ethos, NOUN
The characteristic spirit of a culture, era, or community as manifested in its attitudes and aspirations.
ethic, NOUN
A set of moral principles, especially ones relating to or affirming a specified group, field, or form of conduct.
I was thinking this morning that antismoking (and healthism in general) is an ethos or ethic that has emerged from the medical profession. And it should come as no surprise to anyone that this should have happened, given that the primary concern of medicine is to maintain or restore Health. It’s what they do.
But I was also thinking that there is probably an ethos or ethic associated with every profession. And because every profession is concerned with a different matter, they are all likely to have a different ethos.
So for example an ethos that emerged from from the legal profession might be primarily concerned with Justice. And the ethos of a news organisation might be primarily concerned with Truth. And the ethos of hairdressers might be primarily concerned with Style (why not?).
The ethos of a farming community might be concerned with Food (because that’s what they produce), and with the seasons of the year, and with sowing and reaping, and with keeping plants well watered, and preventing insects and other animals eating the plants, and so on.
The computing profession, of which I was once (and perhaps still am) a member, also developed its own ethos. In some ways, every computing language (Fortran, Basic, Java, C) is an ethos in itself, with its own strict rules. And there are rival sects within computing, such that some people insist that only structured languages like Java should be used (from which GOTO statements have been almost entirely banished), or that Apple Macs are superior products to IBM PCs, or Linux operating systems better than Windows, and so on.
What’s unusual about the antismoking-healthist ethos is that it is one which has broken out of the medical profession, and begun to spread far beyond it. If nowhere else, this can be seen in the smoking bans that have spilled out of hospitals into the grounds around them, and sometimes into the streets beyond. It’s an imperialistic ethos that has set out to conquer the whole world, and to assert the primacy of Health throughout it. To be Health-conscious is to make Health the primary concern.
But of necessity this healthist ethos must come into collision with the ethoses (ethoi?) of other communities. That is, Health must come into collision with Justice, Truth, Style, and any of the other ethical codes I’ve mentioned. In fact, it must come into collision with all of them. Because a Healthist will always be telling you that Justice, Truth, Style, and anything else you may care to mention, all pale into insignificance next to all-important Health.
And in some ways the letter I sent to my MP last week highlighted one of these collisions. For I wrote that prison smoking bans were coercive, and unjust. So I was pitting Justice against Health. And there is no concept of Justice within healthism. Coercive, unjust prison smoking bans are an inevitable consequence of the hegemony of a healthism in which there is no place for Justice. What else is likely to happen when Health has become the only thing that matters?
The same sort of ethical collision must be happening as imperialistic healthism arrives in the military profession. And I would suppose that in the military there is also a powerful ethos which I might suppose is centred upon Courage, or Self-Sacrifice, or Duty, or Honour. And since the military are always highly wasteful of life and health, they are hardly likely to have Health as their primary value. How must soldiers feel about being told to stop smoking, when they are regularly being entering lethal environments in which bullets and bombs are flying in all directions?
One might say that the antismoking healthist ethos has already overwhelmed the pub and restaurant professions, which also had their own ethoses (Companionship? Community? Hospitality?) which have now been made subservient to Health.
So Health is coming into collision with Justice, Truth, Companionship, Courage, and any number of other values. And the defeat of healthism will come when Justice, Truth, Courage, and all the rest begin to be re-asserted in the face of it. Healthism is going to come under attack from everywhere, and on multiple grounds, and not just from smokers or vapers. Everyone will be attacking it. They will attack it in the same way as the organs in a body fight back against a growing tumour.
And I think Americans will (eventually) be attacking it hardest. Because America is also an ethos: of Independence and many other things. There’s also a British ethos: Stiff Upper Lip? And a French and German ethos as well. But Americans will be attacking the hardest because Antismoking is profoundly anti-American in ways it is not so anti-British or anti-French. Antismoking is anti-American because America is the country that gave the world tobacco. And to crush out tobacco is to crush out America and everything it stands for. Antismokers like Hillary Clinton are not just the enemies of smokers: they are the enemies of America (something many Americans think about Hillary Clinton already, quite aside from her antismoking proclivities).
