AdvertsAndSmoking
From UoWiki
A number of comparisons spring to mind between AAY and giving up smoking (see also AAYAndWhatTheScientistSaid).
For starters, you don't notice the stink of cigarettes until you stop smoking. Likewise, once I made a conscious effort to step outside vert-think I began to feel under constant psychic assault, or as Jo put it , 'skilful semiotic attack'. It makes your third eye water.
There are also some interesting comparisons in that cigarettes are (some have argued) the ultimate consumer good, because they create the desire they promise to fulfil, and then hold satisfaction just out of your reach. You can crave a cigarette whilst in the act of smoking one. Desire desires desire.
Are verts carcinogenic? Intuitively I feel this is possible, but have no way of proving it.
There's also the connection between Thanatos, the death-instinct, and smoking, which segues nicely into the subject of cigarettes. There's an extraordinary article here , published in the Wall Street Journal, by veteran campaigner Alastair McIntosh about how cigarette advertising leverages the death-instinct. Incidentally, Indra Sinha relates how Alastair appeared in his office one day while he was still working as an advertising executive to berate him for exploiting the death-instinct in the cigarette adverts he had created. Sinha went on to leave advertising, and became one of the founding cybergypsies .
Cigarettes, advertising and the death-instinct are also related through what Hakim Bey calls invidia or the Evil Eye. See article here .
Also, there's a process of deferral at work in giving up smoking, which works in the context of AAY as well. It's a ZenOfWon't trick that turns procrastination in your favour: if you're having a hard time giving up, just promise yourself you'll take it up again tomorrow. Then, when tomorrow comes, you make the same promise again, and so on indefinitely. It's come to the end of the AAY experiment but I think I'll wait a few more days before letting myself look at them again, just in case they re-educate me.
In reality, I think it is bound to take far longer than a week for AAY to have a permanent effect. I bought my last packet of cigs in July 2003, and it's taken me until now (February 2005) to feel confidently free of tobacco cravings.
