Costs vs Benefits vs You Shouldn't Do That It's Bad For You

I've recently taken up cigar smoking.

I'm doing it properly, so I -only- have to worry about mouth cancer, not lung cancer.  Only.

But y'know what?  Fuck it.  I like it.  I like nicotine - I discovered it first smoking a cigar in Las Vegas, and moved on from there to chewing nicotine gum, and cigars taste better than the gum (and give more nicotine, and are cheaper).

I like the taste.

I like the fact that my duster is going to smell like smoke and becomes an effective hippy repellent.

And I like the ritual of it.

The benefits of cigars outweigh the risks, and more broadly the costs, to me.  If I would live forever if I didn't smoke cigars, sure, maybe not, but I'm not going to - I'm going to die no matter what I do, and in the meantime I'd rather live on my terms.

"You shouldn't do that" is a cost-centric way of viewing the world; it ignores the benefits.  "You shouldn't do that" is the habit of people who have no sense of Other; they cannot comprehend that other people would or should have different values than they do.

It is the habit of both the Right and the Left, and it is the habit of authoritarians exclusively; it is to some extent necessary for authoritarian beliefs in an otherwise moral person, because it enables them to make dictates which they believe everyone fundamentally agrees with, but that some people are simply too weak of character to go along with.