In Memoriam: Christopher Hitchens, 1949–2011
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But I'm terribly upset about this and I'll tell you why.
Because of his willingness to debate. I'd literally scan right wing talk radio schedules for his name because you just knew it would be a great show. In a world where so many people in our modern society hide in their little cliques I think a smart person who is willing to have their ideas challenged is the most valuable person of all.
Losing a voice like that is a true tragedy.
So, with all due respect, I hope he is wrong in his beliefs about the after life because if there is a heaven he's surely earned his place in it.
Edit: On that note this is awesome: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4JJqXISBiI (though skip the first 4 minutes of the host self aggrandizement)
His memoir 'Hitch-22' is well worth the read, especially now (the opening in particular).
Even better would be if it didn't require Flash.
edit (since it won't let me reply) - sorry, I meant Canada doesn't count as 'Outside the US'. Bad humour, no biscuit.
"...I have a profit around $200,000 (after taxes $75.58). This is less than I would have been paid by a large company to simply perform the show and let them sell it to you, but they would have charged you about $20 for the video. They would have given you an encrypted and regionally restricted video of limited value, and they would have owned your private information for their own use. They would have withheld international availability indefinitely. This way, you only paid $5, you can use the video any way you want, and you can watch it in Dublin, whatever the city is in Belgium, or Dubai. I got paid nice, and I still own the video (as do you). You never have to join anything, and you never have to hear from us again."
Does this link work? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/09/christopher-hitchen...
"I have been asked whether I wish to nominate a successor, an inheritor, a dauphin or delfino. I have decided to name Christopher Hitchens."
Definitely a Marxist in the sense of a historian -- one who understands events from the standpoint of class -- and even one who supported solidarity among laborers. But replacing the free market? No.
The way I see the clip is: Hitchens (who I admire for a lot of things) was trying to soothe his bruised ego that he had been so colosally wrong about Bush. He was just doubling down on his massive error of judgment by continuing to support Bush. Claiming that nobody in a theater full of people he does not even know is not smarter than Bush is silly.
It has hardly any relation to the original context or meaning of the writings of one Karl Marx.
Truth be told, Marx himself would probably not be seen as a "marxist". And as a guy who swears by his Hayek and Lord Acton, I wonder how come when someone in the former Western block countries calls you a "marxist" or as a follower of Marx supposedly it is something bad, very bad?
He is indeed quoted as saying "I'm not a marxist, I'm Marx."
Our Western popular[1] perception of Marx is heavily colored by the usurpation of his name, and bastardization of his philosophy, by Lenin, Stalin, et al. These days, most people simply conflate Stalin and Marx, and they're unable to separate the two. (I bet many people probably assume Marx was Russian!). After 50-odd years of cold war with the forces of "Marxism," people in the US are still pretty wary of the name and the title. Add to that mix the fact that the uber-right-wingers have been all too eager to toss the epithets "Marxist" or "socialist" at the first sign of political opposition.
[1] I specify "popular," rather than simply catch-all "Western," because within Western academia, Marx is still studied and taken seriously.
Not to mention the view of many Americans of "Socialism" as both the politics of the Soviet Union and those of present-day western Europe. Given that, fat chance people would know the distinction between Marx and Stalin.
If socialism was ever about one bug thing, it was the collective ownership of the means of production. This was the slogan of all socialist movements, particularly Marxist socialist movements.
And the USSR was exactly that kind of society: the defining feature of its economy was a total ban on private ownership of the "means of production". Meaning, you could own an apartment, a house, a car, a wrench. You could buy and sell goods privately at a market. But you could not own a factory that made toy cars, or a tool shop that sold wrenches, or a company that wrote software. That was owned by the state collectively.
Now of course one can argue that the implementation of this ideal was twisted because e.g. the actual workers at a particular factory didn't control its planning or production, which were governed by the party apparatus. But even if true, (and it's actually not true; centralized control over the means of production is perfectly compatible with Marxism), this is still infinitely closer to the actual ideal of socialism than, say, a capitalist state with an oligarchy at power, where means of production can be and are privately owned. To claim that the USSR was not socialism and in fact some kind of anti-socialism (Chomsky: "as about remote from socialism as you can imagine"), is just such so offensively misleading; such a gross lie, clearly meant to influence people who've never lived in a socialist economy or actually read Marx.
(And it's in fact not true that workers were "virtual slaves" in the Soviet Union. They had shitty lives, to be sure, just as everybody else except state bureaucracy, but they were quite free in their choices, and made more money on average than any other class in the society. It was peasants who were virtual slaves, disenfranchised by the state and in fact forbidden to move to a different village or city without the state sanction well into the 1960s).
I haven't seen the video yet, but you don't quote him as saying that the USSR wasn't Marxist, just that it wasn't socialist. A huge historical difference between Marxists and socialists is how to transition from capitalism to socialism. Marx believed that a "worker's state/council" would be needed, whereas the anarchists predicted that a "red bureaucracy" would only be worse than the one it replaced.
I agree that it wasn't.
But Chomsky isn't saying that; he's saying that it wasn't socialism, and not only that, that it was "about as remote from socialism as possible". That's just a lie. Anarcho-socialists were never the only or the "true" socialists in any reasonable sense. They weren't even the most dominant faction in socialism, most of the time. Chomsky has to know that. He may privately believe that the only real socialism is anarcho-socialism, but that's his business.
For instance, you identify "collective ownership of the means of production" as central to the idea of socialism, and the USSR as a society with collective ownership of the means of production. There's a tricky elision there, though, in that it identifies "state ownership" with "collective ownership." Chomsky and other anarchists raise hell at that idea because to them, the State is not an instrument of collective decision making.
