Endless praise and adoration, limitless abnegation and abjection of self; a celestial North Korea.
Interpretation
The quote critiques the dangers of excessive adoration and self-denial, comparing it to a totalitarian regime.
Christopher Hitchens uses this provocative analogy to highlight the absurdity and danger of a culture that values endless praise and self-abnegation, suggesting that such attitudes can lead to a loss of individual identity and freedom, akin to living under a totalitarian state. By equating this mindset to a 'celestial North Korea', he implies that such ideologies, while seemingly benign or even noble, can be deeply oppressive and stifling.
In practice
In a discussion about the dangers of authoritarianism, one might quote Hitchens to illustrate the risks of absolute devotion to an ideology.
In a public dialogue with Salman in London he [Edward Said] had once described the Palestinian plight as one where his people, expelled and dispossessed by Jewish victors, were in the unique historical position of being 'the victims of the victims': there was something quasi-Christian, I thought, in the apparent humility of that statement.
What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
Never ask while you are doing it if what you are doing is fun. Don't introduce even your most reliably witty acquaintance as someone who will set the table on a roar.
[E]xceptional claims demand exceptional evidence.
The worst days are when you feel foggy in the head - chemo-brain they call it. It's awful because you feel boring. As well as bored. And stupid. And resigned.
Let me tell you something: for hundreds of thousands of years, this kind of discussion would have been impossible to have, or those like us would have been having it at the risk of our lives. Religion now comes to us in this smiley-face, ingratiating way β because itβs had to give so much more ground and because we know so much more. But youβve got no right to forget the way it behaved when it was strong, and when it really did believe that it had God on its side.
Our interconnectedness on the planet is the dominating truth of the 21st century. One stark result is that the world's poor live, and especially die, with the awareness that the United States is doing little to mobilise the weapons of mass salvation that could offer them survival, dignity and eventually the escape from poverty.
A man far oftener appears to have a decided character from persistently following his temperament than from persistently following his principles.
The further on we go, the more meaning there is, but the less articulable. You live your life and the older you get- the more specifically you harvest- the more precious becomes every ounce and spasm. Your life and times donβt drain of meaning because they become more contradictory, ornamented by paradox, inexplicable. The less explicable, the more meaning. The less like a mathematics equation (a sum game); the more like music (significant secret).
No people is wholly civilized where a distinction is drawn between stealing an office and stealing a purse.
To me, the zombies have always just been zombies. They've always been a cigar. When I first made 'Night of the Living Dead,' it got analyzed and overanalyzed way out of proportion. The zombies were written about as if they represented Nixon's Silent Majority or whatever. But I never thought about it that way.
A lot of people have found the idea of living your life over and over again absolutely terrifying; there's some people that find it very comforting. There are others that are appalled by it.
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