Which leaves today's smoking, drinking, promiscuous, childless 20/30/40somethings in something of a dilemma. Since it is now far too late for us to organize our way back into sober, youthful innocence, what are we supposed to do? Should we now start to regard men not as equals but as cheap mobile anticarcinogens? Announce ourselves, like those born-again virgins in America, to be newly without sin? Or should we just acknowledge that Darwin and moralizers have it in for us, and get on with things?
There's a good case to be made for the idea that guilt does as much damage as our various vices do. Maintaining a state of perpetual low-level guilt about smoking, or drinking, or working is probably as corrosive as the cigarettes or the wine or the work itself. And it seems far better to get on with this life -- whether or not it meets religious and governmental guidelines -- than to spend it wishing we had settled down with our pimply17-year-old male classmate just in case of cancer. Live fast, die young, stuff Darwin.
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