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

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These case studies, as I interpreted them to being, provide valuable evidence for the need of people who might turn from the popular "consensus" in an effort to discern the truth, or at least uncover the untruth they deem to be polluting a particular narrative. Whether one believes in religion or not, whether one believes in this religion or that religion, we all are seeking something better in life.

I have to admit, and not without some degree of shame, that prior to picking up this book I had shunned the author for the most part as someone whose views diverged too sharply from my own to be of any interest to me. In Letters to a Young Contrarian , bestselling author and world-class provocateur Christopher Hitchens inspires the radicals, gadflies, mavericks, rebels, and angry young (wo)men of tomorrow. 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.The War Against Cliché is a motley heap of literary judgments that nevertheless offers us a peek at the evolution of Martin Amis. However, this was by no means the guaranteed outcome, and there must have been days when the "as if" style was exceedingly hard to keep up. 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.

Disputations are an essential part of crawling toward truth, but let us not get caught up in tautology. If you care about the points of agreement and civility, then, you had better be well equipped with points of argument and combativity, because if you are not then the "centre" will be occupied and defined without your having helped to decide it.However, this can't alter the fact that in life we make progress by conflict and in mental life by argument and disputation. I think often of my late friend Ron Ridenhour, who became briefly famous when, as a service-man in Vietnam, he exposed the evidence of the hideous massacre of the villagers at My Lai in March 1968. The Old Testament injunction is the one to exact an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth (it occurs in a passage of perfectly demented detail about the exact rules governing mutual ox-goring; you should look it up in its context (Exodus 21).

But… to make up for that rather horrible indictment, you can be reassured that the entire cosmos is designed with you in mind. What I have discovered is something very ordinary and unexciting, which is that humans are the same everywhere and that the degree of variation between members of our species is very slight. I find it odd because I’ve not fallen in love with any of the books I’ve read so far but still find him so compelling.As Thomas Paine pointed out, you may if you wish take on a another man's debt, or even to take his place in prison.