A map of the world that does not include Utopia, said Oscar Wilde, is not worth glancing at. A noble sentiment, and a good thrust at the Gradgrinds and utilitarians.  Bear in mind that Utopia itself was a tyranny and that much of the talk about the analgesic and conflict-free ideal is likewise more menacing than it may appear…. It is only those who hope to transform humans that end up burning them, like the waste product of a failed experiment.

..only an open conflict of ideas and principles can produce any clarity.  Conflict may be painful, but the painless solution does not exist and the pursuit of it leads to the painful outcome of mindlessness and pointlessness..

Perfectionists and zealots can break but not bend; in my experience they are subject to burnout from diminishing returns or else, to borrow Santayana’s definition of the fanatic , they redouble their efforts just when they have lost sight of their ends.

For the dissenter, the skeptical mentality is at least as important as any armor of principle.

Disjointed excerpts from Christopher Hitchens Letters to a Young Contrarian

HKO comment:  Hitchens notes that calls for unity and non partisan approaches are naïve and nonproductive.  It is the conflict that clarifies and illuminates .  Political correctness that effectively forbids speech that offends does little to further clarity.  It is often in the defense of one’s position that one is able to clarify it.

But much of what passes for today’s political discourse is just cheap shots seeking to damage rather than clarify. Opposing views rarely engage each other because they rarely occupy the same intellectual space.  Liberals talk to each other in their media and conservatives in theirs.  They seek to confirm their existing biases rather than to challenge them.  Missions are rarely clear and assumptions are rarely questioned.  They both get so enamored with the fight that they forget that winning is the objective.

Hitchens notes that some opinions are condemned as generating “more heat than light”,  but without heat there is no light.

Pragmatism, a philosophy  devised by William James, John Dewey, and others, is anti-principle.  Pragmatism says that principles are snares and delusions.  Pragmatists teach explicitly that contradictions are inevitable and that it is folly to try to define a consistent set of principles.  Reality, the pragmatists teach, is an ever-shifting flux; what was true tomorrow may not be true today; it’s all relative, and truth is just whatever works now. Or, to quote a well-known pragmatist: it all depends on what the meaning of the word “is” is.

From a speech “Philosophy: The Ultimate CEO” delivered by Harry Binswanger

HKO comments:

While principles are important, one must be careful not to have so many principles that it becomes a refuge from action.  One should have a few critical principles and negotiate the rest.

I have found that the claim to intellectual brilliance may the weakest, maybe the most dangerous reason to select a political leader.

I recall Oprah Winfrey announcing that we should not vote for Obama because he is black but because he is brilliant.  It made me want to run the other way.  I hear supporters for Newt Gingrich tout his intellect, yet less than a week after his announcement he seems to be going down in flames. He thinks out loud and seems to lack any cohesive philosophy outside his own intellect.

I am not anti-intellectual.   Learning (not to be confused with education) is a very important value to me. Intelligence is the ability to hold multiple and conflicting thoughts in your head at one time. It is the ability to see relationships that others miss.  But this ability is limited by lack of experience and by emotional limitations.  The most common emotional limitation among the intelligent is the hubris often associated with the desire for public office.  This is why the most desirable leaders are often those who do not want the job.

Harry Truman may have lacked the academic credentials but he was long on experience.  He had such distaste for high public office that FDR had to berate him to get him on the ticket.

The candidates I like the most are often the once who want it the least.  New Jersey Governor Chris Christie keeps denying he is seeking a presidential bid but he is still actively sought.

My biggest problem with the very intelligent is that they often believe that they do not have to abide by common rules or generally accepted principles as  a guide because they are so smart that they can just adapt to any given situation.  Unmoored from important and guiding principles they wing it because they have the confidence that often comes with intelligence to rely on their abilities.

They think they are smart enough to beat the odds. They know much but underestimate randomness. They do not know what they do not know.

This is not to say that intelligence is not important. It is.  But it is far from enough, and when intelligence is the foremost reason to pick a leader one should be cautious.  Intelligence with experience and modesty becomes wisdom.

Rarely do I hear this as a reason to select a leader, but that is what we need.

Many are the works of genius that would have been incinerated if a roll of opinion had been called.

I am sure you have had the experience of making up your own mind and then discovering, on the evening news of the same day,  that only 23.6 percent of people agree with you. Ought you to be depressed or disconcerted by this alarmingly exact dissection of the collective brain? Only if you believe that a squadron of undertalented but overpaid pseudo-scientists have truly and verifiably arrived at this conclusion.

The first thing to notice, surely, is that these voyages into the ocean of the public mind are chartered and commissioned by wealthy and powerful organizations, who do not waste their money satisfying mere curiosity.  The tactics are the same as those of market research; the point is not to interpret the world but to change it.  A tendency to favor one product over another is something not to be passively discovered and observed but to be nurtured, encouraged and exploited.

From Letters to a Young Contrarian by Christopher Hitchens

HKO comments:

An idea is neither right or wrong or good or bad based on a percent of people who agree with it.  Nor is a man ‘honest’ or ‘smart’ just because a majority of the people think he is.

Unfortunately, the relation between the ends and the means remains widely misunderstood.  Many of those who profess the most individualistic objectives support collectivist means without recognizing the contradiction.  It is tempting to believe that social evils arise from the activities of evil men and that if only good men (like ourselves, naturally) wielded power, all would be well.  That view requires emotion and self praise-easy to come by and satisfying as well. To understand why it is that ‘good’ men in positions of power will produce evil, while the ordinary man without power but able to engage in voluntary cooperation with his neighbors will produce good, requires analysis and thought, subordinating the emotions to the rational faculty.

From Milton Friedman’s introduction to the 1994 edition of The Road to Serfdom by F.A. Hayek