pig

after watching this thread and all its sister threads running around on the boards lately, it seems to me that perhaps this is a distinction of semantics and a case of rampant oversimplification.

you can be a good person, without being the *best* person you can be. most people i know who smoke will admit that they probably would be healthier, and would save a lot of money, if they didn't smoke. does smoking adversely affect your health? you betcha. does it make you "bad" person? too simple of an analysis. good and bad, in what context? would it make you a bad sprinter? probably so. would it make you a bad teacher. i don't really see much evidence for that.

so if you consider a person as the holistic sum of all his/her components, then being a smoker would probably count as a negative against a person, in certain situations. some of these situations are personal, some of them are social. but that doesn't mean a person isn't still a "good" person; it just means that they have a habit which may be disadvantageous.

if we're going to oversimplify and and go holistic: i would rather have a smoker, who is nice and courteous - than a non-smoker who is a sociopathic killer, for instance. i'd say the first is a good person who has a potentially bad quality, the latter is a bad person with a marginally redeeming quality.

edit: i realized that my post was more focussed on the individual aspects of being a smoker, rather than the social. i assert that the same analysis applies. its too simple of an analysis, in subjective terms, to label someone a "bad" person because they smoke around others. "smoke around others" is highly contextual, and again - it might be a negative trait, but its not the persons only trait. a person can still be good and have annoying habits; otherwise, we're stuck with a definition of "The Good," (meaning the Best) which of course no one will attain.

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