For more context: anarchists played a major role in revolutionary socialist Russia, with the popular party of the peasantry (the Socialist Revolutionaries) being in some ways one of the more anarchist political parties in history (supporting, for instance, land and industry collectivization instead of land and industry nationalization). They were quite popular, having over twice the number of representatives as the Bolsheviks, the second largest party. They quickly came to oppose the Bolsheviks and were among Lenin's first victims. This is is in addition to a hardcore anarchist movement also popular in Russia at the time (and also heavily victimized by the Bolsheviks).
The point of all that? They all considered themselves socialist and disagreed that Bolshevism would lead to socialism, disagreeing strongly enough that it often led to their deaths. Chomsky isn't pulling the "the USSR wasn't socialist" out of a hat, but is bringing up an ideological point that's existed since even before the USSR formally existed. And to an anarchist, the idea that the USSR was socialism is as alien to them as the idea that the USSR was capitalist is to you. (The fact that the USSR called itself socialist they would argue was just a propagandist slogan, just as a Tea Partyer might consider Obama calling himself a capitalist as meaningless political rhetoric to take advantage of the less critically minded.)
N.B.: I am not an anarchist, but I did grow up in the Eastern Bloc under dictatorship.
P.S.: In its most pathologic forms, it was a theocracy, with Dear Leader as God. The comparison is a lot more accurate than it would seem at a cursory glance. The official doctrine was the religious dogma. There was a Paradise - the ideal "communist" society. There was salvation, albeit a collective one. There was confession (public mea culpa, which were mandatory). There was Mass - the dreaded communist meetings. They had Bible equivalents (the writings of Dear Leader) and saints (Marx, Lenin). Goes on and on like this.
No, it was not.
Your username is Slavic, so perhaps you grew up in the Eastern Bloc; I certainly did.
Those were not socialist countries. Private enterprise was definitely banned, but the goods were not collectively owned either. The entire country was owned by a small clique with a rigid pyramidal structure.
Dictatorship is a much better word.
Just be careful to not unwarrantedly extend the shadow of violence and dictatorship over the socialist ideas too. I know it sounds like trying to tell apples from oranges, but surprisingly many are ignorant, consciously or not, of the difference, especially in the US.
A free market system with socialist overtones can work wonderfully well. Just look at Northern Europe.
Anything will work with Northern Europeans (or Mormons, in reference to another thread) so that doesn't prove anything.
The key test is whether {something} works with cultures where other things fail.
Come to think of it, that seems more likely now.
How they chose their system has nothing to do with whether that system would work for someone else. It also has nothing to do with how well another system would work for them.
Only 100-70 years ago Sweden was a very classist society with quite severe internal conflicts (workers were gunned down by the military in an incident in the 30s for instance).
In the 17th century Sweden was an imperialist country dedicated to the bloody wars of several ambitious kings (Gustav II, Karl XII, etc). Supposedly some people in Germany still warn their kids of the Swedes...
So my point is that Scandinavia was not always a peace-loving hippie region dedicated to sensible socialism-light. That stuff is quite recent.
If so, that's evidence for the "Swedes can make any system work" theory.
Any sensible, rational "stuff" is recent, anywhere in the world. Until very recently, no country or culture were good places to be.
No, it isn't; it's a much worse word, because it hides the economic reality of living in a country. And that's what socialism vs capitalism is all about: the way the economic activity is conducted in a country, and the way it affects everyone's life. The regimes were different in Castro's Cuba and Pinochet's Chile, and saying they were both a dictatorship is a way of sweeping that difference under a carpet.
I'm sorry, but it's ludicrous to claim that the Eastern bloc countries were not socialist. The most charitable way I can characterize it is as an extreme instance of the no-true-Scotsman fallacy.
Certainly during those regimes' existence no one seriously doubted they were socialist (except people who wanted to redefine the word "socialism" for their ideological benefit). In fact, even Chomsky realizes he has to explain that somehow and makes up justifications for why the West called USSR socialist and for why the USSR called itself socialist. Those justifications are idiotic, by the way (he's claiming the Soviets called themselves socialist to get sympathy from Western socialists, as if the internal propaganda and ideology weren't in any case by far, by x1000 the more important reason).
It's also not true that "the entire country was owned by a small clique", etc. It was not owned, it was controlled, and the 'small clique' (actually the Party bureaucracy) ostensibly represented the will of the workers, through formally functioning though farcical mechanisms such as elections, the extensive Communist Party hierarchy down to individual members, etc. It was not quite a dictatorship - dictators tend to pass their countries to their offspring or in absence of those to hand-picked successors. In the USSR, the power went to another top Party official after an internal power struggle. Never to a descendant (compare with North Korea, which is closer to a socialist dictatorship).
Now having centralized control over the economy by, say, the top echelons of the Communist Party, representing the will of the people, is an idea that's perfectly compatible with socialism and Marxism. That is why, in fact, countless socialists in the West supported the Soviet Union and saw it as the torch-bearer of the socialist dream; they were not confused about the fact that the economy in the USSR was under central control! Now many of them were naive in thinking that the Party leadership really represented "the will of the people", which it generally didn't. But that's not a reason to say it wasn't socialism; it's a reason to say, maybe, that it was bad socialism, socialism gone haywire, a socialist dictatorship, what have you. But it was, very clearly and unmistakably, socialism. Just as if in a capitalist country an oligarch clique takes over all the real power, that's not a reason to stop considering it a capitalist country. If you don't do that, the no-true-Scotsman fallacy destroys any chance you have of objectively observing whatever it is that actually happens in socialist or capitalist societies, and learning whatever lessons there are to learn from that.
What you have to keep in mind in such discussions is that political terms like that tend to have vastly different meaning to people from different backgrounds. One of the best known example of this is that the term "liberal" has a very different meaning in the US than it does in Europe.
In a similar vein, "socialism" over here does not imply the collective ownership of the means of production. If that's what you want to articulate, you should use the term "communism" to be less ambiguous.
To be more specific, it wasn't even a simple readout of Marxism - hence the creation of separate terms like Leninism and Stalinism and Trotskyism and Maoism. I am not defending Marx, but one's disagreement with an entire class of people does not remove their significant internal disputes.
