i think that when the addict wishes to quit, and chooses to quit, even though this is a delusion, THIS is his REAL free will as far as the term is useful. and so its incredibly cruel to tell him "fucking try harder".

the fact is the object of his addiction overpowers his real choice and his real desire, which for so many of us is to quit. it REALLY IS what we REALLY want, and it doesn't happen because of NEURO PHYSICAL processes and commercial systems that our will cannot overpower.

so again, i'll make the point that its my position that is the true defence of free will.

yes, but i can't go to your house and take away your cigarettes and lock you up in a closet and feed you under the door. and you particularly showed up here expressing desperation.

this is not the official city fire brigade-- this is your neighbor handing you a water bucket.

from the distance, the best i can do is suggest a difficult hack: study your addiction reward system (from self-observation, from literature), then disconnect or replace each addiction reward circuit with benevolent ones, as you identify them. it is definitely not easy nor quick, and many people will still be fucked regardless, but if you were lucky enough to receive intelligent genes from your ancestors you stand a non-universal chance to save your ass-- a temporary, non-universal solution.

of course it doesn't end there-- the less capable are still being fucked, and we need social change, but who is going to fight for it if everyone is sick? i'm not suggesting you hack your addiction out of existence in order to "prove free will" but rather for sheer survival. then you can go and give the fuckers throat cancer and cackle over their sick corpses. but survival first.

you have free will to choose whatever you want to do. Most people do not put their free will to use, instead just doing what is expected of them at every turn, because IT IS EASY

free will appears obvious when things are going your way.

when the tsunami is dragging you away, not so much.

BTW, very few people get to "lie in a deathbed" regretting things and being proud of things. Most of us die quick, horrible, pointless deaths. THEREFORE, we should just live life as we see fit, without hurting other's ability to do the same.

you're implying that i just need to want it more.

as if i dont want to never do it again or something? as if in the moment when i smoke, it's desire going "wrong". so i just need this magic x that will will make my desire be good.

it's not like that. we can't extricate ourselves from the catastrophe then talk about social change.

the points im making have to be intensified and screamed louder - and constantly, as a chorus by the people who are being hacked as they are being hacked. the process of addiction should not be silenced, because this is how society ignores/controls it and relegates it out of the picture.

in the same way that we had to see the cancerous lungs before we believed it, because the tobacco companies LIED for years and funded propaganda for their lies.

its useless to do the whole "repentant junkie" routine. i overcame it and so can you! buy my shitty book!

fuck that!

I like the green herb, and I enjoy a cigar now and then, and I enjoy quality food.

Those are my physical "vices" if you will. Any of these can kill me and I could give a fuck. It would be better than dying in an auto accident, because of some asshole's negligence, because of a fire, or because of a murder, or because a million reasons.

Some people are smokers and some are not. Just deal with it. If smoking does not give you pleasure any more, then don;t buy smokes. get rid of your smokes. stop hanging out with smokers. stop going to places where you would smoke. It is hard but so is learning how to eat pussy, and yet both are sooooo satisfying...... ;)

I disagree. I'd say free-will becomes MOST apparent precisely when it is taken away by circumstance, because the people definitely don't WANT to be dragged away by the Tsunami. Simple way to discover free-will.. Tell a 3 year old, "No!" when they ask for something and see the reaction. That temper tantrum and pouting? Yeah. Consequence of free-will being denied gratification.

it makes it so fucking comfortable for everybody when junkies die in slow silence and survivors talk about PERSONAL struggles and everyone congratulates their (imaginary) selves for their (imaginary) free will which they of course will exercise the right way because they're so fucking smart and awesome.

meanwhile the brain that you are blind to is doing its thing. producing the fiction you take as your self.

that brain is wandering around a fucking maze of addictive traps designed to turn it into a money acquiring then depositing machine. hacking it, using it up, leaving the ruins for all the other brains around it to suffer/clean up.

and the brains of rich people are sitting their rationalizing their detachment, pulling the levers, funding the schemes and traps, and bragging about their portfolios.

no offence but no and fuck you!

i wont "deal with it" and i wont shut up.

i wont talk about this like its just up to me and thats it.

ive binned my smokes a hundred times! done all the things you suggest.

this is american hyper-individualism, and while it makes sense on the surface, it doesn't accurately reflect the way things are. life is difficult and reality is complicated. our choices and behavior are constantly being shaped by our environment. the individual doesn't exist in a vacuum. actually, the individual is defined by society. how can society define the individual and then disappear out of existence?

