Title Letters to a Young Contrarian

Author Christopher Hitchens

Year Published 2005

Kind of Book Advice/Writing

How strongly I recommend it 6/10 

My Impressions This is a book about the mindset one should adopt to write and say things that others might not like. The book is full of Hitchen's quips and insights on what it takes to be a contrarian.

Date Read Feb 2019

Practical Takeaways

  • When your opponents misrepresent your views don’t be shocked, but be graceful in how you correct them.

  • Don't expect to be thanked for being an oppositionist

  • Be courageous.

  • Don't do evil just because that's what the crowd is doing

  • Only make writing your profession if you MUST. (If you would die if you could not write)

  • Don't overdo things "Nothing too much" Greek wisdom on moderation (different than 'moderation in all things)

  • "Try your hardest to combat atrophy and routine."

  • "Remember that saying nothing is also a decision…"

  • Travel internationally as much as possible.

  • Be precise in your speech

  • Remember that experts make mistakes "Picture all experts as if they were mammals."

  • Be suspicious of all those who employ the term ‘we’ or ‘us’ without your permission.

 

Big Ideas

  • How someone thinks is more important than what they think

  • You can tell a lot about what someone thinks by their language thinks by their

  • Sometimes people laugh to virtue signal to others that they get the joke

  • Sometimes people laugh to fit in with the group

  • Courage makes all other virtues possible

  • People accused of 'discrimination' actually aren't able to discriminate

  • White is not a color, let alone a race

  • If the oddballs & doubters were in the majority they wouldn't be oddballs & doubters

  • If everyone laughs at the joke you have failed

  • If everyone laughs at a joke it means the joke it is not actually challenging anyone or anything (ie. Ruffling feathers indicates that something controversial was said)

  • Sometimes being boring about a subject is the only effective method for making your point

 

Surprising Facts

  • "The Greek oracle proclaimed "nothing too much" as the supreme wisdom; the lazy modern translation is "moderation in all things," which is not quite the same."

 

Unknown Terms

Oppositionist: a person who opposes someone or something

Intellectual: 1.a person possessing a highly developed intellect. 2."coined by those in France who believed in the guilt of Captain Alfred Dreyfus"

Intelligentsia: a status class of educated people engaged in the complex mental labors that critique, guide, and lead in shaping the culture and politics of their society. As a status class, the intelligentsia includes artists, teachers, academics, writers, and journalists. The intelligentsia status-class arose in the late 18th century.

Iconoclast: a person who attacks settled beliefs or institutions

Papacy: the office and jurisdiction of the pope

Idiot: 1.A stupid person.2.A mentally handicapped person3.Athenians originally employed the term to mean 'any man who was blandly indifferent to public affairs.' 4. How did Dostoyevsky mean it in "The Idiot"?

Platitudes: a remark or statement, especially one with a moral content, that has been used too often to be interesting or thoughtful.

Multitudes:1.a large number. 2.a large number of people

Phlegmatic: (of a person) having an unemotional and stolidly calm disposition.

Counterrevolution: a revolution opposing a former one or reversing its results

"The narcissism of the small difference": Freud wrote about distinctions between people that seem trivial to visitors of the society, but are the obsessive concern of the local and the provincial minds. 2. The bias of How humans focus on the small 5% of how we're different than one another than how we are 95% a like? (e.g. scientists believe humans share between 90% to 99.9% similar DNA)