But the USSR used the ideas and words of socialism as justification quite a bit. That is very significant. It certainly justifies skepticism about anyone selling socialism, and about the robustness of socialism in the face of conditions like the establishment of simple old-school dictatorships by ruthless butchers.
I'm inclined to give Chomsky the benefit of doubt here. As a small l libertarian I can totally relate to the idea of ruling elites who falsely claim to share your ideals but are actually in politics for money, sex and ego stroking.
I've read the writings of Karl Marx.
This guy advocated a "dictatorship of the proletariat", wherein the proletarian party seizes all capital and crushes, with force, any capitalist influence, any attempt for capitalism to re-establish itself. This alleged workers' government maintains control until the world is ready for communism, which might take quite a while. Meanwhile, there is "communal" ownership--via government--of the means of production.
Furthermore, Marx felt he had "proved" this to be the future of history with his "science" of dialectical materialism. I'm not talking about a rhetorical use of the word proof, I'm talking about proof proof. If you're a true believer it's easy to see how a little murder is OK, since you're provably bringing about a communist paradise.
Marx didn't advocate the terrible oppression characteristic of people like Lenin, but he advocated everything but, and it's easy to see where Lenin got this from. Remember, for quite a while, Lenin was considered by many in the West to be a hero, a brilliant Marxist thinker.
I've been able to surprise a few Marxists these facts--all present in Marx's writing. Amazingly, people are somehow able to become hardcore Marxists without realizing their founding figure was a maniac, something like Christians who've never read the Old Testament.
Marx acknowledged that Capitalism works extremely well for wealth creation, and it was the consequences of this that he tried to address. If you view the inevitable phenomenon as a really bad thing for society, then of course force seems reasonable.
I think it's fair to argue that the crushing weight of the social hierarchy often feels extremely violent to those at the bottom.
In order to ignore this, we Capitalists must either convince ourselves that each is harmoniously filling his role, or that each generation (at the bottom) is better off, or that life isn't fair, etc. By being unwilling to ignore this or adopt one of the easy explanations, Marx doesn't introduce force/violence into the political process, he just stops pretending it's not there.
So generally the Marxist view in the modern world (where social upheaval is quite unlikely) means that we are willing to consider toppling established institutions. It is for this reason that I credit the tea party (in its opposition to the Fed, etc.) as a Marxist group. Would shutting down the Fed be an act of violence (even if enacted by congress)? Arguably yes, since it would harshly and abruptly change the distribution of wealth. Abstractly changing the distribution of wealth via policy is in a sense identical to sending an armed thug to everyone's door who either demands money or offers money. You see where this is going, but my point is that I think it's possible (and advisable) to focus most of our attention on soft violence, not stuff like Lenin did, since that is the prevailing legacy of Marx in modern life, unfettered by the complications of past wars, dictators, etc.
"all due respect" cannot change the fact that this is the most disrespectful thing you can write at the death of an atheist.
Furthermore, if the Christian heaven does exist (which in turn implies that Christian doctrine is true), Christopher is most certainly in hell.
If the Christian heaven does exist, it does not imply that all Christian doctrine is true, only that some is true.
And there is a lot of contradictory Christian doctrine. By that, I am not saying that Christian doctrine is self-contradictory, I am only pointing out that several different Christian denominations have doctrines that contradict each other. According to some denominations, Hitchens would indeed be in hell, and according to others, he would be in heaven.
I am almost certain that there are some Christian denominations under which Christopher is now believed to be in heaven, although they are in the minority, and not in the mainstream of Christianity that Hitchens usually debated against. Can you name me two Christian denominations according to whom Christopher is now in heaven?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortal_sin#Roman_Catholicism
If you look at the three conditions that a sin must meet to be considered a mortal sin, I think there is a very high probability that writing a book titled God Is Not Great is a mortal sin. There are hundreds of things that Christopher did which very likely meet those conditions, and there is also a high probability that he has not repented about them before death.
According to Catholicism people do not get into heaven by living according to what they sincerely believe, and many, many, Catholic scholars would say that Christopher is bound for hell.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortal_sin
1. Its subject must be a grave (or serious) matter.
2. It must be committed with full knowledge, both of the sin and of the gravity of the offense (no one is considered ignorant of the principles of the moral law, which are inborn as part of human knowledge, but these principles can be misunderstood in a particular context).
3. It must be committed with deliberate and complete consent, enough for it to have been a personal decision to commit the sin.
The question is about point 2. While Hitchens knew that it would be morally unacceptable according to Catholic doctrine, he considered writing the book as the right thing to do according to his own moral standard, so he would not be doing something he considered as a gravely wrong thing to do. Similarly for other people who live according to what they sincerely believe: they are not committing actions with full knowledge that the actions are the wrong thing to do.
It does leave room for interpretation, and can be argued both ways, but I do not wish to be drawn further into a religious discussion.
It's much more complex than that as there is no single "Christian doctrine" (each christian sect has its own doctrine, including concepts of hell, and these doctrines evolve over time). Some christian sects promise hell to all non-convers (and sinners), while others consider only acts and make devotion irrelevant to entry in heavens.
I'm not going to make judgement calls on the hitch or these doctrines, but "Christian doctrine" being true absolutely does not translate into "Christopher is most certainly in hell". Let alone "the Christian heaven" existing (the "Christian" heaven being real) translates into this ("Christian heaven" could be true while everything else is false)
2) Raising a child doesn't give the child your experiences either. I have no memory of what my father experienced in his life based on him raising me. AFAIK it doesn't happen to other people either.
While there are different interpretations, the common is that heaven is an eternal non-physical state of being together with God (the god of the Bible), perhaps even "absorbed" by this god.
The god of the Bible is racist, jaloux, blood-thirsty and opposed to critical thinking, and among other things calls for human sacrifice, genocide and killing babies. (Read the Bible if you dont believe me.)