But America is deeply conflicted over tobacco. The healthists are as much in ascendance there as they are anywhere else. And an American patriot like Alex Jones is just as much obsessed with Health as anyone else, given that Infowars sells a whole variety of health products in the Infowars Store. e.g. DNA Force, Brain Force, Caveman, etc. So there’s a conflict within Infowars between a set of patriotic, independent, 1776, True Grit, Right Stuff, Frontier American values and a newly-acquired set of Healthist values (Did George Washington ever worry about whether he was getting enough Selenium in his diet?) American patriots like Alex Jones are going to have resolve these conflicts within themselves and the organisations in which they work if they are going to defeat their enemies.
But my central point is that once one thing – in this case Health – tries to assert its primacy or hegemony over all other values, it must come into conflict with those other values, whatever their source (profession, nationality, religion). So rampant Healthism is going to come under attack from everywhere. And it will be found deficient of Truth and Justice and Hospitality. And most likely of Reason and Science and any number of other things. It will die a death of a thousand cuts. And Health-consciousness will be replaced by Truth-consciousness and Justice-consciousness as these other values re-assert themselves. Healthism will be defeated much like Napoleon or Hitler were defeated – by the rest of the world ganging up against them.
Frank Davis 
I particularly like your diagram Frank. With “health” growing like a cancer in society, squeezing all other values to the periphery and eventually threatening to suffocate life entirely. A couple of decades ago I viewed the medical establishment and the WHO as benign. But not any more (I have nothing against actual medical practitioners though). It may be a long shot but maybe, just maybe, Trump’s overhaul of the EPA marks the beginning of the fight back.
Reminiscent also of medical Professor Petr Skrabanek’s view:
“The pursuit of health is a symptom of unhealth. When this pursuit is no longer a personal yearning but part of state ideology, healthism for short, it becomes a symptom of political sickness.”
Petr Skrabanek – “The Death of Humane Medicine and The Rise of Coercive Healthism”
Frank, I hope you don’t mind me giving it a mention here but if anyone hasn’t read his book, I very much recommend downloading it from: https://bradtaylor.wordpress.com/2009/06/05/petr-skrabanek-books/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petr_Skrabanek
That looks interesting, Tony, I’ll download those for perusal at my leisure. Thanks for the link.
Re your ‘Ethos / Ethoi’, Frank, in Modern Greek, a masculine noun generally (there are exceptions) ends in ‘-os’, and those masculine nouns form the plural by replacing the ‘-os’ with ‘-oi’ (pronounced ‘ee’); and since the Greek word for ‘ethos’ is ‘ήθος’, which is pronounced in exactly the same way as the English word (if you pronounce the first ‘e’ as ‘ee’, rather than ‘eh’), then it’s very likely that your supposition is correct! :)
I particularly like your diagram Frank.
I’m glad you interpreted it exactly as I intended.
‘The BBC headquarters in London has got a new resident: he’s tall, bronze and likes a smoke. A statue of novelist George Orwell now adorns the exterior of New Broadcasting House, a few minutes from where Orwell worked as a radio producer during World War Two. But what was the author of Nineteen Eighty-Four doing in the BBC? And did he like it?’
‘The location where Orwell is placed has been an unofficial smokers’ corner ever since Broadcasting House was extended in 2013. So it’s appropriate that Jennings’ Orwell has a roll-up in one hand.’
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-41886208?ns_mchannel=social&ns_campaign=bbc_england&ns_source=twitter&ns_linkname=english_regions
Obvious irony of one of the largest propaganda machines today paying homage to Orwell aside (I can only imagine how he would react to this “honor”), I find it predictably politically correct that even a bronze statue of a man smoking a cigarette must be exiled to the outdoors–and to the “unofficial smokers’ corner” of all locations.
And smokers will be congregated around it, wreathing it in smoke. Stand underneath the inscription on the wall. A real life, physical demonstration that…
There is something deeply disturbing about people who press me into worrying about something that I myself have to worry about. Looks a bit unnatural, doesn’t it.
Anyway, let’s get back to prison smoking bans for a while. Look at this story
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/rise-in-violence-and-self-harm-as-inmates-struggle-with-tobacco-ban-hb7q7592v
A prison in this case is an ideal small model of society. That’s what happens, if and when the Healthyism reaches its logical conclusion. And – thanks for your patience – it looks VERY much like Frank’s drawing of a bloated bag of Health choking everything else around it and asking for retribution..
https://www.lawsociety.org.nz/news-and-communications/latest-news/news/prisons-five-years-smoke-free
http://www.internationallawoffice.com/Newsletters/Litigation/New-Zealand/Wilson-Harle/Prison-smoking-ban-prompts-judicial-intervention-and-raises-constitutional-concerns
In the end, smoking bans in prisons in NZ remain in place.
