smoker's cult - degrees
smoker’s cult - degrees
So this is my first cut at the degrees..
I dont have names for the degrees yet..
0 - The initiatory activity is bumming smokes from others.. There is as yet no commitment to the cult. Nobody expects this grade to be carrying cigarettes. She is a guest at the prayer circles.
I - The first time she buys smokes for herself, she has initated a whole new paradigm, one of running out of smokes. In its purest form, I lasts some time before the threshold of II is crossed.
II - When you begin to smoke by yourself, you are engaging in II degree work. Some people go from I to II in the same night.
III - Quitting - technically you initiate yourself into III the first time you quit.. When does this happen? is it when you tell yourself that tomorrow no smokes, but your resolve didnt last past 10:30, or is it when you announce to others your intention to quit?
IV - Relapsing - seemingly inevitable.. the self-loathing, broken will-power. In this grade one realizes how much control she has given to an addictive little plant.
V - Quit forever - the paradigm of this one is the guy who has a heart attack, the doctor says “if you don’t quit, you are gonna die within so many months”,he suddenly decides that he doesnt smoke any more, and that’s about all there is to it.
The further degrees i am not so sure about… I aiming at 9 degrees if i can..
VI -Renunciation & conversion? This is a grade where one renounces his past. The orthodoxies of the prior grades are now the heresies of one’s current work. One seems to have converted to another cult - the cult of the anti-smokers, those rabid controllers of other people’s lives.
Indeed among those who wish to remove smoking from the face of the planet, there are two different subgroups.. those who have never smoked, who would like never to have to put up with it, and those who used to smoke, but for whom having people smoke around them reactivates unpleasant memories.
This section should be expanded out to a whole other cult summary.