to the matter than rationality. It is possible to act unreasonably in a reasonable cause. Smoking in the States is never just smoking, rather as one sometimes suspects that the last thing food is is food. Smoking represents a sinister infiltration of the other into one’s hygienically sealed world. America thus has its fair share of smoking fascists. There have been literal smoking fascists too. Hitler was fanatically opposed to the habit, and banned it from his bunker even as Soviet tanks were bearing down on it. He was also hysterical about germs, a neurosis shared by many middle-class Americans. There is some evidence that Osama bin Laden also banished smoking from his compound, though it is unlikely that his image will be blazoned on U.S. anti-smoking posters.
In America as in Europe, the anti-smoking campaign is basically a class conspiracy. By and large, the working class continue to smoke while the middle class have given it up. Banning cigarettes is clearly an attempt to entrench middle-class power over a working class whose demise may now be literal as well as sociological. Many middle-class Americans seem to have abandoned drinking as well. I once came across a couple of American acquaintances of mine sitting at a table in the bar of a Dublin theatre without even an orange juice in front of them. You can be prosecuted for that in Ireland. In today’s China, by contrast, heavy drinking can get you promoted, while moderate imbibing can ruin your professional prospects. One can harm one’s career by not downing an excessive number of drinks with one’s colleagues. Job advertisements sometimes explicitly ask for applicants who can hold their drink. “Candidates with good drinking capacity will be given priority,” read one for an engineering company. It is hard to imagine a similar ad for Goldman Sachs. If you are a binge drinker, which is true of over half the men and more than a quarter of the women who drink in China, it may be advisable to mention it on your CV. There is certainly no other way in which it is likely to smooth your progress through life.
Middle-class America is rather more abstemious. Charles Dickens complains in his American Notes about the absence of alcohol in his hotel, where he is forced to drink tea and coffee instead. “This preposterous forcing of unpleasant drinks down the reluctant throats of travellers,” he grumbles, “is not at all uncommon in America.” Perhaps it was not uncommon then, but it was certainly untrue of the early American Puritans. Drinking alcohol was quite acceptable to them, if only because their water tended to be contaminated by human and animal waste, milk before pasteurisation was risky, and coffee, tea and chocolate were yet to catch on. It is true that the Irish do not require such austerely rational grounds for knocking back booze, or indeed any rational grounds at all, but neither did the early Puritans. There was regular feasting and partying among them, along with singing and even card-playing. One Puritan minister wrote that sexual intercourse should be conducted “willingly, often, and cheerfully.” He meant, of course, between husband and wife. The earliest American immigrants enjoyed themselves a lot more than some of their grim-faced progeny. They also differed from them in their profound respect for tradition, as well as in their vision of human society as an organic whole.
It was a lack of fun that struck Dickens about America, long before the fun industry was invented there. He found its earnestness mildly oppressive. Philadelphia seemed to him “distractingly regular. After walking about it for an hour or two, I felt that I would have given the world for a crooked street. The collar of my coat appeared to stiffen, and the brim of my hat to expand, beneath its Quakerly influence. My hair shrunk into a sleek short crop, my hands folded themselves upon my breast of their own calm accord, and thoughts of . . . making a large fortune by
In America as in Europe, the anti-smoking campaign is basically a class conspiracy. By and large, the working class continue to smoke while the middle class have given it up. Banning cigarettes is clearly an attempt to entrench middle-class power over a working class whose demise may now be literal as well as sociological. Many middle-class Americans seem to have abandoned drinking as well. I once came across a couple of American acquaintances of mine sitting at a table in the bar of a Dublin theatre without even an orange juice in front of them. You can be prosecuted for that in Ireland. In today’s China, by contrast, heavy drinking can get you promoted, while moderate imbibing can ruin your professional prospects. One can harm one’s career by not downing an excessive number of drinks with one’s colleagues. Job advertisements sometimes explicitly ask for applicants who can hold their drink. “Candidates with good drinking capacity will be given priority,” read one for an engineering company. It is hard to imagine a similar ad for Goldman Sachs. If you are a binge drinker, which is true of over half the men and more than a quarter of the women who drink in China, it may be advisable to mention it on your CV. There is certainly no other way in which it is likely to smooth your progress through life.
Middle-class America is rather more abstemious. Charles Dickens complains in his American Notes about the absence of alcohol in his hotel, where he is forced to drink tea and coffee instead. “This preposterous forcing of unpleasant drinks down the reluctant throats of travellers,” he grumbles, “is not at all uncommon in America.” Perhaps it was not uncommon then, but it was certainly untrue of the early American Puritans. Drinking alcohol was quite acceptable to them, if only because their water tended to be contaminated by human and animal waste, milk before pasteurisation was risky, and coffee, tea and chocolate were yet to catch on. It is true that the Irish do not require such austerely rational grounds for knocking back booze, or indeed any rational grounds at all, but neither did the early Puritans. There was regular feasting and partying among them, along with singing and even card-playing. One Puritan minister wrote that sexual intercourse should be conducted “willingly, often, and cheerfully.” He meant, of course, between husband and wife. The earliest American immigrants enjoyed themselves a lot more than some of their grim-faced progeny. They also differed from them in their profound respect for tradition, as well as in their vision of human society as an organic whole.
It was a lack of fun that struck Dickens about America, long before the fun industry was invented there. He found its earnestness mildly oppressive. Philadelphia seemed to him “distractingly regular. After walking about it for an hour or two, I felt that I would have given the world for a crooked street. The collar of my coat appeared to stiffen, and the brim of my hat to expand, beneath its Quakerly influence. My hair shrunk into a sleek short crop, my hands folded themselves upon my breast of their own calm accord, and thoughts of . . . making a large fortune by
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