Letters to a Young Contrarian: Chapters 10 and 11

                  Chapter 10 of Letters to a Young Contrarian is once again used to discuss religion.  The author discusses how people of strong religious faith will often bring up courageous people, such as Dr. Martin Luther King and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, when arguing that religion can lead to a life of doing good.  He responds by asking, "Are you saying that their religious belief was a sufficient or a necessary condition for their moral actions?  In other words, that without such faith they would not have opposed racism or Nazism?"  This really made me think.  Many times when I see a religious person that has committed their life to doing good for others and fighting for what they believe in, I relate the two.  It is true that they can be very directly related, however, that is not say that a person of no religious belief could not or does not do the same good work.  Religion is not the only way for people to learn right and wrong and to gain good morals, and I think this is an important point that the author makes.  Too often are we led to believe that people of no faith are worse people than those that are religious.  This was the main point that stuck out to me in this chapter.
                   As the author moves into chapter 11, he finishes his discussion on religion and begins to discuss populism and public opinion.  From this, there were a few lessons that I learned, one being this paragraph: "Nowadays, "public opinion"is more smoothly and easily ventriloquized.  I am sure you have had the experience of making up your own mind on a question 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 under talented but overpaid pseudo-scientists have truly and verifiably arrived at this conclusion.  And perhaps, indeed I would argue, in any case, to even then."  I was really glad that Hitchens brought this up.  It is true that a lot of the public opinion that we see today is fabricated.  They do this to turn these fake public opinions into real ones by making people think they need to believe what the majority believes.  This brings me to the next highlight that I took from this chapter.  Hitchens writes, "It's a mark of sophistication to understand these things, and occasionally to announce that one distrusts or suspects them."  I completely agree with these statement and I do think that it takes a lot of courage to disagree with the public opinion. People that do know that they will face arguments and negativity, and that is why it takes a truly strong mind.  I need to remember this more often, it is never good to go with the majority on something you truly don't believe in, and this book is helping me to see that even more.