The Smokescreen of Ideology: Huffing and Puffing about Health and Choice.

Now that, divorce, homosexuality, transgendered identities, and even  to some extent sadomasochistic behavior and other "sexual perversions" are becoming increasingly mainstream, and thus under the purview of heteronormative neoliberalism, there are few acts that remain legal that can be called deviant. Before there were more symbolic prohibitions, which could incorporate a measure of transgression and, thereby, enjoyment, but now that pleasure seeking is built into the symbolic regulation  of the neoliberal culture itself, in an effort to create, increasingly singular identities, to which products can be marketed (i.e. running shoes for the specialized athlete, LGBT vacations, disability culture, self help books for the Caribbean Canadian, visually impaired, transgendered lesbian, who can't find a man, because she has bipolar two and an eating disorder), it is increasingly difficult to find pleasure in anything, because this is a desire and satisfaction, which further our alienation from ourselves, each other and our bodies is so totalizing. Smoking is interesting, and I must stress that I smoke and for that matter drink about once every four months, because it is wholly within the capitalist order, while being one of the last legal actions, apparently worthy of approbation, the extent of moral evil grows every day. Meanwhile, often people who sanctimoniously decry smoking as perhaps the last and greatest of our common postmodern transgressions, and secondhand smoke as illuminating the unethical disregard of “smokers” for their fellow human beings health, forget the catastrophic devastation we cause to our fellow human beings, at home and abroad daily, to maintain an average Weston person in the lifestyle to which she has been accustomed  cause, probably, at least five people in the global self TO DIE, if not more, not to mention the horrendous suffering we cause to our fellow species. And the devastation people continue to cause in the world by irresponsible sexual choices, including, sometimes, abortion, but the sexual choices, of whatever sort, are framed in the rhetoric of choice; for those are considered acceptable choices, whereas smoking is framed in the rhetoric of an agent responsibility to others, because it’s not deemed an acceptable choice. I’m probably more likely to get injured by people drinking excessively around me than around people who are smoking.

I know the health implications, but the event scenario of the addict does not always hold true. But it is largely a mechanism to control, with Christian undertones, that’s with one taste of the of the forbidden fruit, whatever that it happens to be, one will fall into perdition never to return. The smoker is also interesting because he is one of the last openly discriminated identities, which is fascinating because most of modern prejudice happens at the level of disavowal. “I know very well that new Canadians are immigrants just like I was, but, nonetheless they are stealing my job. I know very well that persons with disabilities should have the same opportunities by right, but to provide them with opportunities is too expensive, in times of economic austerity, when we increase military spending” the ironic thing is that the ideology of health and wellness has made very few people more well. It produces a dialectical opposite, obesity, as we pursue enjoyment not only by acquisition of capital, but particularly by one of its related outgrowths in increased regulation, domination and desire to perfect our own bodies\minds which has led to an increasingly oppressive normative standard with two primary goals, insofar as it is also ever adaptable to particular subjectivities. Not only do we have to aspire to achieve a global norm, we also have to choose particular norms for our kind of human being. Not only this, but according to Dove’s most recent commercial we ought to love ourselves, in our singularity, and if we don’t enjoy this pleasurable narcissism, there is something wrong with us, for after all, everyone is special, and every life worth living. We must do this for as long as you can! Apparently it does not matter whether you enjoy your life or live an excellent one; all that matters is that you live, or more precisely that you live while appearing to enjoy your life, lest you disturb others’ faith in the belief that believing in the pursuit of enjoyment is beneficial. This is really quite pointless, since as we prolong our lives the prospect of aging, on account of rampant social neglect of the elderly, is looking more and more grim with each passing day.

The fact is that health and wellness is a neoliberal marketing scheme that puts extreme pressure on persons with disabilities to conform to their own standard of well-being, while excluding them from the ideal normative standard. There is very little government funding for me to obtain the health desired of the neoliberal subject, and as such you could argue that my body is always “criminalized”. By smoking, very occasionally I take on the criminal subjectivity of disability, born of the confrontation with death that it represents, because I make people deal with the supposed horror of an innocent disabled person being assisted in “perverse” activity. Therefore, through this perversion I can subvert this consumptive ideology through consumption itself, thereby effecting a negation of negation, transcending the dialectic of desire, and thereby carving out for myself a space of sexual and political freedom, which I longed for when I came out of the closet, but perhaps I was born too late for that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGDMXvdwN5c