Letters to a Young Contrarian (Art of Mentoring (Paperback))

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I think it is crucial to flesh out the difference between the other three figures on one hand and Hitchens on the other. However, Hitchens' lucid prose style, his absolute moral clarity and wonderful range of literary and political references eventually brought me round. There is a saying from Roman antiquity: "Fiat justitia - ruat caelum"; "Do justice, and let the skies fall.

Or when talking of the Catholic Church, Hitchens summarised their position on pederasty as "No child's behind left. The complex prose read with the ease of a novel, with a consistent story structure that comes across as a description of current events. No one is quite as good at being condescending and disagreeable and intelligent and hilarious all at once. It became the replication in even less interesting form of the narcissism of the small difference, because each identity group begat its sub-groups and "specificities. It's neither journalism nor polemic, but a very thoughtful book about what it means to be a 'Contrarian' and to challenge the status quo and conventional opinion, and why it is important to do so.

Whether one believes in religion or not, whether one believes in this religion or that religion, we all are seeking something better in life. In this short work the author takes up the subject of what it means to devote oneself to a life of opposition to the status quo by responding to many of the questions he has received on the subject throughout the years. the forces of piety have always and everywhere been the sworn enemy of the open mind and the open book.

Always ask who this 'we' is; as often as not it's an attempt to smuggle tribalism through the customs. That was very prescient of you, as the late master of melee most mouthful produced one such work, and now reaches out across time to steady you by your tender morsels, and shotgun, past your trembling lips, the hot second hand vapors of wisdom tirelessly sought. I suppose my only criticism of it is that it is far too short to provide an even view of the examples described therein, but I repeat that this is a synthesis: it is not enough to make an informed decision on big issues, but enough to comprehend the author.

Even the most humane and compassionate of the monotheisms and polytheisms are complicit in this quiet and irrational authoritarianism: they proclaim us, in Fulke Greville's unforgettable line, "Created sick — Commanded to be well. This maxim, fondly known as the Hitchens rule, has been proved true time and again in the years since Christopher Hitchens' death in 2011. In the late Victorian period, Oscar Wilde - master of the pose but not a mere poseur - decided to live and act "as if" moral hypocrisy were not regnant.

In each case, as we know now, the authorities were forced first to act crassly and then to look crass, and eventually to fall victim to stern verdicts from posterity. In an average day, you may well be confronted with some species of bullying or bigotry, or some ill-phrased appeal to the general will, or some petty abuse of authority.

I often appear uninterested (often enough, I am), in what other people are saying to me, or I am insufferable and condescending. He understands the importance of disagreement-to personal integrity, to informed discussion, to true progress-heck, to democracy itself. So, like Hitchens, whose face apparently forms an unintended sneer, I don’t fit the old description of a gentleman: one who is never rude except on purpose.

Above all, Letters to a Young Contrarian is necessary for its exploration of the role of the dissenter in a time of too much politeness. Hitchens was also a political observer, whose best-selling books — the most famous being God Is Not Great — made him a staple of talk shows and lecture circuits.

I didn't ask for it, and would willingly have foregone it, but there it is: I'm claimed and saved whether I wish it or not. Our remaining expressions - "maverick", "loose cannon", "rebel", "angry young man", "gadfly" - are all slightly affectionate and diminutive and are, perhaps for that reason, somewhat condescending. All I can recommend, therefore (apart from the study of these and other good examples), is that you try to cultivate some of this attitude. But you may not assume his actual crimes as if they were your own; for one thing you did not commit them and might have died rather than do so; for another this impossible action would rob him of individual responsibility. That commitment was most infamously displayed during the debates over the 2003 Iraq War, which Hitchens vociferously supported.