Everyone dies. Dying shouldn't be a factor to keep you from doing anything. Try and write down some of the biggest names in history... it's often that of warriors and soldiers. Even others, like Shakespeare and many other artists, glorified violence. You can name scientists.. but I'll bet that more people would know Alexander the Great more than Leonhard Euler, even though the latter contributed far more to mankind.
Let's not forget that the most powerful nation in the world now, the USA, earned its liberty through violence.. it earned its place as a modern superpower through violence, it ended WW2 with extreme violence, and won the Cold War by beating up weaker countries. Today, it makes a significant portion of its income through weapons exports and weapon research and the defense branch is the most active in the world. And it's still the world's biggest superpower. Is that really happiness?
But yes, it's keeping us away from anarchy. Remember the hippie movement? The one dedicated to peace, freedom, and goodwill? Nearing the end of the hippie movement, they went around carrying guns to defend themselves. And the hippie movement.. that began to die out after they realized they
can't stop violence.
Not that it's a good thing. It's just that saying 'violence is not the answer' is a naive way to approach it, kind of like saying "crime doesn't pay". Of course, it's not the best answer, but if it wasn't so effective, it wouldn't be common.
Going back to the smoking topic... smoking is bad. Definitely. I don't smoke, no purpose, and it wastes money.
But I don't like how it's going from a health issue into a moral issue these days. It's like most people want to look good by stopping smoking. When a politician wants to look like he cares about health, he fights smoking. When someone wants to take the moral high ground, he criticizes smoking. Going against smoking has become a way to look good.
I don't condone smoking, but it's turning into a form of discrimination. Of course, it's fine to discriminate against people who don't care about their health... or is it? Telling people that it's bad for their health is
encouraging the type of people who smoke. Some of them
want to look like they don't care about their health. They're bad.
Otherwise, there's no purpose to smoking. Smoking is a statement. An attitude. There are harmless (and cheaper) things you could suck on, but people start smoking in the first place because it "looks cool". Interestingly, the only times I've seen people stop smoking from their own will was after nobody cared.
I'm pretty sure the facts against smoking have become biased... the type of people who don't care about bad health would smoke, and the type of people who don't care about bad health would do unhealthy things and eat unhealthy stuff. Unless you specifically take out eating, exercise, etc factors, you're going to come out with research results that points to smoking leading to high blood pressure, heart disease, lung cancer, breast cancer, just because these same people don't mind chomping down on other carcinogenics.
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Topic: The Rant Thread (Read 12006 times)