Now, if you are christian you might think this is all justified and fair, but for an atheist, an eternity of being together with this being (without any possibility of rebellion or critical thinking) might seem more like a never ending nightmare.
Furthermore, it is generally agreed that there is no kind of physical pleasure in the heaven - no sex, no sunshine or rain, no books, no Johnny Walker Black Label. The only pleasure is being together with and eternally worshipping the aforementioned god. Who would in good conscience wish this for Hitchens?
I like to think there might be little racism and infanticide and much discourse on creating universes.
I'm an atheist myself and I do find the idea of an afterlife extremely compelling. The tragedy here is that I'm also enough of a scientist to know that the odds of there being any kind of afterlife are vastly against us. So there is probably a group of atheists who, like myself, wish for an afterlife but at the same time know that wishing doesn't make it true. The universe doesn't really care whether a couple of carbon-based molecules change their state and it, sadly, doesn't care about the information stored in our brains either.
You presume, of course, that these things apply to the dead. But when dead, materially, you can reason about nothing because the bases for reason, perception and memory, no longer exist. Seeing yourself as disanimated material after you die is a trick of the mind, and not one that comes naturally, but that is learned in training as a part of survival in your time and place. But in many ways, to yourself, you are unlike anyone else, and in these ways you can conclude nothing about your dead self from your perception and memory of all others that have died.
In short, you can conclude nothing about yourself when dead. Even the laws of physics and nature are not a help to determining the nature of your dead self; these are artifacts of perception and memory.
I do not claim that we have hope for life after death, whatever that means; I only claim that for the living it is, and will likely always be, the "horror of the shade", the mystery of mysteries, and why music and poetry are as important to human beings as science and reason.
I cannot and do not want to speak for Hitchens so I will only speak for myself. My view is that believing in an afterlife is crazy and absurd. (Don't get me wrong: I would love there to be some sort of way for my existence to continue after death. I'm terrified of death. Just wishing for there to be an afterlife doesn't make it happen, though.) I think it is very much distepectful to say things you know the person would have thought of as crazy and absurd when commenting their death.
No thanks.
If you argue from a base mechanics point of view (e.g. Your brain is basically a hard drive with n bits of storage an thus can only enter 2^n states) then you're assuming that in this hypothetical afterlife your physical limitations are maintained. Since your basic assumptions about the universe have been demonstrated to be wrong, assuming this particular assumption will be correct is drawing a very long bow. And the initial assumption is very much in doubt.
To my mind an atheist is someone who has yet to encounter a plausible religion, not (a) someone who defines their beliefs in opposition to one religion (e.g. I do not believ heaven is a green pasture populated by angels playing harps and dead Christians tending sheep) or (b) someone who is closed to the possibility that a plausible religion might exist.
That's ambitious of you.
>To my mind an atheist is someone who has yet to encounter a plausible religion
In principle, were a plausible religion to present itself, I would weigh it on the evidence. In the real world, the vast number of religions, none of which are plausible, combined with the demonstrated ability of science to explain the universe through natural causes, leaves no doubt in my mind that there is no supernatural creator.
As for an afterlife, the complete and utter lack of evidence or argument in favor of it consigns it to the realm of all other fairy tales. As such, I treat it as a thought experiment more than as a proposed state of the Universe. If there is an afterlife, either it's eternal or it isn't. If it is, it is boring beyond belief. If it isn't, then what have you "gained"? Sure, it'd be nice to have a few thousand years to think, but I'd far prefer telekinesis and control over the flow of time. Since the propositions of my having superpowers and my consciousness enduring after my neurons stop firing have equal chance of coming true, I'll stick with the fantasies that tickle my pickle.
Your a) scenario is easily dismissed: I think all religions are equally silly; some have just been around long enough and are familiar enough for their silliness to become engrained. As for b) I am not closed to the possibility in principle. As I said, I simply view it as vanishingly unlikely. I have a better chance of winning the lottery three times in a row than of any religion predicated upon the supernatural being "true".
You say "an atheist is someone who has yet to encounter a plausible religion". That implies that we're waiting for the right one, like a home buyer who's only been shown hovels. That's simply not the case. I am not, in practice, open to the possibility of a god; I think the whole notion is absurd. In the same vein, I am not open to the possibility of homeopathy being effective treatment for anything other than thirst. Certainly, were science to show that it was, in fact, effective, I would change my mind. That does not imply that I'm waiting to find the right kind of water to cure fibromyalgia.
PS: To quickly address your point:
>The idea that there are finite number of possible thoughts is highly improbable given the number of things there aren't finite numbers of.
I never meant to imply there were a finite number of things. Hell, you could count for all eternity and never run out of numbers. That does not imply there are an infinite number of things worth thinking about.
If so, then one would only need to demonstrate a sufficiently impressive failure of current scientific understanding to account for some events that would appear to be caused by his actions, in order to push what would be considered a plausible religion.
I might be mistaken about the use of the word "plausible", but I think it is not necessarily connected with evidence but with human perception. Of course rational people would only find plausible explanations that are backed with evidence, but even the most hardcore rationalists are subject to their own psychology and emotions.
My argument is that in a (completely unlike, hypothetical) scenario like the one I describe, most people would likely find plausible what that someone would claim (if it did not sound completely stupid) not because it would be the reasonable thing to do but because psychologically those acts would feel too imposing, if science could not explain them at the time.
On history, yes, on economics, no. See his answer to the question of his Marxism:
Debating must be done on the ground of good faith, right? Bad faith in a discussion is the sure mark of someone who is not willing to intellectually exchange rational arguments. Then in at least one case Hitchens showed a shocking "unwillingness" to debate:
In his debate about Mother Theresa with Simon Leys, triggered by his book titled "The Missionary Position", Hitchens said "he describes the title of my book as “obscene,” [...] Would he care to say where the obscenity lies?".
This was a killer to me. Never could see him again as someone whose writing could be taken seriously.