There are no magic x's, if anything, cigarettes or other "habits" are futile attempts at finding that magic x. What is the futility? As the Buddha suggested, "Suffering is caused by attachment or desire." There is no magic cure for attachment, it is a matter of learning how to let it go gradually. Even God(s) isn't magical enough to negate attachment instantaneously, its part of our human nature. The meaning of life is again, learning this reality of ourselves and learning better how to manage and deal with it on a daily basis.

it fucking irritates me to be told to shut up and enjoy.

shut up and enjoy. everyday. everywhere. a fucking chorus of morons. over and over again. meanwhile the disaster goes on. mass suffering. but we should just shut up and enjoy.

its really fun to sneer at people who can't/don't/won't shut up and enjoy, cos they look like they are actually feeling something and that's not cool.

male posturing. idiotic fucking male posturing. a chorus of monkeys all screaming the same individualist script, like their rehash of individualist ideology is so fucking unique, like everyone hasnt heard it a million times already, like it actually works or signifies something other than redundancy.

never said you should shut up. I like conversing with you.

I am saying that the energy you put forth railing against the system set up to fuck you, is better served in active decisions and choices that would benefit you.

I had to do it. I am not special. I was an addicted human who loves cigarettes more than you could ever imagine. but when the shit hits the fan, you either choose to change your habit, or you choose to stay in your habit. simple as pie.

the one thing that differentiates us from the animals is our ability to make our decisions based on conscious thought as opposed to sensory reflex. That is what is referrred to by the concept of free will. without free will human would never have mastered fire, would never have been able to create agriculture, or any of the many things which make our lives possible the way they are.

the fire found us. the cigarettes smoke us. etc.

defining the individual is not what we are talking about. we are talking about the act of purchasing smokes, lighting one up, and inhaling it's smoke. you wanna stop? don't DO IT ANYMORE. If you cannot do that, then you need help doing it, and there is no shame in asking for help.

you can all tell me OVER AND OVER AGAIN to deal with this as an individual and i can just stop listening or responding to this fucking redundant shit. as if i need to be told this.

do it yourself, make a choice. blah blah fucking blah.

No good choices are about simple math. If (a) than (b).. If (a) people ingest plants/substances which are biologically harmful to homeostasis, then (b) there will be biologically negative consequences. If (a) people make destructive decisions in their relationships with other humans then (b) those abused humans will react or retaliate in a negative way. If (a) we make decisions to hurt ourselves psychologically with negative or self-defeating thought processes or internal dialogue, then (b) we will gradually erode and destroy ourselves.

The meaning of life is to make good decisions. Not in some kind vain, self-seeking way, humans evolutionarily speaking or social creatures, we can't survive independent of other humans. If we make decisions that hurt other humans out of selfishness, we are actually hurting ourselves. Hence, making better decisions improves life.

its not about me. its a collective problem and theres a collective solution. i am not fucking interested in being told AGAIN that i need to deal with it individually. how many fucking times do you guys want to tell me this, like it even means anything?

no. part of it maybe, but not all.


he has enough energy to survive and then some.

he probably needs a little more energy towards survival but his social criticism is far from futile.

no fucking way.

the meaning of male vanity is to make good decisions and brag and boast about them and lecture others on them.

so why do you NOT DO IT then? Your answer to that is a personal thing, not applicable to anyone else.

vanity does not discount a good decision

im not asking anyone for anything. and i also do not need to be talked to about my individual choices over and over again as if that makes them more real.

never said it was futile. just that it does not help his personal ciscumstances and personal cig addiction

that's overly reductionist.

if life was that easy, we would have no addicts, everyone would be rich, and we'd always have nice weather.

Your choices are only as real as you choose to see them

wrong, I was being specific to one individual, not the whole of society.

because the sequence of words that (does not) constitute me is only an expression of a brain that is doing things on its own. the words come after the brains "decisions", which is just a description of its processes.

but you're enshrining the "personal" above all which is very culturally american and probably more so exacerbated in texas.

if you were in p.r. you'd probably be thinking more about the family. "smoking is bad for me but lets me work harder which is good for my family."

my brain is addicted. the cigarettes are there. the brain and the cigarettes are linked by smoking.

the brain and the body and the cigarettes are all linked in a commodity structure. people who are designated the job of producing profit use the cigarettes to access the brain and make it exchange money for them. the whole things a loop. the brain "craves" the cigarettes in so far as
smoking and the inhalation of the chemicals cause it to be physically altered. both objects are attracted to each other because of the death drive i suppose.

