It is important to remember that polemicists like Hitchens are here to galvanize as much as enlighten; his book is a call to arms as much as it is a lecture. He’s challenging the religious status quo, which for most of human history has not been pretty, and in that task, we should applaud him. While many believers are bothered by his strident critique of religion, they should nevertheless heed his warnings about the deleterious effects of fundamentalism, especially in public life. Hitchens had far less respect for religion than I do, but his commitment to human rights and the defense of an open, free society are something to celebrate. Despite his acerbic, tactless appearance on the surface, Hitchens can be read in the best light as a humanist, dedicated to the Enlightenment project of democracy, liberty, and tolerance. At his worst, Hitchens can be read as a cultural imperialist and elitist whose sniveling disdain for religion displays actual intolerance. Like with most people, I think Hitchens is somewhere in the middle, bolstered by his better angels and hampered by his inner demons. Regardless of your feelings on Hitchens, he’s one of the most profoundly engaging, entertaining, and enlightening public intellectuals of the last half century, and god is not Great might be his most enduring work.
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Rejecting Dogma, Embracing Freedom: Mike Rinder’s Journey Out of Scientology
Cults can take so many things from a person— their money, their dignity, their ability to think critically— but the most powerful thing a cult can take is someone’s freedom. If you can take someone’s freedom, you can take anything else. Rinder learned this firsthand being involved in scientology, a cult that destroys families, degrades its staff, and swindles its members, and has dedicated his life to exposing scientology’s pernicious effect on the world. In rejecting the dogma of scientology, Mike Rinder embraced freedom, the most precious thing one can ever have.
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Anxiety, Kierkegaard, and Me: Living and Thriving with Nervousness
Anxiety is a concept that is nearly universally experienced but almost universally misunderstood. It is not plain nervousness, like when you stop abruptly at a stop light or surprisingly run into an ex-partner or an in-law. For me and many others, it is a constant, pervasive dread that permeates our very existence. A couple of years ago I realized that my anxiety was beginning to affect nearly every aspect of my life, from work and relationships to even my ability to sleep at night. It was here that I began my own investigations into anxiety, reading and studying as much as I could on the subject. From learning about Buddhism to Psychoanalysis and everything in between, I really didn’t crack the “anxiety code” until I discovered a nineteenth century philosopher who wrote a pioneering book on the subject in 1844.
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Image: Jeremy Bishop/Ling Gigi/Mark Seliger
The Injunction of Happiness: Slavoj Žižek and Capitalist Buddhism
Buddhism in the western, capitalist context is the same kind of hollow experience that the fleshlight is for sex; it makes one feel better in the short term but doesn’t actually remedy one’s issues in the long term. In this variant, Buddhism is no more a challenger of our material conditions then right-wing Christianity. As Žižek writes, “Although Buddhism presents itself as the remedy for the stressful tension of capitalist dynamics, allowing us to uncouple and retain inner peace and Gelassenheit (self-surrender), it actually functions as capitalism’s perfect ideological supplement.”
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