See http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1996/dec/19/mother-... Answer http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1997/jan/09/on-moth...
Hitchens is eloquent and direct in his criticisms. Leys, in his reply, is vague and does not answer any of Hitchens's criticisms with any specificity.
Leys demurs and says he has no space for a reply. He then devotes one-third of his letter to joking about Hitchens questioning the use of the word "obscene". His response includes grating ad hominem, with a snide remark that Hitchens must not own a dictionary.
In fact, Hitchens is right and it is Leys who must take deeper council with his copy of the OED. Hitchens, if nothing else, genuinely cares about his use of language. (Note this excerpt: "To represent her as a woman defiled with spittle for her deeds or beliefs is—to employ the term strictly for once—quite incredible." Simply delightful.)
Definition of obscenity, from Wikipedia: "An obscenity is any statement or act which strongly offends the prevalent morality of the time, is a profanity, or is otherwise taboo, indecent, abhorrent, or disgusting, or is especially inauspicious."
Hitchens, when he coyly writes: "Finally, I note that he describes the title of my book as 'obscene,' and complains that it attacks someone who is 'elderly.' Would he care to say where the obscenity lies?" Hitchens knows what he is doing. Most people nowadays don't think the phrase "The Missionary Position" is obscene. Slightly tittilating, yes, but obscene, no. Unfortunately, Leys cannot discriminate the subtlety and smugness in Hitchens's small linguistic victory, and responds blithely and indelicately.
Side note: Classic Hitchens is him saying that people who say that racists are discriminatory could not be further from the truth. Because how can people who dismiss an entire race possess the capacity to discriminate?
For me, using a reference to a sexual position as a title of a book about a respectable worldwide admired nun /is/ "Disgusting or repulsive", which is definition number 3 in http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/obscene
NB: I am all but a puritan, I like some disgusting things sometime. I don't care how Hitchens title his books. I just deeply dislike bad faith, a more traditional way to describe trollism.
But let me respond about "obscenity":
You call Mother Theresa "respectiable". Hitchens's whole book advances the argument that she is nothing but, and is in fact contemptible. His argument is not germane to your point, so I won't delve into it.
Hitchens, in a video (you can find it on youtube, can't remember the title), argues that laughing at religious authority is important, and that religion should be mock, because mockery is one of the first steps towards overthrowing an oppressor. So the argument that we can't talk about a "respectable nun" in profane and coarse terms, and instead must treat her with ignorant reverance, is poisonous and cuts to the foundation of Hitchens's argument.
"It (the title) is actually a perfect triple entendre: the book is about the politics of missionaries and the position of those who feel they can enlighten by divine warrant and presume to instruct the rest of us not just in morality but in day-to-day conduct. It was a title I couldn’t not use."
[edit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8t4VhQX5Ckk "Mockery of religion is one of the most essential things because to demystify supposedly 'holy text dictated by god' and show that they are man made and what you have to show [is] there internal inconsistencies and absurdities. One of the beginnings of human emancipation is the ability to laugh at authority..."]
"Finally, I note that he describes the title of my book as “obscene,” and complains that it attacks someone who is “elderly.” Would he care to say where the obscenity lies?"
Hitchens doesn't deny that there is a sexual connotation. Regardless, sexual connotation is not synonymous with obscenity. The point is that he invites Leys to discuss whether the title is obscene or not. (He doesn't explicitly deny the claim of obscenity, you'll note.) This discussion would further Hitchens's goal of discussing religious wfigures with less reverence.
p.s. I'm not the one downvoting you, if it matters.
EDIT The meaning of the word "obscenity" is quite clear, just saying something is obscene does not make it so. If you are asserting there was obscene content you should support your assertion and say what the obscenity was.
If you didn't know that, I understand that you might not see the sexual connotations of such a title. But please don't tell me Hitchens didn't know, it would be the most formidable misunderstanding in the history of debating.
> Debating must be done on the ground of good faith, right?
> Bad faith in a discussion is the sure mark of someone who
> is not willing to intellectually exchange rational
> arguments.
Thank you for this -- too many people value protecting their own beliefs/friends more than they value critical thought and challenging ones own beliefs. R.I.P. Chris
So, wishing him in heaven from another atheist as you say you are is really saying you don't know much of his work and life.
To wish for him to be surrounded for all eternity by those he loves most, in the presence of the source of all love, truth and beauty... I think that's something we'd all like to experience along with him.
Edit: Unclear phrasing
----
She gave us a good tour and we saw this tabernacle here and this here and so on and then at one point she said, "I just want to tell you a little about the church of the Latter Day Saints." And we all politely stood and then she said how in the afterlife all families will be reunited. "You’ll be with your families forever!"
So I put my hand up and said, "What happens if you’ve been good?"
Yeah, pretty much.
Edit: OK, that was unnecessarily flippant. I personally never heard that statement as an honest question, only as a ha-ha-only-serious comeback. It turns out that all the people I met who didn't like their families felt bad about it, and realized it wasn't the way things should be.
To put it another way, I think when Hitchens calls it "the christian conception" of heaven, it wasn't a description of what certain christians believe, but of the biblical description.
I find myself writing the ridiculous sentence that Hitchens perhaps took a religious prose poem/vision/prophecy/allegory/history too literally.
I understand that he had an axe to grind. But he hasn't done justice to the thing he argued against.
I take Hitchens as trying to find a common ground for argument by appealing directly to the text. So it is on point if his interpretation of the text does not do it justice, especially if the Christians interpret it differently in a way that is more internally consistent.
The problem is that no one seems to have an idea of heaven that -- if it were actually REALIZED (vs staying as an abstract idea) -- would be tolerable for any length of time by human beings. We have to assume that people are transformed into something that deals well with eternity, for example... but we never even talked about it at that depth.
I was raised Catholic by two still-seriously-believing parents, I should mention, so I have some idea of what some Christians think heaven is like. It's a vague mush of conflicting ideas.
