Hi all
I got thinking a lot while commenting on the UK Guardian story about the latest idiotic pronouncement about vaping - in this case, a proposal for a ban in public places in Wales. Guardian story is Electronic cigarettes may face public ban in Wales | UK news | The Guardian; there's also a thread about it in the Media and General News forum.
What got me thinking was another commenter who was wondering what kind of vaping might be accepted, polite and considerate to other people - for example in a restaurant:a very different question from the one we're usually up against, which is whether any kind of vaping is even allowed.
I think that it's difficult to even consider the first question until the second one has been settled (in our favour, of course!). But I thought I'd repost my thoughts here for anyone interested to read and discuss.
Part of the fear that is being (deliberately, IMHO) stoked up about e-cigarettes - though e-cigs are only one example of a widespread phenomenon, whereby every possible social problem "must" be tackled by legislation - is that, without stern and utterly restrictive legislation, non-vapers will be abandoned into an asocial, Mad-Max state where any vaper can come up to them, blow vapour right in their face, and then stare into their eyes while cackling satanically. "If it's not proscribed in law, we're left helpless" is the common way of thinking.
This was never the case even with cigarettes. Smoking tobacco had a rich set of social traditions associated with it - and this included conventions and norms about respecting non-smokers' dislike of tobacco smoke. People disliked smoking, and set and enforced personal rules about their exposure to it (e.g. in their property), long before any of its harmful effects were discovered.
But what the anti-smoking zealots did, very cleverly, was to reframe smoking - anywhere in someone's vicinity, even outdoors! - as the same kind of boorish, aggressive assault as walking right up to someone and blowing smoke in their face. As a result people no longer react to smoking with an appeal to courtesy ("Please could you smoke further away from me, it's bothering me"), but with outrage and appeal to authority. The smoker is no longer an equal who can be negotiated with, but someone guilty of assault. The only solution to smokers' behaviour, according to this new social convention (or rather, destruction of social conventions) is legal sanction.
This, folks, is the wonderful "climate" health campaigners have set up, and are so anxious to preserve. We're now dealing with the consequences of this, so that it's become very difficult to mutually (between vapers and non-vapers) come up with a social code for vaping which allows everyone to get along. It's the zealots' own fault. In their arrogance, they destroyed a valuable social tradition, and replaced it with a climate of fear and hatred. How poor and impoverishing their thinking is is illustrated by the disappearance of the infinite range of smokers - the occasional smoker, the light smoker, the heavy smoker, the considerate smoker, the inconsiderate smoker - in favour of a single, simplified hate-figure: the Smoker, full stop. In parallel with this impoverishment, there's an impoverishment of reactions from non-smokers: asking, talking, demanding, listening have been replaced with one, automatic reaction: it's Wrong, it's an Assault on My Health, and (in many places) it's also Against the Law (and if it isn't, it Should Be).
So vapers (including me) are angry and militant, because something that does no harm to anyone else is being treated like a crime of assault, rather than as an activity that is amenable to polite negotiation between people. And all but a tiny minority of us are ex-smokers, who thought we could finally stop being made to feel like sinners or criminals - only for the long arm of the "public-health" guilt-machine to reach out and tar us with the same brush they'd used on smokers.
Sometimes I think some vapers are being too aggressive in asserting their right to vape anywhere, and blow the vapour anywhere. But on the other hand I understand where they're coming from, and often feel the same way. They, and me, are reacting aggressively to a "climate" in which bystanders are encouraged to react aggressively to anything that looks like smoke; and to a political environment where we feel constantly under threat of an unjustified, ridiculous ban. First in this place, then in that place, then in that other place...
The one thing that "public-health" idiots could do to allow social norms about vaping to be developed is to shut the **** up and stop spreading lies about the harmfulness of vaping. (I'm not starry-eyed enough to imagine that they might actively speak out about the harmlessness of vaping to bystanders, to encourage social norms to develop). Then non-vapers could relax, think about their own preferences and comfort about large, small, or middling amounts of vapour around them (rather than panicking about CATCHING CANCER) in various situations (outside, drinking inside, eating inside). Vapers could then assert their right to vape while negotiating with non-vapers; a compromise would be found in each situation.
I think the development of this kind of socially-agreed, well-functioning norm is the thing the "health" zealots fear most of all. This is what is behind their rhetoric of "renormalisation". Their campaign against smoking was always a limitless Kulturkampf, rather than a scientifically-based health education campaign. Because they were allowed to succeed, they inevitably also succeeded in subverting and destroying a portion of the normal, organic functioning of society. And now they stand against society; it's becoming clearer and clearer that they actually hate society (imagined as what people create between each other at the grassroots level). A community of vapers and non-vapers getting along without annoying each other too much is a threat to their authority, because this authority rests on the idea that society is broken and urgently needs to be "fixed" with radical measures. So, I wonder, what can we do, beyond fighting legislation, to make this community come about, and really defeat the zealots?
Your thoughts/disagreements/agreements welcome!
