…about Christopher Hitchens is on display in this video.
On the one hand, how can you not admire the man’s courage and discerning eye? He has the stones not only to enter the dangerous wasteland that is North Korea, but he has the guts and clarity of mind to tell that beleaguered nation’s real story in terms that few – anyone? – would dare to employ. Hitch’s ability to find the “telling detail” is unparalleled. When he talks about North Korea putting its best soldiers on the DMZ and observes that those soldiers – the cream of the NK crop – are six inches shorter than the average South Korean, he speaks volumes about the relative conditions in the two countries. Nobody does it better today and few have done it better anytime in history.
And yet…
Hitch clearly sees North Korea for what it is: the most degrading, degenerate, repressive regime on the planet. Drawing out the obvious “1984” analogy, he notes that nowhere in Orwell’s masterpiece does the author mention the presence of religion in his fictional world. So, one would expect that North Korea, that most Orwellian of nations, wouldn’t have religion either, right? “WRONG!” sayeth Hitch. North Korea is in fact the most religious nation on earth, he thunders, that theology having been expressed in the dual divine nature of the Great Leader and the Dear Leader.
You see how Hitch gets there. In his world, all religions are cults, so there is no difference between a “cult” based on faith and Divinity, and a cult that asserts that its human leaders are divine. The former is not possible, so every appeal to a higher power must be the latter. Yet, if one accepts this logic, how can Hitch claim that “1984” didn’t depend on his version of religion? Worship and obedience of Big Brother meets Hitch’s definition of religion every bit as much as worship and obedience of Kim Jong-il does.
This is the classic Hitchens quagmire. He longs for a world in which human beings respond to their higher selves, but insists that only the individual is capable of defining what that higher self should look like. As I have said before, in a world of Christopher Hitchens’, his philosophy is grand and the world would be a better place in which to live. In the flawed world we actually live in, philosophies and theologies that lead people to better places are vitally important. Equating the selfish cult of Kim Jong-il and Kim Il-sung to Judeo-Christian traditions and teachings is stupid – a word that one rarely employs when it comes to Christopher Hitchens. The Great and Dear Leaders have always viewed the people they lead as things, to be used to achieve ends important only to the state and its leaders. While our Judeo-Christian heritage is far from perfect, it has always focused – to one extent or another – on the salvation, redemption, fulfillment and happiness of each and every individual. Those are two very different philosophical constructs, but Christopher – bless his curmudgeonly soul – is wholly incapable of telling the difference.
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I hate to be the fly in the ointment… but I think he’s mostly right. “Religious” doesn’t mean virtuous. It means following something set up as a superior guiding force or principle (even “self” — the most common American god). It may or may not have strict rules, complex rituals, scripture, etc. Obviously I disagree that all religions are evil, but I do agree with him that North Korea is a theocracy. I do disagree with his equating of the two — the father-son, etc. but I do think they are analogous concepts the way DPRK has it set up.
Most religions (if not all but orthodox Christianity) are unitary as opposed to trinitary (or binary in DPRK’s case) so again… I think he’s mostly right — just not to the degree or way in which he thinks he’s right. He would think — that as a Christian I’m like a North Korean citizen — just better fed. Of course that is stupid and a Hitch’s biggest blind spot in his Enlightenment faith. He’s got the “x” side of the equation right, but he misses the “y” when it comes to the religion of the state.
Maybe for DPRK “cult” is better than religion.
Well said, Floyd.
The short way of saying it is that everything hinges on what a man worships, as all men “worship” something. All men have a “religion” in the form of their worldview. But aside from that, the religious impulse–the desire to reach the absolute and transcendent–is always present. Man, at a cultural level, will always attempt to recreate a form of the sacred where it has been destroyed or displaced (even Hitch has his “higher self”). This is seen most visibly in ostensibly atheistic regimes, where the ruling ideology has become a state cult. Having destroyed the organic growth of traditional religion(s), the only thing left to fill the doctrinal void is the regime’s philosophy/ideology (even paganism is much morally healthier). That he can’t see the difference between a tradition that gave the world Science, the university, just war ethics, natural rights, international law, and representative government and a tradition that only resulted in a living hell is risible.
As to the Enlightenment, we have to discern between the early and late Enlightenment, and between the Anglo-Scottish and Continental Enlightenment. The early Enlightenment might be defined as a democratization of medieval ideals. The aristocratic idea of Chivalry becomes the modern ideal of the gentlemen. Natural Law leads to natural rights. Consensual government leads to representative government. The inquiry of the medieval university becomes the inquiry of public discourse. And so on.
The British Isles, having largely escaped the eccentricities of the Renaissance, birthed a separate Enlightenment tradition that was more rooted in the medieval Christian tradition. The Continent, coming out of the Renaissance, birthed its own tradition, which became a mutation and distortion. It was the Anglo-Scottish Enlightenment that lit the way for the Founders, while it was the Continental Enlightenment that informed French Revolutionaries.
When you see a Marcoe comment that begins with “The short way of saying it…” you know you’re in for a treat.
I hear a lot of folks here and other places say things akin to, “all men worship something.” Is that true? Aren’t some men barbarians or primitives? Aren’t there men who don’t aspire to anything? Maybe those men simply worship themselves?
The idea can be that you worship whatever you give your life to. If your purpose in life is to keep drinking, you worship booze. If your purpose is the maximum number of sex partners, you worship sex. But that’s a moral judgment. What’s more interesting is the fact that even those who loudly proclaim their rejection of the supernatural tend to have some overarching value that they set above all others, if only the love of their families, treating it as transcendent in contradiction to their principles.
In a somewhat related point, G. K. Chesterton writes of attending a meeting of businessmen, hard-headed materialists to a man. Someone brought up the topic of good luck charms, and everybody had one. Chesterton remarked that of all that worldly, earth-bound group, he himself (the Christian) was the only one present who hadn’t provided himself with a fetish.
That’s a great anecdote.
Is that true?
Feral children or people committing suicide might be an exception.
Aren’t some men barbarians or primitives.
I can’t think of a primitive or barbaric culture that doesn’t have at least a crude religion. Some of them have surprisingly subtle religious ideas.
Aren’t there men who don’t aspire to anything?
Feral children and people committing suicide? The lowliest slave might have a fleeting dream of freedom. The guy who spends his cash on lottery tickets might have ambitions for a phantom fortune. The lout sitting on his mother’s couch might think that if things just went his way for once, he might be able to start his dream business. There is a difference between dreaming and taking action.
Maybe those men simply worship themselves?
In such cases, they usually justify it with elaborate arguments or set themselves to a grandiose cause that is worthy of themselves.
Following from Larry’s point, you’ll find that where a person worships something like drink or money, they might begin to sacralize and ritualize their behavior, visibly giving it a quasi-religious devotion. You’ll also see the religious impulse in some people’s hobbies and in many manifestations of fandom.
correction: French Jacobins.
Good stuff one and all.
To jump on this late, and a bit brief …
As Victor Davis Hanson says: “Everyone needs as God.” Hitchens admittedly is obsessed with upholding the values of the Enlightenment, for example.