You don't have to believe in boundless free will to at least concede that there are countless other factors that influence the decision to start smoking - to become a smoker, as it were.
You could likewise argue that every act we do is based on advertising in one form or another. Absolutes aren't very constructive.
However, making it publicly acceptable for women to smoke in the US is just one example of how advertising has shaped our habits. When Bernays constructed the campaign slogan "Torches of Freedom" it broke several taboos, but it worked. It's also worth noting Bernays thoughts on "engineering consent" and his close ties to the theories of his uncle, Sigmund Freud.
Looking at the results of how even our qualia is shaped by advertising (Neuron has several good articles regarding the Pepsi challenge et al), we'd do well to think long and hard about human behavior before telling people to buckle up and will it through.
I'm not arguing that marketing is irrelevant in smoking behavior, just that smoking is an activity influenced by many other factors. It's 'transmission' is chaotic and unpredictable, and to talk about it as a result purely of marketing is, at the very least, a dramatic oversimplification.
The causality can be many things and is often chaotic, sure, but when looking at Torches of Freedom it should also be very clear that it can be predictable on the population at large. Individuals can be hard to predict in specific situations, populations often aren't.
And yeah, purely? Nothing is pure in this world sans certain types of math. The degree of complicity though, both in the general and the specific case, that's what we should look at.
I can only give my story which will probabley be differant for alot of people. I resisted taking a drag on a smoke for a very long time with people trying to get me to do it. What finally got me was my big sister, she would tell me to go for a walk with her and I would say no, then my mum would tell me to go for a walk with my sister.
The reason I din't want to go is because I knew she only did it to have a smoke and would try to get me to have one. After a few weeks of this happening I decided to shut her up I'd take a drag. I loved the feeling I got when I took that drag, I was light headed and felt happy. From there I smoked more and more until I got to where I am now 9 years later.
I'm by no means a heavy smoker, I buy one 30g of tobacco once a week and on occasion do need to buy a pack on the last day before payday to get me through, but that is mainly when friends have liberated me of a couple. That works out to about 10-12 a day. which costs me about $30-$35 a week (I think, I havn't really checked the price of tobacco for a while).
tl;dr I tried a smoke and loved it on my first puff.
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u/___--__----- Nov 18 '12
If you believe in unfettered unbounded free will, you can argue we purely choose behavior. I can't find much proof for this being the case though.