Christopher Hitchens

Yamanoto · 31-08-2019 09:16PM

A Tyrant Named Miltiades! wrote: »

but seem to need some kind of epistemological or ontological demi-God to tell them how to be

Where's Paul Calf when you need him?

Bag of sh1te

31-08-2019 09:19PM

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Empty postulating, with more than a hint of smug condescension ("they're not particularly well-read/educated but worry not folks because I am").

Not in the slightest. I don't claim to be well-read. I'm just making an observation that, from what I can see, a lot of the followers of Hitchens, Dawkins and yes, Jordan Peterson seem to view those characters as ready-mix alternatives to answering basic questions about the meaning of life as opposed to putting the graft in and reading some real books.

Those guys are the Betty Crocker of philosophy.

Junkyard Tom · 31-08-2019 09:24PM

Bambi wrote: »

machine gun the audience with factoids on topics they were not familiar with, stringing them all together to make his point.

Sounds a lot like that toxic little elf Ben Shapiro.

JohnnyFlash · 31-08-2019 09:34PM

A Tyrant Named Miltiades! wrote: »

Not in the slightest. I don't claim to be well-read. I'm just making an observation that, from what I can see, a lot of the followers of Hitchens, Dawkins and yes, Jordan Peterson seem to view those characters as ready-mix alternatives to answering basic questions about the meaning of life as opposed to putting the graft in and reading some real books.

Those guys are the Betty Crocker of philosophy.

Careful, the Peterson fans get very tetchy if you suggest he’s actually a spoofer and a charlatan.

suicide_circus · 31-08-2019 09:39PM

yeah you've always got to be weary of a Messiah but if people get benefit from it fair enough

Obvious Desperate Breakfasts · 31-08-2019 09:57PM

A Tyrant Named Miltiades! wrote: »

That sums him up very well. Dawkins has a similar MO, as does Jordan Peterson, albeit in a very different context.

I always found it interesting that their target audience was (or is) young men who may not be very well-read, may not be particularly well-educated, but seem to need some kind of epistemological or ontological demi-God to tell them how to be, or how they are, in the world. Maybe it's a natural consequence of the decline of organised, western religions. Maybe it's economic, or a consequence of female empowerment. It is interesting that they have so few successful and/ or female followers.

Except when it comes to biology which he does know a lot about.

HappyAsLarE · 31-08-2019 10:00PM

JohnnyFlash wrote: »

Careful, the Peterson fans get very tetchy if you suggest he’s actually a spoofer and a charlatan.

Charlatan is a bit strong for someone with a PhD and clinical practice.

31-08-2019 10:11PM

HappyAsLarE wrote: »

Charlatan is a bit strong for someone with a PhD and clinical practice.

It isn't if your doctoral thesis, twenty years ago, was in psychology and today you're behaving like an expert in economics or Marxism, and allowing yourself to be regarded as such.

Peterson's debate with Zizek was as clear an example as you can get of a man who was out if his depth. It was the logical equivalent of some barely literate eejit on twitter trying to start on a professor of French history about the French being a nation of surrender-monkeys. Embarrassing stuff.

Ardillaun · 31-08-2019 10:17PM

JohnnyFlash wrote: »

The dude had a 3rd class degree. He wasn’t exactly a public intellectual. Being a crank and left-wing social critic is piss easy.

Good degrees are a worthy goal for the many of us who require supervision. Like Waugh, Hitchens had his own curriculum and didn’t need to be told what to read. There’s no question he was a distinguished public intellectual and an extraordinary speaker but he often seemed fonder of making a big splash arguing his points than getting them right. For example, socialism was a disaster and Clinton was one of the better Presidents. Throwing his lot in with the neocons was a major error that wasted much of his later years in dreary feuds many lesser writers could have penned. I liked his literary criticism the most, e.g. an exquisite review of Brideshead Revisited. He had a great book about Waugh in him that he never got round to writing. Somehow the Trotskyist and the devout Catholic convert were kindred spirits.

Dyr · 31-08-2019 10:19PM

A Tyrant Named Miltiades! wrote: »

That sums him up very well. Dawkins has a similar MO, as does Jordan Peterson, albeit in a very different context.

I always found it interesting that their target audience was (or is) young men who may not be very well-read, may not be particularly well-educated, but seem to need some kind of epistemological or ontological demi-God to tell them how to be, or how they are, in the world. Maybe it's a natural consequence of the decline of organised, western religions. Maybe it's economic, or a consequence of female empowerment. It is interesting that they have so few successful and/ or female followers.

Your M.O is very similar to Hitchens

Hitchens audience was not young men.

Peterson is the exact opposite of Hitchens from what I've seen of him, he goes into excruciating bloody detail and makes it clear when he's going out on a limb

Junkyard Tom · 31-08-2019 10:22PM

A Tyrant Named Miltiades! wrote: »

Peterson's debate with Zizek was as clear an example as you can get of a man who was out if his depth.

When Zizek said [paraphrasing] 'who are these postmodern neo-Marxists, have you any names' and 'I'm not trying to make an idiot of you'. You can see Peterson just dying inside as he tries to come up with some answers as he's been completely exposed.

Franz Von Peppercorn II · 31-08-2019 10:24PM

A Tyrant Named Miltiades! wrote: »

It isn't if your doctoral thesis, twenty years ago, was in psychology and today you're behaving like an expert in economics or Marxism, and allowing yourself to be regarded as such.

Peterson's debate with Zizek was as clear an example as you can get of a man who was out if his depth. It was the logical equivalent of some barely literate eejit on twitter trying to start on a professor of French history about the French being a nation of surrender-monkeys. Embarrassing stuff.

Zizek. Now there’s a spoofer. Not that Peterson is not.

