Looks like your spending a lot of time on me sablebrush52. I am glad you think I am worth your effort. I wonder how much less time it would've taken you to answer the questions than to write what you did. You ask me questions assuming to get answers but demand $10,000 plus $800 an hour when challenged to come up with an answer to my questions. I have heard some cop outs in my day but you take the cake. I guess you are used to dealing with fools, it is said they are easily parted with their money.
brightleaf: "Saying we all practice in vice by smoking is a classic warren statement."
sablebrush52: "Citations please?"
From this thread
warren: "Trying to rationalize what is a very selfish choice helps pass the time, I suppose. Better we simply take ownership of our, rather expensive and enjoyable vice."
to which he clarified
"A weakness of character or behaviour; a bad habit"
Which amends to
warren: "Trying to rationalize what is a very selfish choice helps pass the time, I suppose. Better we simply take ownership of our, rather expensive and enjoyable weakness of character."
I put it in bold as you seem to have trouble seeing it. Rephrased by me for clarity "It is better that we admit our weakness of character, and take ownership of our expensive, very selfish behavior, than try to rationalize smoking."
He speaks of vice, selfishness, weakness of character, wasting money; essentially condemning our moral health.
Since this a health thread, I think moral health is an appropriate topic.
Our morals guide us in our daily life, providing a framework from which we act and a filter through which we perceive the behaviors and relationships in the world around us. It has been argued that by choosing to smoke tobacco we have somehow degraded ourselves and revealed a fault in our character. Smoking tobacco is not a new fad. I will choose examples from those who have lived with, and used the plant in their daily lives for the longest period of time. Surely, if there is moral degradation to be found, it will be most apparent among them.
Here is the perspective of smoking from a brother of the pipe whose tobacco culture was preserved through generations via oral tradition, and more recently immortalized in writing.
Long ago there was a wise and peace-loving elder who traveled from tribe to tribe encouraging cooperation and friendship between all nations. He was a spokesman for the cause of good and his mission was to promote unity among all beings.
At a very great age the elder called a council meeting of elders and representatives from the many clans, tribes, and nations which he had visited and taught. He told them that his work was coming to an end and he must soon join the spirit world. However, he promised to return in a new form as a reminder of the peaceful brotherhood he had sought to establish among the nations.
A short time after his death a new plant sprouted from his grave. This was tobacco and has been used in ceremonies ever since as a symbol of unity, honesty and peace. The rising smoke from the pipe is a reminder that the thoughts and prayers of people go upward to the Creator.
Little Turtle of the Nipmuck Tribe, Dudley Band
Original Document held at the Concord Museum in Massachusetts
And from The Soverane Herbe pages 22 and 23, published in 1901
...the resource on certain occasions passed into general habit. Once initiated into the mysteries of tobacco by the priest, man returned to it with whetted appetite. Instead of delegating his affairs to the medicine-man, he personally sought the inspiration and help of the gods and tobacco. The smoke, too, that cured disease would as surely prevent it. Moreover, the very act of smoking was the offering of a sacrifice to the Great Spirit. Thus gradually the smoking and inspiration of tobacco ceased to be a purely religious ceremony for high days, and for times of trouble and stress, and a remedy for disease; it became a common and a daily custom. From a sacred rite it passed into an ordinary practice, with which were still associated, when Europeans discovered the New World, a moral, if not a religious, significance, and established medicinal virtues.
Lastly, from The Spirit World Published by Time-Life Books 1992 pgs. 86-87
The tobacco smoked that evening is merely one fruit of the earth with which Indians have long felt a supernatural connection. Roots and nuts that they gathered, trees that they felled, crops that they planted, and herbs that they collected for healing were considered gifts from the spirits. As such they were treated with reverence in daily life...Of all the plants known to ancient Indians, tobacco was among the most sacred...Few Native American customs were more widespread than the ritual use of tobacco. Except for the tribes of the Northwest Coast, every Indian community south of the subarctic offered tobacco to the spirits, not only during special ceremonies but also as part of the rituals accompanying most endeavors.
To ascribe all of the peoples of the New World, pre- and post-conquest, as being “selfish and weak of character” based solely on whether or not they participated in smoking a pipe is,well,.......laughable. Seeing as how smoking is now a world wide phenomenon, ascribing everyone in the world who smokes as being selfish and weak of character” is LUDICROUS.
It is clear to me that choosing to smoke does not create moral inferiority, or a person of sub-par constitution. We may choose to have different morals, but tobacco use should not be a determining factor is how you value your character, or those of other people.
