Human beings are pattern-seeking animals who will prefer even a bad theory or a conspiracy theory to no theory at all.
Interpretation
Humans naturally seek explanations or patterns, even preferring flawed ones over uncertainty.
This quote by Christopher Hitchens highlights the inherent nature of humans to look for explanations and patterns in the world around them. When faced with ambiguity or a lack of understanding, people are often inclined to adopt even incorrect theories, including conspiracy theories, in a desperate attempt to make sense of their experiences and the complexities of life.
In practice
In a discussion about social media misinformation, one could say, 'As Christopher Hitchens observed, human beings are pattern-seeking animals who will prefer even a bad theory or a conspiracy theory to no theory at all.'
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.
All are called to be what in the reality of God they are already.
Liberty without discipline cannot survive. Without order and authority in the spirit of man the free way of life leads through weakness, disorganization, self-indulgence, and moral indifference to the destruction of freedom itself. The tragic ordeal through which the Western world is passing was prepared in the long period of easy liberty during which men forgot the elementary truths of human existence. They forgot that their freedom was achieved by heroic sacrifice.
The knife of historical relativism... which has cut to pieces all metaphysics and religion must also bring about healing.
If I am mad, it is mercy! May the gods pity the man who in his callousness can remain sane to the hideous end!
Not till your thoughts cease all their branching here and there, not till you abandon all thoughts of seeking for something, not till your mind is motionless as wood or stone, will you be on the right road to the Gate.
The trace left behind is substituted for the practice. It exhibits the (voracious) property that the geographical system has of being able to transform action into legibility, but in doing so it causes a way of being in the world to be forgotten.
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