And that's just fine, because no one wants to think about it deeply; that's not the point. It's just for saying "well, your Nana is in Heaven now, and she's very, very happy there". It's whatever it needs to be for Nana to be very, very happy.
If she's reunited with both husbands and her lover from the late 1950s as well, presumably none of them will have drinking problems or anger-management issues anymore, and they'll all get along, and be very, very happy, and also the baby that died will be there. Also very, very happy.
But again, this is already miles further than anyone delves into it. It was just "well, God will be there, and it's just amazing to be in His presence; end of story."
Even in the Catholic mass, there is a point at which priest announces: "And so, with all the choirs of angels in heaven we proclaim your glory and join in their unending hymn of praise" at which "Holy" is sung.
This is in direct reference to the book of revelation where it is depicted exactly as such, unending praise to god.
And by the way, any meaning you take from revelation is really up to you. The book is a rambling by a deluded madman.
But if you don't unquestioningly share the christian or biblical values, and dont find til biblical god's special kind of love particularly appealing, then an eternity trapped in this might not seem so blissful.
I agree that love, truth and beauty are not simply reducible to matter alone. But that does not mean they have a mystical or otherworldly basis either: invoking supernatural explanations to explain software is obviously foolish, but trying to explain software in terms of atoms gets you nowhere.
This is why I reject both supernatural/mystical/religious and materialist positions. The earlier is conceptually flawed because it rejects or denigrates the physical world (at least in part), and the latter is just as flawed because it rejects the conceptual framework necessary to fully understand phenomena outside of the special sciences. Both camps claim that love, morality, etc. do not have much (if anything) to do with reason and reality.
"I am honorary president of the American Humanist Association, having succeeded the late, great science fiction writer Isaac Asimov in that functionless capacity. We Humanists try to behave well without any expectation of rewards or punishments in an afterlife. We serve as best we can the only abstraction with which we have any real familiarity, which is our community.
We had a memorial services for Isaac a few years back, and at one point I said, ''Isaac is up in Heaven now.'' It was the funniest thing I could have said to a group of Humanists. I rolled them in the aisles. It was several minutes before order could be restored. And if I should ever die, God forbid, I hope you will say, ''Kurt is up in Heaven now.'' That’s my favorite joke."
I am honorary president of the American Humanist Association, having succeeded the late, great, spectacularly prolific writer and scientist Dr. Isaac Asimov in that essentially functionless capacity. At an AHA memorial service for my predecessor I said, "Isaac is up in Heaven now." That was the funniest thing I could have said to an audience of humanists. It rolled them in the aisles. Mirth! Several minutes had to pass before something resembling solemnity could be restored.
I made that joke, of course, before my first near-death experience--the accidental one.
So when my own time comes to join the choir invisible or whatever, God forbid, I hope someone will say, "He's up in Heaven now." Who really knows? I could have dreamed all this.
My epitaph in any case? "Everything was beautiful. Nothing hurt." I will have gotten off so light, whatever the heck it is that was going on.
There is a version in Timequake as well. That was where I originally read it [see: http://books.google.com/books?id=ggiR05avpw4C&pg=PT73...]
My path to becoming a fan of his work started young when I was no more than 11 or 12 and sitting in a pediatrics waiting room with my dad on the East end of Long Island. The man sitting next to me cross legged with a pile of loose curly grey hair was reading a magazine and gruffing every few moments. I noticed my dad staring at him.
Anyways when we left my dad said do you know who you were sitting next to? Of course not. That man was Kurt Vonnegut, I have a book on my book shelve you should read...That night I read the entire book Slaughter House Five. Then he gave me Galapagos, and then I was reading Schopenhauer, but I digress.
I have since read every single one of his works, which is why I cloud have told you where that quote was from. Vonnegut introduced me to the American Humanist Association, of which I am a member now, which means I send them money every year, also contribute to their lobbying group in DC, and read their magazine Free Inquiry.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2010/...
Jeremy Paxman: "Do you fear death?"
Christopher Hitchens: "No. I'm not afraid of being dead, that's to say there's nothing to be afraid of. I won't know I'm dead, would be my strong conviction. And if I find that I'm alive in any way at all, well that'll be a pleasant surprise. I quite like surprises. But I strongly take leave to doubt it.
Farewell, Chris.
'He did not, in fact, like being called "Chris" – his mother would not, he explained, wish her firstborn to be addressed "as if he were a taxi-driver or pothole-filler" – and found "Hitch", which most friends used, more acceptable.'
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/dec/16/christopher-hitc...
That obit is a good read, btw.
My understand was that he was a Trotskyist rather than a Marxist. Emphasis on 'was' for either.
But if there was anyone to whom labels should not be applied surely it was Hitch.
Here's the best obit I've read: http://reason.com/archives/2011/12/16/christopher-hitchens-r...
edit - I should add that I am vehemently in agreement with your sentiments about why it is so much a tragedy.
Hitchens' 2002 review of Martin Amis Koba the Dread, "Lightness at Midnight", gives a good summary of his (i.e., Hitchens) attitude to Trotskyism and Marxism. He picks out a wonderful quote of Victor Serge:
> Have you forgotten the other bankruptcies? What was Christianity doing in the various catastrophes of society? What became of Liberalism? What has Conservatism produced, in either its enlightened or its reactionary form? ... If we are indeed honestly to weigh out the bankruptcies of ideology, we shall have a long task ahead of us.
(From http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/2002/09/hitchens... )
Something to think about today, with respect to our own politics.
I deplore the way our political culture has taken to shorthanding disagreements by labeling people as Socialists, Marxists and Communists when those movements are politically dead and the concerned individuals are not involved in the pathetic remaining organizations and, come to mention it, don't match to the textbook descriptions of the ideologies.
