Sculpting society

I am old. In my life, I have seen how clever the manipulation of public opinion has become. Of course, getting your minions to do as they are told, is nothing new. It has happened throughout history, But the delivery of the message has always been slow - word of mouth, town criers, priests, rumour, legend, war. The first half of the 1900's we had movies - a good way to spread propaganda and the emerging of science and drug companies. Now we have the Internet - and science  and drug companies are omniscient. 

We think we think, are of an opinion, or changing our minds all of our own accord. But we are simply sculpted society. We think as we are led to think. We are no less infected by modern dogma and creed than vassals under a medieval lord. Science proves and disproves stuff hourly as the media reports.  Governments confer with medical and scientific quangos or lobby groups that we support with our taxes, as much as they ever did with Archbishops, or Popes.

We have found new big-sticks to punish people with, that produce as much shame, fear and deference as the old ones did. And we conform.

Take smoking. The habit of smoking is now despised by people who have been educated during the course of my life to believe it is not normal, is foolish and selfish.  Smokers have now been downgraded and filed into the folder called" Idiots". My generation or earlier are the "modern" smokers, sculpted by the Tobacco Companies - for profit. An example of sculpted society. 

It is a fact that since the earliest times, humans have smoked - something.

As we go into the future I am not going to be ashamed to say that I am a smoker who now vapes. The reason I won't be ashamed is that inhaling something, to some, has always been a pleasurable occupation.  I can see myself sitting in a cave chucking a datura leaf onto the fire thousands of years ago, and inhaling deeply. 

I am a smoker that vapes because vaping is not essentially different to smoking. We are satisfying the desire to inhale that has come down with us through the mists of time.


I AM a smoker who smokes vapour because I prefer the whole experience and the freedom to inhale to my pleasure. If I didn't, I'd still be smoking.