Letters to a Young Contrarian Chapter 11 and 12

          These chapters had so many passages that I thought were insightful, so I will only go into detail about two. The first is on page 72: "Books that were once banned or ridiculed or both, from the time of the forbidden Ulysses, have had to be saved not by the crowd, but from the crowd. The evidence of our own revolution had to be broken to people very gently...". My first instinct was to be angry at the media. They were, as Hitchens states, saving banned books from the crowd, as if the crowd weak and could not handle what was written in those books. The whole point of literature is for authors to comment on human nature and connect with the audience. Why should the public be prevented from reading books that were written about us? But when Hitchens states that certain books need to be broken to the public "gently", it made more sense. People don't want to hear the truth about humanity. Authors are brave enough to criticize humans through their art, and many people probably can't handle that. Who wants to read about how flawed we are? Who wants to have to come to terms with everything that is wrong with humanity? Sometimes, people can be fragile and even ignorant; they do not want face criticism and learn about the dark side of human nature. I think people need to swallow their fears and be willing to accept the truth about the human condition, and literature is the best way to do so.
          In Chapter 12, I was intrigued by the passage on page 82: "One must have the nerve to assert that, while people are entitled to their illusions, they are not entitled to a limitless enjoyment of them and they are not entitled to impose them upon others". I think Hitchens is saying that people need to help other people see the truth for the betterment of humanity. While it is not a crime to have false ideas or "illusions" about something, one should always be warned about their lack of truthful information. I think many people would refrain from telling someone truthful information in hopes of making themselves look better. If one person is wrong, and proceeds to share their wrong information with others, the person who is right looks that much better. Hitchens wants people to forget about their pride and forget about being right so that they can focus on the general truth. He later says "Allow a friend to believe in a bogus prospectus or a false promise and you cease, after a short while, to be a friend at all".  He believes truth, and loyalty to your friends, is more important than any pretentious desires to be right or superior to people.