HappyAsLarE · 31-08-2019 10:24PM

A Tyrant Named Miltiades! wrote: »

It isn't if your doctoral thesis, twenty years ago, was in psychology and today you're behaving like an expert in economics or Marxism, and allowing yourself to be regarded as such.

Peterson's debate with Zizek was as clear an example as you can get of a man who was out if his depth. It was the logical equivalent of some barely literate eejit on twitter trying to start on a professor of French history about the French being a nation of surrender-monkeys. Embarrassing stuff.

You don’t see how a psychologist can understand economics and Marxist leaning through their knowledge of human behaviour??

Still waters · 31-08-2019 10:26PM

JohnnyFlash wrote: »

Your.

It shows the level of YOUR mental ability to reduce the debate down to grammar, the first port of call for someone out of their depth

Franz Von Peppercorn II · 31-08-2019 10:26PM

Ardillaun wrote: »

Many of the great figures of Silicon Valley were college drop-outs. Good degrees are a worthy goal for the many of us who require supervision. Like Waugh, Hitchens had his own curriculum and didn’t need to be told what to read. There’s no question he was a distinguished public intellectual and an extraordinary speaker but he often seemed fonder of making a big splash arguing his points than getting them right. For example, socialism was a disaster and Clinton was one of the better Presidents. Throwing his lot in with the neocons was a major error that wasted much of his later years in silly spats anybody could have penned. I liked his literary criticism the most, e.g. an exquisite review of Brideshead Revisited. He had a great book about Waugh in him that he never got round to writing. Somehow the Trotskyist and the Catholic were kindred spirits.

Hitchens was better when he was broadly left alright, I must look up that essay.

Dyr · 31-08-2019 10:27PM

Junkyard Tom wrote: »

Sounds a lot like that toxic little elf Ben Shapiro.

Very similar approach, what helps Shapiro is he's usually up against SJW type college students who's worldview is so risible that it's like shooting fish in a barrel.

Mad_maxx · 31-08-2019 10:31PM

Lil Sally Anne Jnr. wrote: »

Pro-Iraq war new-atheist dullard no thanks. But the kiddies love him. I prefer his brother, Peter.

I like both of them

p1akuw47h5r3it · 31-08-2019 10:34PM

Franz Von Peppercorn II wrote: »

Hitchens was better when he was broadly left alright, I just look up that essay.

So he was better when he had the same politics as you. Classic.

Franz Von Peppercorn II · 31-08-2019 10:39PM

DanDan6592 wrote: »

So he was better when he had the same politics as you. Classic.

He never had the same politics as me. I’m not a far left Marxist or Trotskyite, as Hitchens was to his dying day. I’ve never hoped that soviet horses would win the Cold War and water its horses in Hendon

That assumption tells us about your limited view of the world.

He was just a better writer then when he was more honestly on the left.

Mad_maxx · 31-08-2019 10:39PM

Ipso wrote: »

His interview with Sean Hannity after the death of Jerry Falwell was hilarious.

Yes indeed, to quote hitch in reference to Jerry Falwell

"if you gave him an enema, you could bury him in a matchbox"

31-08-2019 10:46PM

Still waters wrote: »

It shows the level of YOUR mental ability to reduce the debate down to grammar, the first port of call for someone out of their depth

In fairness, the other guy started it, if you're going to call someone out like that you better get the basics right

Andrewf20 · 31-08-2019 11:02PM

An amazing talent. I particularly love how he takes poor Todd down a peg in this one:

Still waters · 31-08-2019 11:05PM

riffmongous wrote: »

In fairness, the other guy started it, if you're going to call someone out like that you better get the basics right

I can edit it, but i choose not to because it's immature in an adult debate to pick up on it, we'd be seriously bogged down in a grammatical quagmire with no forward debate if it was tolerated, and also auto correct on my phone, so fcuk that, oops i spelt fcuk wrong.

Franz Von Peppercorn II · 01-09-2019 01:11AM

Andrewf20 wrote: »

An amazing talent. I particularly love how he takes poor Todd down a peg in this one:

That’s the thing about Hitchens. Nothing he says there is untrue but it’s all trivial. He is talking with a religious DJ. Well done on winning that one.

blinding · 01-09-2019 10:18AM

Sure no one with any sense would take religion seriously . Its not meant to be taken seriously .

Its about ceremony / performance at important times of your life . In between its there to amuse .

Father Trendy / Father Ted is what you should be perusing between important ceremonies .

Tony EH · 01-09-2019 11:44AM

take everything wrote: »

Just watching a few YouTube videos of Hitchens from years ago and he really is a great speaker. A Charlie Rose interview where IMO he sees right through Bill Clinton and openly expresses his antipathy for him for example (where incidentally Rose is as combative as I've ever seen him- birds of a feather and all that)

I often wonder what he'd think of some of the bull**** that goes on today.
I haven't seen a massive amount of his stuff, but from what I've seen, he is eloquent, polite, incisive, insightful and just intellectually honest. Something in short supply nowadays.

He's a huge loss.

Hitchens could form a decent argument and was convincing on a large range of topics. His astute eye on the sham of American politics was especially useful when I was younger and he had a great ability to cut through bullshit in short order.

That is why it was all the more disheartening to see his position on the Iraq war in the 2000's, where he displayed an unbelievably blinkered approach to the reality of what was happening there and why it happened.

It was then that I realised that he could be one of the most pigheaded commentators on world affairs a that he had a proclivity to fear being wrong, or seen to be wrong.

And even if he'd lived to see the likes of ISIS and the fallout of that miserable war, I still don't think he'd have admitted his error.

A fine man and a great political mind, but one that could have been more humble too.