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Schizophrenic Society

Published by marco on

Updated by marco on

 This photo was taken on an international flight from Switzerland to the U.S. I think it captures, in a nutshell, how insane, how schizophrenic, how hypocritical we are.

It is considered utterly non-noteworthy for a flight attendant to push a cart full of cancer sticks—clearly marked as such with a photo of an intubated man in the last throes of the crushing grip of what I assume was terminal lung cancer, for which one can hope that his orphaned family is seeing at least some remuneration—through an otherwise modern airplane, a flight where smoking is banned, as it has been on flights for decades.

But consumerism trumps all, as does addiction—both to nicotine and to a mindless consumerism that exhorts ceaselessly to buy, but also to save. That is, buy in bulk but don’t pay too much—in fact, pay as little as possible, choosing based purely on price, without regard for environmental or human impact.

And so we have cart full of cigarettes trundling up the aisle so that people addicted by their society can get their fix free of pesky groundling taxes—potentially saving multiple dollars in the bargain.

This is madness, but we can rarely see it from the inside.