I got thinking a lot while commenting on the UK Guardian story about the latest idiotic pronouncement about vaping - in this case, a proposal for a ban in public places in Wales. Guardian story is Electronic cigarettes may face public ban in Wales | UK news | The Guardian; there's also a thread about it in the Media and General News forum.
What got me thinking was another commenter who was wondering what kind of vaping might be accepted, polite and considerate to other people - for example in a restaurant:a very different question from the one we're usually up against, which is whether any kind of vaping is even allowed.
I think that it's difficult to even consider the first question until the second one has been settled (in our favour, of course!). But I thought I'd repost my thoughts here for anyone interested to read and discuss.
Part of the fear that is being (deliberately, IMHO) stoked up about e-cigarettes - though e-cigs are only one example of a widespread phenomenon, whereby every possible social problem "must" be tackled by legislation - is that, without stern and utterly restrictive legislation, non-vapers will be abandoned into an asocial, Mad-Max state where any vaper can come up to them, blow vapour right in their face, and then stare into their eyes while cackling satanically. "If it's not proscribed in law, we're left helpless" is the common way of thinking.
This was never the case even with cigarettes. Smoking tobacco had a rich set of social traditions associated with it - and this included conventions and norms about respecting non-smokers' dislike of tobacco smoke. People disliked smoking, and set and enforced personal rules about their exposure to it (e.g. in their property), long before any of its harmful effects were discovered.
But what the anti-smoking zealots did, very cleverly, was to reframe smoking - anywhere in someone's vicinity, even outdoors! - as the same kind of boorish, aggressive assault as walking right up to someone and blowing smoke in their face. As a result people no longer react to smoking with an appeal to courtesy ("Please could you smoke further away from me, it's bothering me"), but with outrage and appeal to authority. The smoker is no longer an equal who can be negotiated with, but someone guilty of assault. The only solution to smokers' behaviour, according to this new social convention (or rather, destruction of social conventions) is legal sanction.
This, folks, is the wonderful "climate" health campaigners have set up, and are so anxious to preserve. We're now dealing with the consequences of this, so that it's become very difficult to mutually (between vapers and non-vapers) come up with a social code for vaping which allows everyone to get along. It's the zealots' own fault. In their arrogance, they destroyed a valuable social tradition, and replaced it with a climate of fear and hatred. How poor and impoverishing their thinking is is illustrated by the disappearance of the infinite range of smokers - the occasional smoker, the light smoker, the heavy smoker, the considerate smoker, the inconsiderate smoker - in favour of a single, simplified hate-figure: the Smoker, full stop. In parallel with this impoverishment, there's an impoverishment of reactions from non-smokers: asking, talking, demanding, listening have been replaced with one, automatic reaction: it's Wrong, it's an Assault on My Health, and (in many places) it's also Against the Law (and if it isn't, it Should Be).
So vapers (including me) are angry and militant, because something that does no harm to anyone else is being treated like a crime of assault, rather than as an activity that is amenable to polite negotiation between people. And all but a tiny minority of us are ex-smokers, who thought we could finally stop being made to feel like sinners or criminals - only for the long arm of the "public-health" guilt-machine to reach out and tar us with the same brush they'd used on smokers.
Sometimes I think some vapers are being too aggressive in asserting their right to vape anywhere, and blow the vapour anywhere. But on the other hand I understand where they're coming from, and often feel the same way. They, and me, are reacting aggressively to a "climate" in which bystanders are encouraged to react aggressively to anything that looks like smoke; and to a political environment where we feel constantly under threat of an unjustified, ridiculous ban. First in this place, then in that place, then in that other place...
The one thing that "public-health" idiots could do to allow social norms about vaping to be developed is to shut the **** up and stop spreading lies about the harmfulness of vaping. (I'm not starry-eyed enough to imagine that they might actively speak out about the harmlessness of vaping to bystanders, to encourage social norms to develop). Then non-vapers could relax, think about their own preferences and comfort about large, small, or middling amounts of vapour around them (rather than panicking about CATCHING CANCER) in various situations (outside, drinking inside, eating inside). Vapers could then assert their right to vape while negotiating with non-vapers; a compromise would be found in each situation.
I think the development of this kind of socially-agreed, well-functioning norm is the thing the "health" zealots fear most of all. This is what is behind their rhetoric of "renormalisation". Their campaign against smoking was always a limitless Kulturkampf, rather than a scientifically-based health education campaign. Because they were allowed to succeed, they inevitably also succeeded in subverting and destroying a portion of the normal, organic functioning of society. And now they stand against society; it's becoming clearer and clearer that they actually hate society (imagined as what people create between each other at the grassroots level). A community of vapers and non-vapers getting along without annoying each other too much is a threat to their authority, because this authority rests on the idea that society is broken and urgently needs to be "fixed" with radical measures. So, I wonder, what can we do, beyond fighting legislation, to make this community come about, and really defeat the zealots?
Your thoughts/disagreements/agreements welcome!
