms for detoxifying a certain amount of cyanide through conversion to thiocyanide in the liver; and even chronically used as long as the usage stays below the detoxification threshold, there will be no ill effects.

The bottom line is that there IS such a thing as a safe-exposure threshold to tobacco; but because public policy treats it as uniquely even more dangerous than nerve gas; public policy based upon erroneous premises will result in insane decisions.

NOW -- again to be very politically incorrect, the reason for restrictions on smoking in areas of public accommodation has nothing to do with the health of non-smoking patrons. Using smoke-eating devices and separate smoking/non-smoking areas is plenty sufficient such that a braised steak would be more dangerous than the atmosphere. Rather, it has to do with the deliberate psychopathologization of the practice such that people who smoke are viewed as somehow MORALLY inferior to those who don't. Likewise, by pushing the practice out of the public eye, it is easier to sell the narrative that the only people who smoke are homeless bums and criminals -- thus using artificial peer-pressure to reduce the likelihood of smoking. This works, as anyone who has heard someone apologize for smoking can attest.

Places in which people who are physically attractive may smoke -- such as dance halls -- are particularly problematic as public view of this would contradict the narrative being sold to the public. Even more problematic for this negative narrative is the continued existence of smoking as a fashion accessory (often accompanied by techniques accentuating the linkage to sex) that can encourage others to partake. (In other words, a hot babe smoking can be sending signals of sexual availability that give her an advantage over other women in men approaching her. Other women may seek to negate that advantage by adopting the practice themselves.)

Concluding. Public anti-smoking policy is based on the public assumption of costs associated with habitual overuse of tobacco. If there were no public assumption of costs, such policies would be very different. When you give up responsibility for your health to others, you also give up your freedom.

Such policy, while wrong-headed in certain respects, certainly makes use of extensive knowledge of human nature in order to discourage the practice -- and bans on smoking in public places are rooted more in social than medical science.

Because nicotine can be addictive to some people when used habitually, and habitual overuse raises the risks of developing very serious diseases that can result in death; I do not habitually use tobacco or encourage others to do so. However, I do not buy the deliberate social ostracizing of smokers as morally inferior beings and never buy into that narrative of government-endorsed hate.

Finally, in our zeal for an entirely economically-defined humanity; we are hurting ourselves terribly. Freedom is about so much more than which brand of car I might purchase. Viewing people through a consumerist lens is a very bad personal policy that will encourage increasing levels of narcissism and sociopathy in our culture.

[charlestudor2005]

It's amazing to me that WTF hasn't wandered over to this thread to see your criticism of Canada. And here, he thought the only thing you despised was the good ole USA.

[WTF]

Originally Posted by charlestudor2005

It's amazing to me that WTF hasn't wandered over to this thread to see your criticism of Canada. And here, he thought the only thing you despised was the good ole USA.

I don't smoke

but maybe we can invade Canada and fix their lack of smoking establishments

[am-a-pleaser]

Originally Posted by Lauren Summerhill

We have lots of choice, but little freedom.

I quite agree. In Texas, as with other states and places, out freedoms have been slowly taken away. A myriad of reasons exist. I came to realize this many years ago. I was 7 years old when I first encountered a newly passed law directly affecting my freedom.

Smoking laws, seatbelt laws, auto insurance laws . . .

I don't have my choice of cars, I can only choose among those produced. And their production is governed by many regulations. Try finding a hotel with a smoking room, or a restaurant with smoking allowed. I'm not debating whether or not smoking is a health hazard. I read a book when I was young, 1984 by George Orwell.

So, freedoms have in fact been taken, and Big Brother is in fact watching. Our GPS devices let others know exactly where we are and when we are there. GPS in phones, cars, Garmin gps, GM/Onstar . . . Our internet use. We are tracked all the time. And many have enthusiastically embaced the technology without a thought that their freedom has been compromised.

So choices----which cell phone do you use to allow others to track you?

For many of us, we have to take extra steps to use the technology, and insure we keep as much freedom as possible. Internet anonymizers, paying with cash . . .

Well, freedom is taken away and given away, little by little.