See other Religion Articles
Title: Tobacco and the Soul
Source:
A Classical Presbyterian
URL Source: http://classicalpresbyterian.blogsp ... -of-pipe-smoking-for-soul.html
Published: May 18, 2007
Author: Michael P. Foley
Post Date: 2008-09-18 13:09:31 by X-15
Keywords: None
Views: 276
Comments: 10
The current brouhaha over smoking has made everyone painfully aware of tobacco’s effects on the body, but it has also obscured a more profound reason for smoking’s popularity: its relation to the soul. As the heyday of smoking passes into the ashheap of history, it is meet that we reflect on this connection. The soul, of course, is a complex thing. Long ago Plato suggested that we consider it as divided into three parts-the appetitive, spirited, and rational-that correspond to the three basic kinds of human desires: the desire to satisfy physical appetites, the desire for recognition, and the desire for truth. Once this tripartite division is recalled, tobacco’s relation to the soul becomes clear: the three prevalent types of smoking tobacco-cigarettes, cigars, and pipes-correspond to the three parts of the soul. Cigarettes correspond to the appetitive part of the soul, a fact that explains their association with both food and sex. The connection with the latter is particularly obvious: think of the proverbial postcoital cigarette, or of the ubiquity of cigarettes at singles bars. People with strong physical desires demand instant gratification, and they try to make what they desire as much a part of their own bodies as possible: hunger demands eating, thirst drinking, and lust making the body of one’s lover a part of one’s own. So too with cigarettes. A cigarette is inhaled: it must be fully and internally consumed in order to give pleasure. And a cigarette, with its quick buzz, is also instant gratification. Even the cigarette’s notorious connection to death ties it into appetites: both are indifferent to health in their quest for satisfaction, and both, when they reach addictive levels, become hostile to it. Cigars, on the other hand, correspond to the spirited part of the soul. This explains their traditional popularity among men seeking honor or reputation-politicians, executives, etc. The reason for this correspondence can be found in the similarity between cigars and ambition. A cigar is visually impressive: with its large size and great billows of smoke, it often leaves a greater impact on the spectator than on the smoker. Further, a cigar is phallic-not with regard to male lust, but to male power. "Testis" in Latin means "witness": the phallic status of the cigar is meant to bear public witness to the smoker’s prominence, his virility. The fact that a cigar is not inhaled reflects this external focus. Ambition also has these traits: it too is more external than internal. Unlike physical desires, which are satisfied simply by consumption, ambition requires the consensus of others. The honor-seeker, for example, has to be honored by as many people as possible in order to be satisfied. Finally, the pipe corresponds to the rational part of the soul, which explains why we tend to picture wise figures smoking pipes: the Oxford don surrounded by his great books, or Sherlock Holmes, who, in Doyle’s original stories, actually smoked other sorts of tobacco as well, yet is almost always portrayed with a pipe. Unlike cigars and cigarettes, a pipe endures. Similarly, the questions of the philosopher far outlast the passing concerns of physical desires on the one hand and human ambitions on the other. Further, while the cigar is entirely masculine, the pipe has both masculine and feminine elements (the stem and the bowl). This corresponds to the philosopher’s activity, which is both masculine and feminine: masculine in its pursuit of Lady Truth, feminine in its reception of anything that she discloses. Finally, the effect that the pipe has on others is analogous to the effect of philosophizing: the sweet fragrance of a pipe, like good philosophy, is a blessing to all who are near. It is fitting that all three kinds of smoking tobacco involve the use of fire, for each relates to the soul’s responsiveness to reason, and fire, at least from the days of Prometheus, is especially emblematic of reason. But there are also nonhuman parts to the human soul. The growth of our hair and fingernails, for example, is due to the soul’s activity, yet is not responsive to rational instruction. The use of tobacco that does not involve fire, therefore, somehow corresponds to these nonhuman-or more accurately, subhuman-parts of the soul. Chewing tobacco, for example, is a quintessentially subhuman activity. It is the rumination of bovine men. Or perhaps we should say it is camel-like, for camels not only chew, but spit as well. In either case, the point is clear: chewing tobacco is a sub-rational activity, which is why we usually associate it with men of limited acumen..... Most significantly, however, the relative rarity of pipe-smoking in America is a telling sign of its current intellectual crisis. If the pipe epitomizes the intellectual way of life, then is it any surprise that it cannot be found where schools substitute politically correct ideology for real philosophy, or where the intelligentsia, instead of engaging in serious thought, pander to the latest activist fads? Is it any surprise that America’s most famous pipe-smoker in the last thirty years has been Hugh Hefner, pajama prophet of the trite philosophy of hedonism? No, the age of the pipe-smoker is as far from us as the day when philosophers will be kings and kings will philosophize, a sad reality to which the thick blue haze of non-pipe smoke is only too ready to attest. It should also be no surprise in this pipeless age that the ferocious battle over tobacco has missed the real point about its addictive power. Tobacco holds sway over the soul as much as it does the body. The qualities it takes in its various forms make it a near irresistible complement to the particular desire dominant in an individual’s soul. How we react to these forms says as much about our attitude toward those desires as it does toward the weed itself.
Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest
#1. To: X-15 (#0)
MARRY A FAG, DON'T SMOKE ONE, (at least not in public) The Dutch, gawdblessem, are mounting a last ditch, man the barricades ALAMO type effort to restore it on the basis of social and cultural mores. An era has passed, and the ashtrays are being emptied out on bars all across the world. (Thanks, Lord Grey) and I fear they will not be filled again in our lifetimes. Or anyone else's, for that matter.
Where does menthol fit in?
"Anybody can rat. It takes real ingenuity to re-rat." -- Winston Churchill
The war on tobacco, despite the crusading ninnies who want to control other people's lives compulsively, has really two driving factors. Tobacco, smoking, is relaxing and is a stress reliever and because of this people who smoke use Pharmaceutical Mind Control drugs, e.g., Prozac, a lower rate than non-smokers. The elites, who own the Pharma Complex, want people to use their "Soma" and go down into a mind numbed fog. They're easier to control and lose their cognitive capabilities. Since they are cognitively impaired by the mind control drugs they don't "get ideas" - literally as well as figuratively. Given that elites, the Carnivorgies - Rockefuckers - Rotchilds, have used us to fund our own enslavement the profits from these mind control drugs, again Prozac, Luvox, Effexor, et. al., are used to help fund the global enslavement program. So, anything, such as smoking, which runs counter to this must be eliminated. So, the dislike of some who oppose other people enjoying themselves, is used, along with phonied up and overblown concerns about "second hand smoke" which has been hyped to the extreme and exaggerated beyond all reality, is used to take out the obstacle to the Mind Control State. Realize that these people are Materialists who regard themselves as "special" and everyone else as animals to be herded, preyed upon, and used for their sick and perverted amusement. And they are very perverted and what has crept out through the cracks on their depraved, degraded, and inhuman sexual practices is simply an indicator of the level of foulness we are dealing with and which must be exposed and opposed.
"The difference between an honorable man and a moral man is that an honorable man regrets a discreditable act even when it has worked and he is in no danger of being caught." ~ H. L. Mencken
Tobacco + soul.
Very nicely expressed putting some of the larger ramification of this apparently unopposable zeitgeist into a larger context.
i enjoyed this. thanks for posting. i would never have thought about the parallels of tobacco to the soul. the description of those who chew t'baccy was amusing.
Do You Know What Freedom Really Means? Freedom4um.com
What would Jesus smoke?
Antiparty - find out why, think about 'how'
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Thank you.
"The difference between an honorable man and a moral man is that an honorable man regrets a discreditable act even when it has worked and he is in no danger of being caught." ~ H. L. Mencken
You're most welcome. This piece reminds me of a piece in Harpers mid 90's about a about to quit smoker who waxed romantic about watching smoke curl or rise up straight and mused very well about it. In your post, I believe you touch upon something very important - the pleasure principle exhibited in say, smoking, being a target as much as anything else. The scale of this social engineering movement portends ill for the kids and grandkids of today - my point being, if Health has been raised to one of the prime purposes of government, social moraes, tolerance of habitues and the bar/lounge/nightclub as an escape from daily drudgery(after all, they were the last havens), then virtually anything can be targeted next. As I told some friend, after they toss us smokers out, they're coming after you drinkers next. (MADD and their mandatory breathalyser in each car proposal). And voila, near where I am, a town that has had a 2 AM closing since the repeal of prohibition, moved closing time to 1 o'clock. Another town nearby followed. The state's reasoning? Dunno, but one justification - hey, you don't have many customers late at night anyway, what with fewer smokers and the omnipresent fear of the man and the DUI laws. It makes me smile in a schadenfreude manner - Food falls under the rubric of health, and if there is ever a National Energy Emergency, watch for controls on your thermostat - some Californian putz already advocated remote control of thermostats - or potentially, each house could be analysed by a state team who then put forth a number of dollars that you could spend based on the State mandated guidelines for energy usage - exceeding that could be trouble. All from making tabak worse than meth or pederasty - or even a pederast on meth. Inshallah.
Hey, it's America
#2. To: X-15 (#0)
#3. To: X-15, TwentyTwelve, Wudidiz, Kamala, christine, all (#0)
#4. To: Tauzero (#2)
Where does menthol fit in?
I've already said too much.
#5. To: Original_Intent (#3)
#6. To: X-15 (#0)
#7. To: Tauzero (#2)
#8. To: a vast rightwing conspirator (#7)
What would Jesus smoke?
-Schweizerische Schuetzenzeitung (Swiss Shooting Federation) April, 1941
#9. To: swarthyguy (#5)
#10. To: Original_Intent, X-15 (#9)
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest