DANGER BEYOND SMOKING

In an editorial entitled “The Danger Beyond Smoking” the Saturday Review (Jan. 24) made some provocative observations. Going beyond the point of smoking being a hazard to health, the editorial raised some moral questions about the apparent indifference of so many smokers to the recent medical reports.

Norman Cousins, the editor, tells of a conversation with a doctor friend who has not quit smoking, but who readily agreed with the findings of the experts regarding the dangers of smoking. “I see the evidence almost every day in hospital wards or among my own patients,” said the physician, “and I have seen enough lung surgery to recognize the difference between the pink, healthy tissue of non-smokers and the discolored, foul tissue of smokers.”

And yet the doctor admitted that he goes on smoking in spite of such facts. Why? And why do people go right on smoking when they know what it may do to them?

The doctor replied that he supposed he kept on smoking for the same reason others do: they don’t care!

“It doesn’t make much difference to them if some years are lopped off their life,” he said. “I’m very realistic when I tell you about the probabilities, especially when I point out that their chances of dying from cancer are about ten times greater than if they didn’t smoke. But they really don’t care. That’s about the size of it. They really don’t care.”

Mr. Cousins observes that the danger beyond smoking may be more serious than smoking itself. What has happened to a society when so many of its people, for the sake of a habit, will turn a deaf ear to the findings of their own scientists in behalf of health?

The editor asks, “How shallow or profound is their awareness of the potentialities of a fully awakened human being?” He calls for research into the question of how indifferent we have become to life itself. Do we really care whether we live or die? He wonders if there might be a. correlation between abundance and indifference. And is there any relation between this insensitivity to the uniqueness of life and the spread of violence?

Cousins sees this as a basic test for a society: the ability of both the society and its people to comprehend the principles of human plasticity, human perfectibility and human growth.

As a high school teacher as well as a college professor, I was especially interested in the reaction to this editorial when a high school teacher read it to her class in Wheaton, Illinois, as reported in the February 29 issue. She had them write out their reaction.

One student said: “If our America is made up of people who don’t care if they live or die, what kind of fight could we give to save our country from such forces as crime, disease, and especially Communism.”

Another wrote: “Not enough people take a stand against gradual suicide,” while another observed: “It is not the evil of smoking itself which disturbs me, but the way in which thousands of Americans disregard the warning, almost impudently defying their mortality.”

Still another: “Indifference does seem to be the American norm as evidenced in poor voting turnouts, dwindling school spirit, as well as unconcern about the tragic problems of so many minority groups, and even health and safety hazards for oneself.”

I doubt, however, if this insistence on smoking despite the dangers is a matter of indifference to either life or health. Man is strongly motivated by the instinct of self-preservation, and he indeed wants to live and be healthy. But he is also a creature of habit, and he will cleave to those habits that have so long been pleasing to him. The answer is, therefore, that the people will quit smoking when they really want to, and they will really want to when they are convinced that smoking will kill them or seriously afflict them. The medical reports reveal that many smokers do develop cancer, but all do not. It is the old self-deceiving rationale that it won’t happen here! It will happen to others, and that’s too bad, but it won’t happen to me!

It is another way of saying that man is willing to take grave risks for the sake of pleasure. Highway deaths may continue to mount, but some will continue to speed --- and some will be found dead sitting on their seat belts. And many, perhaps most, will keep right on smoking --- and they’ll die sooner because of it --- mostly because they do not really believe what they hear.

It is something like hell. Most folk believe there must be something like hell, but no one believes he will go there. Death on the highway, lung cancer, and hell are there all right, but always for the other fellow. Man has a strange way of believing only what he wants to believe.

“Because sentence against an evil deed is not executed speedily, the heart of the sons of men is fully set to do evil.” (Ecc. 8:11 )

IS TCU OR ACC LAST?

The state colleges and universities of Texas have been integrated for sometime now, and I know of no difficulties having occurred in any of them of a racial nature. I have had Negroes in my classes at Texas Woman’s University all along, and there has not yet been the first sign of any discontent. It has all been done quietly and peaceably, and almost unnoticed.

It appears to be a different story with the Christian colleges. I trust it will not offend anyone segment of our people by including all the denominational colleges as “Christian colleges” --- so let it be for the sake of this editorial. These Christian institutions are coming to integration slowly and painfully it seems. My impression is that Christians and their institutions should take the lead in social justice. They should blaze the trail of righteousness, setting the pace for what they sometime call the “godless” state and secular institutions.

Even with the Supreme Court decision, which set the stage for the integration of state schools, the Christians have a terribly hard time keeping up. Only last year did Baylor University, the largest Southern Baptist institution in these parts, commit themselves to integration. At the time of the Baylor announcement, Texas Christian issued a statement that their tuition would increase, with nothing said about integration, to the chagrin of a number of my Disciple friends. “Baylor integrates while TCU raises its tuition”, one Christian Church minister complained to me. He was embarrassed, for only the Sunday before he had called for special gifts for Negro education.

But TCU has finally made it! In the Faculty Bulletin for January 29, 1964, the officials announced to the faculty that the trustees had voted to accept Negroes into all departments of the university starting next fall. The Bulletin describes the trustees’ action as “the hard decision” --- one of the greatest crises faced by the board in its 91 years of history. Even then it came only with difficulty. The president had to remind the trustees that only Rice and TCU remain segregated of all the schools in the Southwest Conference, and that Rice remains segregated only because of a restriction in its charter, which they are presently seeking to correct by court order. Well, after two hours of discussion and threats to “table” the motion, our Christian university finally agreed to let the colored folk come to their campus and get a Christian education. In the same world with a Cuba, a South Vietnam, an India, a Malaysia, a Cyprus, the Christian trustees nobly faced their crisis --- one of their most difficult --- of deciding to extend their educational facilities to include Negroes!

Now that the Christian educators in Fort Worth have endured their blood, sweat, and tears, how about the Christians in Abilene?

It has been an interesting race to see which of our Christian colleges in Texas would be the last to integrate. I thought for awhile it would be a dead-heat between Texas Christian and Abilene Christian. But ACC will make it; just give them time. Already they have ventured so far as to admit a few Negroes into their graduate school, and before long the colored folk will be able to go to ACC just like they can attend these godless and sectarian institutions.

“And if you salute only your brethren, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?” (Mat. 5:47)