Indeed RIP

While I certainly didn't agree with his atheism, there was NO ONE who articulated the importance of free speech better than Christopher Hitchens. The West has lost its best defender against authoritarianism. We lost him when we need him most.

http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2012/01/hitchens-201201

Hitchens' last article, that he wrote as he was dying...he used his last hours to keep writing, to keep talking to the world...

And he used his last article to take on Nietzsche, and the saying:

"That which does not kill me makes me stronger."

...

I am at such a loss for words, right now...anything I can think of to say, it doesn't seem adequate, fit to be said:

And I want to say something, write something important, now, more than ever before...

His last article, it's so fitting...I have to admit to both betraying the entire idea of "Going out strong" like a Greek hero, as Hitchens clearly did, he went out on top...

I've said over and over that's the way one should live, one should go, that there shouldn't be grief about that, it should be a celebration...

But now it comes that someone who was a giant has gone out like that, and invoked another of my idols as he went, too...

And I can't feel the way I've said I should--I betray a feeling of loss, of having known a hero of mine to be actually alive, and living...to be a live Odysseus or Hamlet...

And now he's just like those two heroes, and just like Homer and Shakespeare:

Another name in my bookcase...another of my "dead white male heroes."

And I can't feel the way I should...II should be proud that he went out on top, that he shackled off this mortal coil strongly, that he wrote up until the end...he did everything a Greek or Nietzschean hero should do:

But I can only recognize him as such...I can't mourn him as such, because I shouldn't mourn, shouldn't feel grief for someone who went out like THAT--

And I do.

And it's a betrayal of what Nietzsche thought, and what Hitch himself thought.

And I'm not even writing a WebDip post properly...how can I possibly ever write up to his standard...I've just shown I can't, as much as I want to.

I don't even like to feel PERIOD, I like Sherlock Holmes and Spock...

And I definitely don't like to feel grief when I shouldn't and inept at the moment I feel like I should be so poetically inspired by him to write something brilliant...the way Ben Jonson and John Milton eulogized Shakespeare...

I can't be the least bit like an Ubermensch at the moment, by all rights, I should be most compelled to be inspired to be like one.



I hate this--and that's not eloquent, but it's true, and really, it's all I can say, in this failure.

Ummm...dude that's easily the most eloquent thing you've ever written on this site.

Anyway obi, I think we can do away with the illusion that grieving has anything to do with the deceased. It's not really for their benefit. It's for the benefit of everyone they left behind. And in the case of a public figure like Hitchens the people they left behind may never even have met them, just people inspired by them. You go ahead and feel whatever it is you actually feel. And whatever it is you want to feel. Mark Hitchens' death however you see fit. Somehow I don't think he'll care.