Month: March 2019

Smoking as Acceptable Rebellion.

/ Yogi Hale Hendlin

Notes from a debrief of Philip Morris’s 1998 Litter Focus Group read: “Non-smokers tend to give smokers a lot of slack about throwing down a butt,” claiming that “throwing it on the ground eliminates fire risk,” and that litter is a “natural result of outdoor smoking areas.”  For smokers, littering is a “natural part of the ritual”; an act of “rebellion”; a “small act of civil disobedience”; and an acceptable demonstration of power in “stepping on a lit object and grinding it.” To deal with the “issue” of litter, the key was “don’t be preachy,” and to have “no billboards, no advertising,” “don’t give antis any more reason to yell.”

The tobacco industry aimed to successfully frame littering, just like smoking itself, as an act of “acceptable rebellion” brings pleasure through expressing angst inexpressible elsewhere in society. Protecting and providing a safe space for these meaningless but environmentally polluting expressions of “civil disobedience” was a priority for the industry to retain and attract as many smokers as possible. It also was in the interest of other managerial regimes, such as corrupt governments to give people certain guilty pleasures that they could believe that they were being free with, so that they wouldn’t clamor for real freedoms, like clean water, clean air, a universal basic income, wealth equity, or taking their commons back.

References

Robinson & Maites. N331; The R&M Creative Brief [Internet]. 1998 Apr [cited 2019 Mar 26]. (Truth Tobacco Industry Documents). Report No.: ypyg0085. Available from: https://www.industrydocuments.ucsf.edu/tobacco/docs/#id=ypyg0085

Donohue C. Litter Focus Group De-Brief; N331 [Internet]. 1998 Jan [cited 2019 Mar 26]. (Truth Tobacco Industry Documents). Report No.: npyg0085. Available from: https://www.industrydocuments.ucsf.edu/tobacco/docs/#id=npyg0085

Proctor RN. Golden Holocaust: Origins of the Cigarette Catastrophe and the Case for Abolition. 1 edition. Berkeley: University of California Press; 2012. 752 p.

Hendlin Y, Anderson SJ, Glantz SA. “Acceptable rebellion”: marketing hipster aesthetics to sell Camel cigarettes in the US. Tob Control. 2010 Jun;19(3):213–22. DOI: 10.1136/tc.2009.032599

Aphorisms

/ Yogi Hale Hendlin

With research, be as exhaustive as possible without it becoming exhausting. (March 13, 2019)

Superstitions are killing the planet. (Viz., the idea that we need x in order for y to happen or not to happen; that we need more bunkers, armor, weapons, food, etc., in order to feel safe; these are superstitions. And they are killing the planet.) (March 22, 2019)

Maximizing/optimizing extraction/expropriation is not the same as biomimicry. (April 11, 2019)

I’m on team justice. Are you on team conflict avoidance? (April 15, 2019)

Justice is shared sacrifice, including past sacrifices. (April 15, 2019)

People who are conflict avoidant usually are afraid of a reckoning confirming already-held anxieties about the injustice of their position. (April 15, 2019)

One-ply is sufficient if thick enough. Four-ply will never be enough if it’s too thin. (May 11, 2019)

How do we make access to nature equally accessible, or inaccessible, depending on our aims, without having it based on economic access (which often is reliant on illegitimate or violent prior actions, conscious or not)? Or, should access to wilderness be based on care? — On a genuine love and nurturing, and softness and sensitivity to the relational connection of self and environment? In which case, money would not have anything to do with it, but rather a different type of aristocracy, a natural aristocracy based on connectedness to inner and outer nature. (May 23, 2019)

I suspect that people use perfume or cologne in equal proportion to how fetid their underlying smell really is. (May 23, 2019)

Respect it, don’t expect it. (June 11, 2019)

I’ve been having some really intelligent conversations with myself lately. (June 11, 2019)

It’s not the fashion industry, the fascist industry. (June 11, 2019)

Say as little as possible, do as much as is necessary. (June 11, 2019)

Do your due diligence or you’re done. (June 12, 2019)

Erasmus Sustainability Days Keynote

/ Yogi Hale Hendlin

March 4th, 2019, I’ll be giving a keynote to 1500 or so students at my home university, Erasmus University Rotterdam, as part of their Sustainability Days.

They asked me to be fiery and inspirational, so I’ll try my best.

The paper will be put online afterwards on my academia.edu page.

Yes, they forgot my last name, and forgot to put that I’m an assistant professor instead of a full professor (something we academics take very seriously), but it’s going to be a nice event anyhow.

Science and Politics of Glyphosate Workshop June 6, 2019

/ Yogi Hale Hendlin

My Erasmus University Rotterdam colleague Alessandra Arcuri and I are organizing a day-long workshop on the most used pesticide in the world: glyphosate. Glyphosate, the active ingredient in RoundUp, Monsanto’s flagship herbicide, has been linked with cancer by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in 2015.

For more information, registration, and to submit a paper to present at the conference, please visit our website, at the Dynamics of Inclusive Prosperity Initiative.

IARC and EFSA’s differing views on glyphosate