The human wish to credit good things as miraculous and to charge bad things to another account is apparently universal.
Interpretation
People naturally see good events as miracles while blaming external factors for bad events.
This quote by Christopher Hitchens captures a fundamental aspect of human psychology: our tendency to attribute positive outcomes to extraordinary forces or luck while seeking to rationalize negative experiences by placing blame elsewhere. This reflects how individuals navigate the complexities of their experiences, often favoring a worldview that highlights benevolence in fortune while dismissing personal responsibility in misfortune.
In practice
This quote can be used to illustrate a point in a psychology class about cognitive biases.
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.
Ah! How I hate the crimes of the new generation: they are dry and sterile as darnel.
It is an anxious, sometimes a dangerous thing to be a doll. Dolls cannot choose; they can only be chosen; they cannot 'do'; they can only be done by.
All this shouldn't last; but it will, always; the human 'always' of course, a century, two centuries... and after that it will be different, but worse. We were the Leopards, the Lions; those who'll take our place will be little jackals, hyenas; and the whole lot of us, Leopards, jackals, and sheep, we'll all go on thinking ourselves the salt of the earth.
Call a thing immoral or ugly, soul-destroying or a degradation to man, a peril to the peace of the world or to the well-being of future generations: as long as you have not shown it to be "uneconomic" you have not really questioned its right to exist, grow, and prosper.
The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases.
Ideas are refined and multiplied in the commerce of minds. In their splendor, images effect a very simple communion of souls.
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