" . . . we have the same job we always had, to say, as thinking people and as humans, that there are no final solutions, there is no absolute truth, there is no supreme leader, there is no totalitarian solution that says that if you will just give up your freedom of inquiry, if you would just give up, if you will simply abandon your critical faculties, a world of idiotic bliss can be yours. We have to begin by repudiating all such claims – grand rabbis, chief ayatollahs, infallible popes, the peddlers of mutant quasi-political worship, the dear leader, great leader, we have no need of any of this." Christopher Hitchens
We in Africa have indeed "abandoned our critical faculties" and got our due reward a thousand fold; we inherited that "world of idiotic bliss!"
Christopher Hitchens died last week. He was a writer of renoun. Nick Cohen in the Observer (UK) 18 December 2011 describe Hitchens as the most 'intellectually generous' man he has met. Christopher had "a laconic voice from the English upper middle class, putting our arguments better than we could, and urging us to square our shoulders and speak our minds."
Rest in peace, brother Christopher.
No comments:
Post a Comment