This is my biggest issue with Alex Jones. I really want to like the guy, but for someone whose entire persona is built around being open-minded and exploring alternatives to the mainstream, he is solidly entrenched in the Empire of Health.
He is a literal snake oil salesman, who figured out he could profit off many of his followers’ paranoia. He pitches “healthy” supplements to those who are afraid of GMO/chemically-altered foods and fluoride in their water. He also hawks an expensive air purifier for those who are paranoid of chemicals in their air (which is right up the alley of the clean-air obsessed, puritanical Antismokers).
It amazes me how even “hardcore” conspiracy theorists refuse to question the Antismoking lies and myths. However, Alex Jones makes his reasoning quite clear: doing so would destroy his self-proclaimed “credibility” as a peddler of “health,” and that’s bad for his wallet.
I actually do like the guy. I think he’s profoundly honest in his own way. But I think he also embodies a contradiction, which is between his real love of freedom and his real fear (shared by many people) of (ill-)Health. He’s as frightened as anybody of getting cancer/stroke/heart attack. I think he’s struggling with his own demons as much as he’s struggling with the Left and the Liberals and the Democrats.
I think what’s interesting is that Infowars has now collected a whole bunch of people, none of whom are quite like Alex Jones. e.g. David Knight, Paul Joseph Watson, Owen Shroyer(?), Roger Stone, Steve Pieczenik, Jerome Corsi. None of them are Alex Jones clones. They’re all different. But they all defer to Alex Jones because he’s the main man.
I also don’t see that there’s anything wrong with selling stuff, if he believes in it, which I think he does (even if I don’t). I’d prefer if he sold T-shirts instead. And the Infowars Store does seem to be branching out into new products.
He’s as frightened as anybody of getting cancer/stroke/heart attack
And that’s why fortunetellers have always been popular, one’s in white coats are only the latest manifestation of purporting to know the unknowable.
However faithfully you follow their authorative sounding and frequently contradictory pronouncements, when your fate finally does come upon you, they will be long gone.
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/08/26/215761377/a-history-of-snake-oil-salesmen
“It amazes me how even “hardcore” conspiracy theorists refuse to question the Antismoking lies and myths”
It amazes me how so many people generally refuse to question the anti-smoking lies, not just supposedly “hardcore” conspiracy theorists like Jones! Even all those normal, non-conspiratorial members of the public who are now starting to see their own indulgencies beginning to be targeted can’t seem to cast their mind back just a couple of decades or so to see the comparison between what was being said about smoking then and what is being said about their “bad habits” now. The similarities are nothing short of astonishing. Sometimes these “new” prohibitionist movements even highlight the fact they are copying the anti-smoking template by enthusiastically connecting their campaign to that of the anti-smoking one. Phrases like “the new tobacco,” “should be treated like smoking,” and “hoping for the same success [sic] against xxx as we have seen against tobacco.” They couldn’t make it clearer if they tried, but still people won’t see it. They bury their head in the sand, stick their fingers in their ears, switch the channel on the radio or the TV or turn the page in their newspaper and pretend that those words were never said.
Perhaps they are just so brainwashed that they have truly mastered 1984’s Doublethink and so regard with cynicism any and all new pronouncements made by Public Health, but cling fast to the idea that where smoking is concerned – and, amazingly, only where smoking is concerned – they are shining beacons of truth and honesty who wouldn’t dream of even slightly exaggerating any tiny factoid which came within their reach which might further their ultimate aims, still less fabricating them out of nothing.