I think it's because with Hitchens, you knew he spoke from the integrity of his own convictions. He was nobody's man, on no one's bandwagon, carrying water for no political agenda other than his own desire to see the world become a better place. His libertarianism or Marxism was just a function of where his own intellect led him, and he never compromised for fashion or acceptance. That gave him gravitas, ethos. How else could you go after Mother Theresa and not get run out of...the World on a rail?
Only Hitchens. He was often compared to Orwell and H.L. Mencken, and he was one of the few writers for whom the comparison was as a peer rather than a distant echo of a greater time. Who will pick up his mantle? Who has the intellect, wit or courage of their convictions that compares with Hitchens?
At the moment I simply can't think of anyone.
So he let himself be waterboarded.
VF Article (site's getting hit hard): http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/08/hitchens...
Youtube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7u-Wk1aU-E
The title of the article? "Believe Me, It's Torture".
Hitchens gave short shrift to the "insulting" suggestion that cancer might persuade him to change his position where reason had not, arguing that to ditch principles "held for a lifetime, in the hope of gaining favour at the last minute" would be a "hucksterish choice", and urging those who had taken it upon themselves to pray for him not to "trouble deaf heaven with your bootless cries".
I saw Hitchens speak at the New York Public Library, as part of their Live! series. Everyone retired to the garden afterwards, to take drinks.
I spoke with Hitchens briefly. He called Mother Theresa "a bitch". I criticized his diction and argued that bitch was the wrong epithet. I don't recall my exact argument, but he conceded my point. I was elated, given that I considered (and still consider) Hitchens one of the most eloquent orators of our generation. In deference to him and his passing, I have mulled my choice of language in this comment.
I am still grateful that I had the chance to engage this great polemicist.
My apologies if you're actually quite extraordinary.
None taken.
[edit: A question I asked him at the NYPL, 55:30 in the video http://www.nypl.org/audiovideo/god-not-great-debate-between-...
Q: In the beginning of the talk you expressed antipathy towards deism in principle, predicated along this particular interpretation of God as a supreme dictator and judge. Is that correct?
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: That would be correct, yes.
Q: Now, if I could play devil’s advocate for God for a moment. Could you appreciate a God who watches us and our actions eagerly and with great interest because he created a world where everything is permitted?
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: Yes, I can picture it, but I’m not without horror. (laughter) ]
"An astroid...has been named after Vanity Fair contributing editor Christopher Hitchens. The asteroid orbits Mars, Jupiter, and Earth. It’s an ironic but fitting honor for an iconoclast who has spent much of his life shaking his fist at the heavens and the deities they may or may not host."
Update: #hitchslap seems to be doing well, also.
"“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence." - Christopher Hitchens
Everyone knew Hitchens didn't have much time left, so it was great to see him doing what he does best against someone as high-profile as Blair.
He was an amazing person. He could write and speak with such force, yet such complexity and refinement at the same time. I deeply admired him even when I disagreed with him completely.
Farewell, Hitch.
You can get a sense of his political style from his fascination with the remark from Israeli peace activist Israel Shahak, "there are beginning to be some encouraging signs of polarization". Meaning that usually, well almost always, you have to choose sides. Draw the line between the sides yourself if necessary.
It's Hitchens' writings that introduced me to the early, dry, humorous works of Evelyn Waugh (best known is "Scoop", but also Decline and Fall, and the Sword of Honour trilogy). Some of Hitchens' best writing was literary appreciation, not polemics.
Firstly, Christopher is not dismissive of life-extension techniques that transhumanists espouse. If he could live longer right now due to a technique formerly classified a "espoused by transhumanists," he would choose to, as is evinced all over that essay. Rather, he is largely dismissive of life-extension techniques that don't work. The transhumanism part has nothing to do with it.
In that essay, cryonics is lumped in with the paragraph that discusses bad advice. So we can agree that Christopher considers cryonics as bad science, the same way he considers eating the granulated essence of the peach pit to prevent overwhelming growth of a malignant neoplasm bad science.
On the other hand, the rest of the essay discusses good science, that is, science which has been proven to work. He discusses its "near-miraculous" quality.
Perfusion of chemicals to preserve and prepare brain tissue is already textbook science, just not applied to whole brains. The case of Clive Wearing is one piece of an assortment of evidence that consciousness is a clever illusion (the philosopher of consciousness, Daniel Dennett, can say a lot here). Ultimately, cryonics is science that (by definition) has not been proved to work, but nonetheless serious science. Please don't deny that. Harvard neuroscientist Kenneth Hayworth explains this much better than I could, so I leave the floor to him:
http://brainpreservation.org/documents/killed_by_bad_philoso...
This issue is much too important to worry about what's distasteful.
I should have been clearer:
"Christopher Hitchens believes that most of the techniques that transhumanists think will lead to radically longer lifespans will not work."
I think that we are not in disagreement.
I think the supposition that he saw death from aging as unpreventable is supported by his lack of explicit advocacy for anti-aging research and by his public dismissal of cryonics. But that's probably because the current evidence is too fuzzy. We don't have the ability to bring back a cryonics patient, and we do know the damage involved in preserving them is non-negligible.
If he actually saw reversible human cryopreservation in action, with negligible damage, I doubt he would have abstained from taking a ten or twenty year jaunt to the future to see if they have a better treatment available for his cancer, or any other disease of aging.
Because when you think about it, that's a surprising thing about humans in general. Why do people who do not believe in immortality (as an ideal, I'm saying) still go in for cancer treatment?
His dismissal of cryonics is well known (and deeply tragic in my opinion), but he has not to my knowledge taken the position that everyone should, morally or philosophically, have a duty to die by the time they hit age 120 or so, or that there is such a thing as a "natural lifespan" towards which we are obliged.
Life stinks.
What happened to those weapons of terror? Well, the Kurds can probably tell you. Suffice it to say that not everyone was a big fan of Saddam, and some people were legitimately happy to see the US overthrow Saddam.
