Ramblings About Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens arrived comparatively late in my life. Even when he did appear for no small time I would get him mixed up with his brother, Peter. Not in their worldviews, obviously, but I would be heard to ask, “which one’s that, I keep forgetting, Christopher or Peter?”. Thankfully, as time went by I enjoyed a sort of instantaneous reverse dementia when it came to the Hitchens siblings and became able to separate them by their physical appearance. Watching ‘Question Time’ on BBC television was the cure; it would be hard to confuse the irrational, misinformed, emotion-laden drivel and eternally arrogant smugness of face which has become Peter Hitchens’s trademark. Their difference in intellect is a strong argument for refuting the notion that IQ is solely a result of genetic inheritance. That’s right, I much preferred Christopher.

I admit, though, to having read little of Christopher Hitchens’s work and only one complete book, ‘God Is Not Great’. My exposure has been primarily visual and auditory, via the many videos on Youtube and courtesy of all the other writers who have recognised his literary talent, or his ability to infuriate his detractors, enough to quote him. I sometimes wonder how my opinion of Christopher Hitchens might have been different had I read him copiously without ever setting eyes on him. In many ways, it could be argued, he was not the optimum ambassador for atheism, or even any political or commercial viewpoint for that matter. He certainly packed a strong message, but it wasn’t delivered with the glitz and glamour of a televangelist but in a crumpled suit, often unshaven appearance, obvious taste for strong drink and, when not on stage, seemingly relentless politically and socially incorrect smoking. The ‘Four Horsemen’ video from September 2007 shows him sitting akimbo on his chair, attempting to blow the smoke away from the majority nonsmokers (Dan Dennett, Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins), his meagre concession to the long-awaited fresh attitude to clean air. He wouldn’t have got away with that at my place (OK, the video was actually shot at his place....).

Yet somehow I found him endearing.

I can’t help but contrast Christopher Hitchens to another character who, as a young man, I found endearing too, the Australian Federal senator and leader of the Greens, Bob Brown. Bob was a healthy, clean-cut, suit-wearing late thirty-something family doctor when he rose to national prominence in the early 1980s as a spokesman for the influential green movement in the state of Tasmania. This was in the days when cartoons in the Murdoch-owned national daily newspaper ‘The Australian’ would depict anyone with any sympathy toward caring for the environment as having long unkempt straggly hair, bellbottom trousers, sandals and flies buzzing around their head. I can vividly recall an elderly woman of my acquaintance, a devout Christian of the Pentacostal persuasion and staunch anti-environmentalist by the name of Prudence (really), who once remarked to me that “he seems like such a nice young man, it’s hard to imagine he’s a communist”. I’m sure her opinion was ratcheted down a notch, however, when he came out as gay.

All this leads me to wonder what might be considered Christopher Hitchens’s most notable contribution to atheist thought? It goes without saying that he had rapier-sharp thinking which never waned, despite his ill-health. That he was more than au fait with a wide range of subjects both in the humanities and the sciences. There are his many writings, of course. And his talks and debates. There was also the celebrated ‘Hitchslap’ always aimed with a delightfully poker face at those who persistently showed themselves to be intellectually unfit to top up his whisky glass. All these alone are worthy enough to cement the man in the atheist cultural memory. For myself there are several pearls of wisdom that equal anything that has emanated from either mouth or pen of any religious authority. I'd like to share two that I find particularly inspiring:

"Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence."

"A life that partakes even a little of friendship, love, irony, humour, parenthood, literature and music and the chance to take part in battles for the liberation of others cannot be called 'meaningless.'"

Is it really arrogance, however, to point out that atheism has far more than it’s fair share of smart people? Even some pretty witty people? There was always something a little more about Hitchens though. Like insisting on being, at all times his own man, never compromising even a millimetre. He must have been the only Brit who had spent several decades in North America without acquiring the tortuous resonance of a 'mid-pond' accent. No doubt purposefully. He readily challenged attitudes, forcing individuals to come to some kind of terms with the parts of his worldview they agreed with and the parts that made them squirm. He forced a degree of cognitive dissonance toward himself in a way that other pundits do not have to. There was diversity and there was disagreement about his political views and this was a good thing. When Hitchens opined atheists could no longer be so easily negatively portrayed as having:

“...had their say.......under their heroes, Vladimir Lenin, Josef Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Mao Tse Tung, Pol Pot, Kim Il Sung and Kim Il Jung, Fidel Castro, and innumerable others, they murdered upwards of 100 million people”.

As, for a random example, the ludicrous Catholic blog, ‘Commentarius de Prognosticis’ put it. Of course anyone familiar with what an atheist like Hitchens has written and spoken at length about Kim Il Sung and can still pen the above is either a liar or a fool, quite possibly both. Hitchens’s political stances slowly eroded the notion that atheists are as singularly-minded as many theists like to portray, i.e., akin to a faith community, sharing the same beliefs and ‘dogma’. Atheist diversity of thought is not characterised by concern with the minutiae of scipture or dogma, however, but on variations in the analyses of wider observations, evidence and data. Dogma, on the other hand, collects no data.

I disagreed with him profoundly on a number of political issues, the most obvious one being his stance on the invasion of Iraq. A photographic comrade of mine is Iraqi. He is a good man, a surgeon, with a deep personal religious faith, yet socially very liberal. He told me that after the invasion, and until recently, he could no longer climb the steps to his roof garden to even watch the sunset as he risked being shot by the American military who might mistake him for a sniper or someone keeping tabs on troop movements. A professional photographer of his acquaintance was shot dead in the street from an American helicopter while working. In one of the most poignant images I have ever seen, my friend captured an image of the dead photographer’s father viewing a framed photograph hanging on a wall, taken by his son just before he was killed. The photograph is of another body being lifted from the River Tigris onto a boat.

Christopher Hitchens’s humanity surely had a hiccup when he supported the invasion of Iraq. But somehow I could forgive him for that.

Before his death there were the inevitable barbs in the fundamentalist Christian blogosphere that his throat and oesophageal cancer were "God's revenge for him using his voice to blaspheme him". Some even instigated a 'Pray for Hitch Day' in order that he be saved and turn to Christ. He, of course, implored people not to pray for him on the typically Hitchensian grounds that "What if I pulled through and the pious faction contentedly claimed that their prayers had been answered? That would somehow be irritating." Then, inevitably, the laughable claims that Hitchens "did a Darwin" and converted to Christianity on his deathbed. As if anyone who has read his epilogue 'Mortality' would believe that. Now he's dead, though, I can be sure there is no God in his heaven. If there were such a place, we would expect to see Hitch return after three days. God would have lost so many their debates and be reeling from the Hitchslaps he would have resurrected the guy if only to save face among his sycophants. 

I’d like to finish with a poem by Dylan Thomas. I’m sure Christopher Hitchens would not mind if I point out that the commonalities between his and Dylan Thomas’s life. Both were writers of genius, each in their own way, both had no qualms about spotlighting moral hypocrisy in the religious and not-so religious alike. Both also had more than a fondness for alcohol and tobacco and both died younger than they should, probably because of that. Christopher Hitchens was a man who enjoyed life, created, made many people think and laugh and always, always raged against the dying of the light. If I didn’t know better I’d swear Dylan Thomas wrote this poem for him.

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rage at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning they

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,

Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

'Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night' by Dylan Thomas (1914-1953).

'That Good Night'  © Gary Hill

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