2/ Shame is tied up with addiction. If you feel shame after doing something, it’s quite likely to be diminishing you in some way. Shame is anticipated social condemnation, so addicts must care excessively about what other people think. No surprise celebs are addicts.
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13/ The way out is Dr Johnson meets Nietzsche. If you want out, you have to go out completely and existentiallly. Will Self described a gangster he knew who used to smoke. “When did you stop?” asked Self. “1960s. I read the Doll report in the papers. Stopped next day.”
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14/ Self describes the villain’s approach as existential. A bit like a Jean-Paul Belmondo film. “Read that smoking is linked to cancer. [Spit ciggie out] Stop smoking. Move forward. Do the job.” Assess what is good for your body, cut out the bad. No moralising. No question.
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15/ This is also the Dr Johnson approach, which holds that giving up completely is easier than moderation. “I’m not doing that any more.” People sometimes describe epiphanies likes this when they feel they’ve smoked every cigarette they had to smoke. They had 10k in them.
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16/ Anyway, the Nietzsche-Johnson approach is the opposite of cultivating a moralised identity as an “addict” where you secretly get off on the shame-confession dynamic of falling off the wagon. You dirty little Puritans.
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17/ But it’s also possible that, really, people need their vices & that the vices are in them. “Self-improvement” is a very American* democratic notion. The other vaguely Nietzschean angle is to accept people need these things to be what they are, even if the results are fatal.
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