The main problems are this
1) bogus pretext for the war, lying to your own people
2) the means they used (bombing civilian infrastructure, cutting off power supplies to hospitals etc)
And on that note, the US has this insane idea that if they interfere with other countries, mess with their economics etc then it makes people upset with $local_dictator... but it doesn't work like that, it just makes them and everyone else in the world pissed off at the US.
3) What they did afterwards. Sticking around and trying to make the Iraqis pay for it all by looting their resources. Not good.
Afghanistan is even worse. The soviet union stuck their dick in the meat-grinder that is Afghanistan and were there for 20 years and it destroyed them and bankrupted them economically. How is the US going to fare any differently? Oh, you spent a trillion dollars on this war and your economy is in the hole for a trillion dollars. What a mysterious coincidence!
RIP.
Where's the good news?!
I don't know if anyone had ever done that before, they clearly weren't prepared for it. He was there for something serious and he kept to it, regardless of views, much respect to the guy. In a pop-media bubble gum bullshit news and entertainment world he had a mission and kept to it. A tragic loss we need more of him and more like him.
I was only aware of him using this turn of phrase when debating O'Reilly ("We barely got our trousers off, we should pursue this.")
[youtube link taken down by Fox News, sorry]
He eloquently made the case for our faith in empirical evidence and the scientific knowing of reality, and he didn't pussy out at the end. Knowing he was dying, and soon on his way into that void, still looked that motherfucker in the face, and stayed frosty.
Wish he could have died from old age, though.
Not sure what you mean by this, do you really believe that science validates a specific view on what constitutes reality?
http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2011/12/christoph...
With all due respect to the passing of a fellow human, this story has absolutely nothing to do with hackers, with software development, with the startup business... I know people are going to reply to this with some reference to "but it is of intellectual interest!" -- but really, there are lots of different places on the Internet (thousands, maybe millions!) to discuss lots of different things. If you have begun to look at Hacker News as your sole source of news and information in the world -- of which such stories and their upvoting may be a sign -- you really need to diversify your life. It will be better for your health, and for your work.
It would be great if we could allow this place remain a silo of thought on technical and business matters, and seek out other places and people for other sorts of information and discourse.
HN is still a pretty small community, and regardless of whether or not it upvotes strict tech articles or not I think is besides the point. I come here because it's like being in the center of an intellectual panopticon, and to a large extent, I trust people here to show me things that will make me grow. I'm not interested in _everything_ posted here, but it is also not important to me (and I imagine a lot of other people as well) that all the articles here are strictly super technical.
You have to find the best outlet for information and discussions regarding the topic at hand; as it stands, Hacker News is an excellent place for discussion about technical topics, but if we continue to have more of this mainstream-type stuff because of a more general audience that chooses to use this as their version of CNN, we're going to quickly alienate more technical-minded people who come here to avoid general news topics.
If you want this place to remain special, you have to keep it special.
I agree with, but this is also #1 story on the frontpage right now, which makes your statement not indictment a flood of "bad" content in the "new" section, but an indictment the HN population for upvoting it. If HNers didn't believe it was relevant content, why vote it up in the first place? HN is small enough that I just have a lot of trouble believing this is the result of user dilution.
So simple, and yet somebody is always there to complain about what should or should not be.
Why?
In any case, I disagree with the "the people have spoken" argument. It boils down to "if you don't like it, then leave". It should be the other way round: if you want to discuss this, then use another forum.
HN has a certain purpose, even if it's not completely well-defined. It follows that there are stories that should be deemed off-topic, regardless of whether a large minority votes them up.
I'm not talking about the on-topic-ness of this particular story (though I'd say it's off-topic even though I am a fan of Hitchens), but trying to defend the notion that it's fine to complain about highly upvoted off-topic stories.
PS: a related comment of mine in a recent thread on Stackoverflow:
This has absolutely nothing to do with "intellectual interest": we're mourning, and it's a sign we're all basically human.
What's a pity is that the discussion here is of such low quality, picking nits about heaven and the like.
Hitchens as a writer was a force of nature. Who else could produce such exquisitely wrought pieces at such a rate? In this respect he reminds me a little of Dickens.
Edit: here's a marvelous remembrance by Christopher Buckley: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/12/posts...
From http://whoisioz.blogspot.com/2011/11/oser-dire.html:
" Why does it also not delight me that the extent of the allegations against him, at least on some showings, is “unwanted advances”? It might be argued, by the cynical or the naive, that all “advances” begin that way. True, a period of a matter of months is specified, but don’t I seem to recall, in President Obama’s jaunty account of his courtship, that it took him a certain amount of time to “wear down” his intended target? I dare say that many of us could say the same, while reminiscing among friends, and still hope to avoid getting too many sidelong looks. But in the present circumstances there seems to be a danger of a straight-out politicization of the sexual harassment issue, with many people deciding it in advance on the simple basis of campaign calculations, or—to put it more crudely—of whose ox is being gored. This appears to represent a general coarsening by silence, and yet another crude element in a depressing campaign. "
-Hitchens
I have always suspected that Christopher Hitchens is really a child of Indianapolis or Topeka who spent a year in London while an undergraduate at the North Dakota State Technical and Agricultural Community College or some such and returned with an accent and a ubiquitous unopened umbrella so thoroughly does his Englishness come off as an affect. And, to crib from our friends across the pond, he comes off as a real tosser. "I dare say"? It's as if, sensing his own impending demise, he's angling to be played by Maggie Smith in the biopic.
Any man willing to gratuitously fondle the mother tongue as Hitch does above is obviously going to be an apologist for molestation. If you're a liberal, then you'll find it particularly appalling that Hitch first made his conservative bones, you'll pardon the expression, not by cheering for the death of a million Iraqis, but by stroking feverishly over Monica and Kathleen Willey. This was evidence of Clinton's despicable character, whereas here we are in grave danger of "politicizing . . . the sexual harassment issue," as if chalking it up as an issue has not by fucking default cast it into the baleful form of politics.