I recieved a phone call from my GF who was travelling on business. We chit-chatted when she mentions she bought a pack of cigarettes. She explained that she buys one normally when shes travelling on business because its very stressful.
My first reaction was a negative emotional response. I didnt like this one bit! My brain was hitting me with a stick yelling “thats wrong!”. Then I asked, why is it wrong, hoping to have something verbalized with which to convince her. My first thought was “health!”. I started acting on my thoughts and verbalized them to her.
For some reason, my brain thought it would be a good idea if I tried to appear to be rational, or perhaps my brain didnt want to anger her so I started “Well, there are some health benefits to smoking such as stress reduction… but”… I realized that I was pulling this information out of my ass with no real basis, and I couldnt find a way to express the badness of smoking, I mean… everyone knows. So I concluded the sentence “but… you know its bad”.
Then I thought… what the hell just happened here. After we finished chatting, I did some self-reflection.
Going back to the initial emotional response, I reflected on it and tried to grasp its nature, and saw that my response was not negative because of how I verbalized it as health issues… but rather because I associate smoking with the banal elements of society. I see white trash with a donut in one hand, and a cig in the other waiting for the next weekend to get trashed from a 36 pack of miller lite. Wasting away life and braincells.
My emotional response seems to stem from me not wanting to associate my GF with those elements, to keep my perception of her in-tact. (Shes a great girl btw if youre wondering).
As it turns out, my thoughts afterwards were just scrambling for justification, and what I actually verbalized was bullshit. I see this effect in much more subtle fashion in myself (and for what its worth, in others). Particularly when we come to believe the bullshit and justifications for emotion that we spout without any examination or self-reflection.
I dont want to fall victim to the fallacy of induction. But I think one could infer some other interesting general statements from this, about:
a. rich vs. poor morality, and the emulation of the habits/values of the rich
b. morality as an afterthought, i.e. morality, if sincere, is verbalized bullshit/justifications put into written word
c. will (to not associate gf with white trash) → emotion (disgust/discomfort) → thought (justification). Though, it goes deeper in that there is a association with “white trash → wasting their lives → i’m better than them and not one of them → they are bad” or something of the sort.
d. then there is “getting carried away by ones words”, in which we come to believe what we say and we become entrenched in it, believing we are coming up with great arguments to convince others of our feeling, but at the same time having long ago ceased in being truly sincere about the arguments.
I would have included some thoughts from famous philosophers, but I didnt feel confident in quoting them correctly. I know Nietzsche would have alot to say here.