Hitch & Ditch
6 months?!?! WTF?
Oh yes, dear reader, it’s been just shy of 6 months since my last blog post, hence the “Ditch” portion of today’s title. Not only have I ditched all dozen of you, my loyal subscribers, but I’ve also clearly ditched my little writing hobby. For this, I blame work and life, those two pesky little bastards that get in the way of the fun stuff!
With the blog back in the forefront of my massive frontal lobe, let’s see if I can’t resurrect this thing, albeit in a much more manageable form than how I was doing things before (i.e. no more 20 page dissertations). Besides, if the big guy in the sky, our celestial “dear-leader,” can resurrect Jesus (in my humble opinion, the true J-Woww), surely I can resurrect a little blog, right? If I succeed, does that make me a born-again blogger?
…And now for the “Hitch” part of today’s blog, I’d like to pay homage to one of my literary heroes, the late, great Christopher Hitchens. As goes the attention span in the modern world we live in, this homage-paying is not related in any way to the anniversary of his birth, death, publish date for any of his books (my favorite among them being God is Not Great) or anything like that; this homage-paying is pure happenstance, brought to you by the reigning king of time-wasters, YouTube. So, with that rousing introduction, here’s a little ditty (sans music, but as eloquent, catchy and memorable as a really good short song) from Hitch. By way of quick set-up, this video a short spot he recorded for Vanity Fair on the Ten Commandments, completely eviscerating them and then offering up a better list for the modern world in which we live:
Christopher Hitchens’ Ten Commandments
Discovering this video for the first time last week made me appreciate the feeling that gangster rap fans get when a new Tupac song comes out!
So what did you all think? Any commandments missing from Hitch’s list or anything he got wrong?
Personally, if I could add only one commandment to his list, I think it would be: “Thou shalt not be gullible.” I realize that we’re not all born with the same faculties and ability to apply logic and reason to our lives, but assuming one is of sound mind and capable of living independently, I consider living a life of gullibility in an age of such enlightenment to be a mortal sin of the highest order. Not only is gullibility a disservice to the individual, but it’s also an incredible disservice to society, and it tends to be contagious. I’ll leave coming up with some examples as an exercise for the reader!
That’s all for now. Cheers and happy doubting,
~BLA
Beerlovingatheist's Blog 
I would counter that it should be re-phrased from ‘Thou Shalt Not be Gullible’ to ‘Thou Shalt Not be Credulous’. Similar meanings, but I define credulity as believing in ideas or things without backup or support. Being gullible is merely allowing oneself to be easily tricked or manipulated. So, with the former I could convince you to do something with no reasoning. The latter would require some semblance of proof, albeit hollow or insignificant.
Then again, ‘Thou Shalt Not be a Pedantic Prick’ may be a valuable law to keep myself reminded of.
Haha… Pedantry is a lost art, it’s all good. I agree that “credulous” may in fact work better than “gullible” here, good revision. I’d like to claim some deeper reason for choosing the word gullible, but I simply like the way it sounds. I can’t help but think of the character Gumby… I picture a mailable, easily shaped, soft and flabby person when I hear the word, and I think that’s why I went with it. Either way, I’m glad you agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment of this being a mortal sin. And negative examples of the harm caused by the credulous/gullible abound, don’t they? On one extreme, you’ve got the bud light drinkers who either buy-in to the advertising or simply don’t look to their left or the right when they buy beer…otherwise why would they choose to drink something so vile? On the other extreme, you’ve got the population of Germany in the 1930s, when very few people stood up and said, “hey, maybe this whole final solution thing is a bad idea!” I’m not for bullying, but I am definitely for publicly shaming the credulous!