i do not need to smoke, i do not want to smoke. but people want me to, and the company that sells the things needs me to to continue existing.
all of us exist in a society that organizes itself so that i smoke and they collect the profit. it goes on and it causes disease, misery etc. it wastes lives and potential. it makes things worse for all of us.

we know that a brain like mine works in certain ways. we statistically measure what happens to it, and we find that it smokes. we are learning about how the process of addiction works - what causes and conditions make the smoking continue, and what would make it stop.

of course, finding out how to cure addiction is not in the interests of any company, because selling drugs is a faster way to make profit. r&d for cures for addiction is expensive. you need profit to try. and if you succeed, it only happens because someone thinks that this cure can become profitable. but if it fucks with the profit of loads of other industries, which are way more profitable, well then you're gonna have a fucking problem.

the ultimate irony would be them hiring an assassin that was also a junkie. quite likely really.

why the fuck would our society cure addiction? its just not as profitable as engineering new products to addict people to. which is what we are LITERALLY DOING. fucking burgers are engineered scientifically to addict us now! this is fact and not some conspiracy theory!

talking about free will is literally doing freelance work for these assholes!

talk about free will all you want. at the end of the day the statistics describe what really goes on. we can use the statistical data to free the addicted brain from its miserable trap.

it IS possible.

Don't diss animals like that, haven't you ever had a dog or a cat? They are not mechanical, they are sentient beings. They make willful decisions based on their own cognition and consciousness. Elephants can paint imaginary pictures. Apes can express complex emotions through sign language. Parrots can learn to do algebra. How is it that humans continually forget that, duh, WE ARE ANIMALS, so any traits we see in ourselves logically must also exist in other animals. We share the same physiology. Further, animals have skills we couldn't fathom. Echolocation? Thermal imaging? Sensitivity to electromagnetism or gravity? Sometimes animals make us look all the more stupid and helpless really..

That is also not entirely true. Smoking must be definition be more than just physiological addiction to the chemical of nicotine because if that were the case, then simply taking nicotine gum/pills would solve addiction, YET folks still crave CIGARETTES even when ingesting nicotine. Smoking is matter than of culture as much as biology.

you are right, but culture is not the whole picture. its a small contributing factor, but simply talking about culture keeps the idea of free will alive.

the neurological reality OVERPOWERS culture. you can hear all the bullshit about free will and positive thinking blah blah blah but the fucking addicted brain does not get such an intense sensation from that that its addictive pathways are deactivated.

the society is organized so that consumers live in pens that are like experimental labs allowing profit seekers to maximize the techniques used to get all the fucking cash in your hands into their pockets.

this is, believe it or not, a problem for all of us, even the people making the profit.

culture is the superstructure which is determined by the base constituted by the relations of production.

-alvin toffler (ha ha ha ha)

--

actually if you tell him that BLACK PEOPLE ARE TARGETS OF THE SMOKING INDUSTRY he'll see it better (and it's true, anyway).

or: the old sugar/rum/slaves triangular trade.

"you have free will, you can choose not to be a slave"

industrial capitalism is what really freed the slaves

agricultural capitalism created the American slave trade.

and there are still plenty of slaves in America. they are just hispanic immigrants sequestered in 4 bedroom houses with 90 others.

yeah.

the chinese slave labourers will eventually be replaced by machines.

these processes are not ugly and brutal, but they are real.

addiction is also slavery. 1st worlders are enslaved in this way more easily. the more money you can get at the more of a junkie you can become.

neurological slavery! thats what it is.

slavery of the brain to substances engineered or naturally capable of ensnaring the brain in systems where it is programmed to get money then buy the drug. the unwitting "self" - the vocal chords that take social responsibility for this brain are blind to whats going on inside their head. they are enslaved, and then the society acts as slavemaster through the individuals, hectoring and chastising them to both quit and enjoy at the same time. they pay to be hectored in this way. pay for the fantasy of overcoming with supernatural win that they are supposed to consume and then embody.

the slaves dream of quitting, so they can have that money in their pockets for a little longer, live in slightly better conditions, in a bit less savage chaos and squalor. meanwhile the companies engineer new drugs, their dealers await new shipments and supplies.

but they have free will! they could just walk away! decisions! no???

a dog will eat until it barfs from overeating, and it will do so over and over and over again. the only dogs/cats I have known that seem sentient and that seem to make actual decisions are the ones that people got high.

(I have a theory that primates ingested psychotropic substances which forced them to confront the mind/self duality, thereby creating the mental structure that humans use to such varied ends)

anyway db, you need to join the underground railroad and escape! then you can be free to march on your enemies.