In contrast to many of my peers, I didn’t get any present when I turned 18 and never smoked. Many of my friends secretly smoked since being 14 and took the present anyway. My parents had a wholly different strategy. My mother simply said she would break our legs if she caught us smoking. I didn’t take this threat too seriously but I never smoked anyway because I was too nerdy to pull it off. But lately I’ve been thinking, what if there’s more to smoking than looking cool?
What if smoking is a way of regaining control over your life? Let’s say you’ve just worked 8 hours in some lousy office or service job for a crappy salary, how do you deal with that? How can your ego deal with being screwed every workday from 9 to 5? One way is to construct some fantasies that restore some of your self-worth (see my other post); sure you’re getting screwed, but one day you’ll quit and the office will fall apart because you’re the only one that knows how things work, and they’ll be so sorry for treating you like shit! A different way is to screw yourself harder than they can by smoking a cigarette. The cigarette externalizes, makes tangible, the abstract violence that is done to you by workplace exploitation (among other things) into the little ‘cancer-stick’ that is the cigarette. In this way it could be similar to punching a wall when you’re angry, or even self-mutilation.
But which part of yourself are you punching when you smoke? In my view, each human is split into two parts. One part knows the painful Truth of its existence; the fact that you are basically an insignificant cog in the machine, lacking any meaning or dignity. The other part is precisely the fantasies and the lies we tell ourselves to deal with this horrible truth. Since a direct confrontation with this Truth is impossible, the only way to assert it is through a ritual like smoking. When we smoke we act out, we willingly stage the violence that the world inflicts on us, thereby creating a distance towards it.
Such an ‘acting out’ of our misery is the only way to really confront it, and to do something about it. Still, there is a big gap between confronting and changing, as evidenced by the people who are stuck smoking two packs a day.
Maarten Schumacher 
I think an argument that acting out of tenderness / kindness in the face of the void or humor at the absurdity of it all is a more shocking and full of possibility than indulging in the fantasies that the world inflicts only violence. The real also includes the sublime/ beauty. I feel a sense of relief when I manage to stand in the face of the real, without being able to distribute the pain as you clearly understand and if I act at all – prob best not to ascribe any action as a response as they’re all fantasy – I act from love or beauty. That is the only human defiance.
Thank you Denise for your eloquent comment! The picture I’m painting in this piece is indeed a bit too grim. I will agree with you that an act of love is the only human defiance if you will agree with me that a true revolutionary acts out of love..
This is an excellent piece in its brevity and depth. I am ‘re-blogging’ – which I rarely do 🙂 Warmly, Eilif Verney-Elliott
Thank you! I’m feeling the blogosphere warmth.
Reblogged this on Eilif Verney-Elliott and commented:
Excellent piece about violence externalised and smoking.
Have to comment on this one as I can personally connect!
I love the broken legs story!!! 😉 Though, you have to admit that we have to thank your mom for obviously it was an effective treatment: you are not smoking! And I personally have to thank her as otherwise I would have to continue my search.
But, the problem in your argumentation is that it is drawn from false assumptions. Most people start smoking when they did not enter the job market yet as teens. So, there must be another reason for starting. I always felt that it was easier to connect to people (strangers) who were also smoking: thats because we had already one thing in common! So definitely has something to do with social pressure even if it is not felt as a pressure. We all are looking for recognition/acceptance/approval and if out peer-group so most of the people around us are smoking than smoking is the normal case and not smoking is the minority… Not giving up smoking later has clearly something to do with self-distruction. But I never felt as much in control, in control of my body and my mind than when I stopped smoking!
Irina
Thanks for your comment! I was also thinking about puberty lately, how anxious it is. Maybe I can think of puberty in terms of the same split between Truth and ideology. Then puberty would be the last real confrontation with Truth, and becoming an ‘adult’ would be finding a way to deal with this truth. For example, in puberty you would realize the world is not fair. When you become an adult you deal with it for example by thinking if you give some money to charity you don’t have to think about it anymore. Or, in puberty you realize that there is no family relation except the biological one; your family are idiots who you would have nothing to do with if they weren’t accidentally your family. Becoming an adult means accepting that they are ‘still your family’ and that you have to continue the relationship to them even though you are powerless to determine the conditions of this relationship.
Well anyway so I was thinking there are some painful truths in puberty that have to be repressed when becoming an adult. Smoking can be a way of dealing with these truths and carries over into adulthood as a ‘return of the repressed’ of sorts. But you are right of course, there are other reasons for smoking, primarily social pressure. Or if your parents smoke, it is the perfect way to emulate them and rebel against them at the same time, exposing their hypocrisy.
Anyway thanks for your feedback! Please don’t break my legs if you catch me secretly smoking! All the cool kids are doing it so why can’t I?!
That process begins early, Maarten. My children already know life isn’t fair and that I am shoehorning them into what “life is”. Kids are somewhat more connected to the real but not entirely. They want the fairy tale of life. They also already know I am an idiot who is constantly repressing and making absurd demands of them. They aren’t even in puberty yet. Children are incredibly perceptive and perfectly aware. I think they are more aware of the process than outside of it.
Thanks for your perspective, Denise. My memory doesn’t stretch back to pre-puberty. I guess that’s when the real repression takes place. Anyway it’s nice to see a mother who is not afraid to confront the idiocy of the things she has to teach her child, rather than simply threaten violence when the child rightly doesn’t understand. You should write a mommy-blog, could be interesting!
I’m afraid it would be brutal. Of course I threaten violence. Well, I try to intimidate them to get them to do the idiotic things I want and need and am repeating from culture and my upbringing. It’s the greatest hell I’ve known – being a mother aware that I’m doing to them – that I’m the source of much of their trauma. It’s the same as adulthood just from less experience. They don’t understand why things don’t revolve around their preferences and so do adults. I’m starting to see a perverse (?) beauty in the restrictions and idiocy. Maybe I’m seeing comedy in it. I wish I knew more about philosophy and psychoanalysis. I agree that it might be an interesting blog. I only know enough to get me out on a limb.
I don’t care about philosophical rigour and psychoanalytic insight, just write about it with honesty, heart, and common sense 😉