I'm here as a product of process of evolution, which doesn't make very many exceptions. And which rates life relatively cheaply.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the indifferent nature of evolution and its implications for the value of life.
Christopher Hitchens suggests that the process of evolution is largely blind and does not prioritize individual lives or experiences. This perspective implies that life is valued less in the grand scheme of natural processes, inviting us to contemplate our place in the universe and how we define worth and significance beyond mere survival.
In practice
In a discussion on the value of life and existence during a philosophy class.
In a public dialogue with Salman in London he [Edward Said] had once described the Palestinian plight as one where his people, expelled and dispossessed by Jewish victors, were in the unique historical position of being 'the victims of the victims': there was something quasi-Christian, I thought, in the apparent humility of that statement.
What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
Never ask while you are doing it if what you are doing is fun. Don't introduce even your most reliably witty acquaintance as someone who will set the table on a roar.
[E]xceptional claims demand exceptional evidence.
The worst days are when you feel foggy in the head - chemo-brain they call it. It's awful because you feel boring. As well as bored. And stupid. And resigned.
Let me tell you something: for hundreds of thousands of years, this kind of discussion would have been impossible to have, or those like us would have been having it at the risk of our lives. Religion now comes to us in this smiley-face, ingratiating way β because itβs had to give so much more ground and because we know so much more. But youβve got no right to forget the way it behaved when it was strong, and when it really did believe that it had God on its side.
Guilt is altruism's stock in trade, and the inducing of guilt is its only means of self-perpetuati on.
There's a notion I'd like to see buried: the ordinary person. Ridiculous. There is no ordinary person.
I doubt if a single individual could be found from the whole of mankind free from some form of insanity. The only difference is one of degree. A man who sees a gourd and takes it for his wife is called insane because this happens to very few people.
History is how we have learnt to think about ourselves. It's not as though the Greeks and Romans are static entities out there to be discovered and translated. We make them speak, we talk to them, and they inform what we say.
The probability of apocalypse soon cannot be realistically estimated, but it is surely too high for any sane person to contemplate with equanimity.
It is the essence of the institutions of liberty that it be recognized that guilt is personal and cannot be attributed to the holding of opinions or to mere intent in the absence of overt acts.
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