Remember
... An example would be smoking. We all know that smoking is bad, it is a health risk. The health risks are great and can be proven. Someone who is close to another person with side effects from smoking may be more familiar with the harm smoking can bring. Even these people continue to smoke; they may cut back for a short period of time but the majority will continue to smoke. Knowing the harm it brings after our loved one gets through the hard times or dies we continue to smoke. We see people in stores, at school functions or in the hospital who tote around oxygen tanks because they can’t breathe sufficiently without the extra oxygen. We see people that have cancer and are suffering because they had to satisfy that nicotine craving. We also see people coughing with fits of emphazema. These are just a few of the health risks that result form cigarettes. This should be enough to make us not want what is bad because it brings harm to us and the people around us. We know this is not beneficial and we know it is bad yet we choose to do it. Smoking is beneficial, but it is also harmful, so does it really benefit us? This brings us to the benefits of smoking. We benefit because we satisfy the nicotine craving for that moment. We wake up needing nicotine; so we light up. We go to bed having had that last cigarette to get us through the night. We don’t look ahead and know we are going to suffer from smoking. We don’t think if I have this cigarette when I am older I may suffer for it, we just live for the moment. For that moment it benefits us to have that cigarette. This habit is beneficial because it gets us through the day and we are not suffering with headaches from withdrawals. Right now the harm is having a headache and it benefits us to smoke so we don’t suffer the effects of the nicotine withdrawal. Therefore we are mistaken, we know headaches bring harm to us yet by smoking we eliminate the possibility of the headache. The harm here is eventually if we continue to smoke we will have to quit and go through the headaches and withdrawals anyway. It would be less harmful if we stopped before the cancer or emphazema got the best of us. Socrates thinks we are mistaken when we desire bad things. We know that smoking is harmful there is no mistake about that; we also know it is bad. We desire smoking, which is why we do it. Sometimes it is to cure a craving; sometimes we think we need it to calm our nerves. When we desire bad things and w...