GEN172 R Soloveitchik understands this blessing [God conferred on Adam the first] as a divine mandate to mankind to subdue the earth and aster the environment (hereafter, kibbush).  In R. Soloveitchik’s thinking, the kibbush mandate amounts to a charge to man to self-actualize himself by realizing his God like potential as a creative being.  Fulfillment of the mandate bids man to achieve dignity but along with it to attain a rarefied sense of responsibility.  Man achieves dignity when he reclaims himself from coexistence with nature, rising from a helpless existence to a powerful existence that is intelligent, planned, and majestic.  … What emerges from the kibbush mandate is a criterion for evaluating the inherent worthiness of economic activity.  If an economic activity contributes neither to advancing man’s dignity nor to his sense of responsibility, it has no rational for existence.  Illustrating a perversion of the kibbush mandate is the production and sale of cigarettes.  This judgment is not predicated on the ability of Halakhah [Jewish law] to establish a clear-cut prohibition against smoking.  … the causative links medical science has established between cigarette smoking and various dreadful diseases is undeniable.  Far from advancing human dignity, the tobacco industry degrades human existence by causing disease, misery, and pain.  Its very existence perverts the kibbush mandate. … Investment in [a cigarette company] would represent a clear-cut perversion of the kibbush mandate and therefore should not be made.  CASE 373-4