Urging humans to be superhumans, on pain of death and torture, is the urging of terrible self-abasement at their repeated and inevitable failure to keep the rules.
Interpretation
The quote critiques the unrealistic expectations placed on humans to achieve superhuman standards, highlighting the consequences of failure.
Christopher Hitchens addresses the flawed notion that humans should be held to impossible standards of perfection. He emphasizes that forcing individuals to strive for such unattainable goals leads to feelings of inadequacy and self-abasement, especially when they inevitably fall short of these expectations. Hitchens suggests that instead of promoting superhuman ideals through harsh consequences, society should recognize and accept human limitations.
In practice
In a discussion about societal pressures, this quote can highlight the dangers of setting unrealistic standards.
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.
Man is a creative retrospection of nature upon itself.
Earth has no sorrow that heaven cannot heal.
Tolerance and understanding won't 'trickle down' in our society any more than wealth does.
A subject which at first glance seems quite removed from the undeclared concern of the book can encapsulate that concern.
It's been unsettling to discover that every form of narrative, even one that purports to tell the truth, is a kind of lying.
I'm in a business where the only thing that matters is weight and appearance. That is so messed up. They might as well say 'Get younger,' because that's how easy it is.
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