Or perhaps it’s a pride thing. No-one likes to admit that they’ve fallen for pack of lies so gullibly – even when failing to admit it means remaining blind to where these original statements ultimately lead. But whatever the reason it may cost them dear in the long run, because all the time they pretend that things are different this time, they deny themselves the best opportunity to fight the prohibitionists in the most effective way – and from the outset, before they truly get the bit between their teeth. For what could be more powerful in mobilising large numbers of drinkers (or whatever group these new “sinners” belong to) than being able to make those comparisons, and then simply ask their fellows to take a look at how smokers are now treated, and then to add two and two together …
When this is pointed out to them, you hear all sorts of mental gymnastics going on in order to make this campaign somehow different from the anti-smoking one, the most common one being “Oh, but there’s no such thing as Passive xxx. The only person I’m harming is myself.” This is a particularly naïve view from drinkers, because there’s a whole host of “innocent bystanders” available for anti-alcohol campaigners to make use of. Do they honestly think that those campaigners won’t drag road traffic accidents, violent street crime, domestic abuse (particularly against the cheeeeldren) and family breakdown into the mix as “their” version of Passive Smoking? Honestly? God, you can almost see the poster-campaign now – a gruesome accident or assault victim, for instance, and a tagline, using the drinkers’ very own words against them: “No such thing as Passive Drinking? Really?”
Do they genuinely also think that all those hangers-on who aren’t active in “the movement,” but who for whatever reason have a dislike of people who drink alcohol (for example), won’t take great pleasure in adding fuel to the fire by citing the “lesser crimes” committed by drinkers, along the lines of “I’ve lost count of the number of evenings I’ve been on which have been ruined by some loud drunk on the next table mouthing off,” or, the old stalwart, “Drinkers just aren’t aware of how vile stale beer or whisky smells when breathed in the direction of a non-drinker. It’s absolutely revolting!” I bet there’s a host of non-drinking equivalents of any of those all-too-well-known anti-smoking trolls that pepper blogs like these from time to time who just can’t wait for it all to start so they can get their little six penn’orth in against their own pet hate!
But unless and until these new “sinners” make the connection to the anti-smoking movement and start to realise that the whole thing is based on flimsy evidence, junk science, cherry-picked “studies” and hard-hitting emotive propaganda, no more and no less, then the juggernaut will roll on – and with smokers already well-thumped, they’ll be the next in line.
Don’t get me wrong, Jax; that was my entire point. We, a small minority of smokers (which is already a minority of the general population), are the only people questioning the antismoking psuedoscience and lies.
Absolutely nobody else is questioning the “settled science,” not even the people who have built their entire reputations around questioning seemingly “unquestionable” beliefs.
To put things in perspective, we are currently living in a time where it is more acceptable (albeit only slightly) to publicly question the spherical shape of Earth than it is to publicly question the entirely unfounded and unreplicable yet somehow “settled” Antismoking “science.”
Great analysis, Jax. I’d add three things: Many of the drinkers/ Coke drinkers/ salt, sugar, and meat-eaters will dismiss the “science” against them as bullshit, but continue to believe everything about smoking partly because they’ve got a vested interest in that belief. Many others, however, will–already have, in fact–adopt the smokers’ crouch, accepting that they’re not just harming themselves, but shamefully sinning. I’ve already read countless confessions in articles of, for instance, mothers hiding the chocolate chip cookie they bought for themselves and guiltily downing it in a locked bathroom so their children won’t see. And finally, already the superior self-deniers are prominently out there, commenting snarkily in online threads about how those disgusting, careless meat/cake/pretzel-eating/cola-swilling swine are costing them money, and the health care system money and possibly deserve to die ugly for their sins.
A little more health fascism at work. I have some painful illnesses, spinal stenosis and arthritis. In the old days, I was able to get prescriptions for morphine (was never an abuser) for the times it got really horrible. That all stopped a few years back when the BC College of Physicians and Surgeons decided that only terminal cancer patients could get opiates. The rest of us could get by on anti-inflammtories (don’t work), anti-depressants (a machination of the devil, and why are they said to relieve pain?), or paracetamol, plus exercise, of course.
So…no drugs for me. Despite no drugs for me, I was called in for a random drug test. See, because I’m in so much pain, I might be tempted to use street drugs, so I must be randomly tested four times per year to make sure I’ve not succummbed to temptation and be thrown into rehab.
Let that sink in.
They’re not testing for nicotine yet, at least. But one of the few reasons Health Canada hasn’t banned smoking in private residences yet is because as we all know, while tobacco smoke is the devil, marijuana smoke is holy, and they want to make sure that pot smokers are still allowed the freedom of smoking their preferred drug at home.
World. Hell. Handbasket.