"If, when men come to blows, they hurt a woman who is pregnant and she suffers a miscarriage, though she does not die of it, the man responsible must pay the compensation demanded of him by the woman's master; he shall had it over, after arbitration. But should she die, you shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stroke for stroke." (end quote--From The Jerusalem Bible translation)
Notice the obvious. If you kill the fetus, then you have to pay compensation. But if you kill a woman, well, that's different. Now there's a human life that you have to answer for.
This is more evidence that the "life begins at conception" idea didn't exist until the modern abortion controversy.
Because the NIV is more common in the community I grew up in, here is the same passage from the NIV:
22 “If people are fighting and hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely[a] but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the woman’s husband demands and the court allows. 23 But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, 24 eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, 25 burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.
My question: The "Shooting an Elephant" by George Orwell controversy: What is your gut feeling on this? Did it really happen, or did George Orwell make it all up? What about Orwell's other autobiographical writings? How reliable do you think they are? And does any of this matter to our enjoyment of Orwell?
The essay is Such, Such Was Eric Blair by Julian Barnes from the New York Review of Books. (Although my friend read this essay in a book which of collected essays by Julian Barnes, which and she tells me that in that book the same essay was titled as "George Orwell and the Fucking Elephant".)
Whatever title it goes by, that essay is a fascinating look at the controversy about whether or not Orwell's essays were authentic. I recommend reading it. Click on the link above.
If you watch Steve's response, you'll see that he's of the opinion it should have no effect on our enjoyment of Orwell one way or the other. But, I don't know, for me, I though Shooting an Elephant was much more fascinating back in the days when I believed it was all true. Now that I know it didn't happen, the essay isn't quite so interesting to me anymore. But that's just me. What do you guys think?
For my other forays into Steve Donoghue's Q&As (the ones I've blogged about anyway), see HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE.
[Update February 16, 2025: The video featured in this post has now been deleted. For more information, see this post here, in which I explain why I deleted it.]
Recently I've been watching a lot of Christopher Hitchens on Youtube. For which I blame the Youtube algorithm. Somehow one video of Christopher Hitchens popped up in my recommendations. I watched it. And then more and more Christopher Hitchens videos started popping up.
Watching too much Christopher Hitchens can have diminishing returns. He's got a stock of zingers that he uses repeatedly. The first time you hear them, you think he's brilliant, but after hearing him over and over again, you get a bit used to it.
But, it had been a few years since my last Christopher Hitchens binge, and he had faded enough in my memory that I was due to re-discover him.
After watching a few more Hitchens videos, the Youtube algorithm served me up this one in which Hitches hosted CNBC Talk Live 1991. And it perfectly captures how charming and witty Christopher Hitchens could be.
In terms of content of the conversation, there's not a lot there. The two white supremacists just basically refuse to give Christopher Hitchens a straight answer to anything for 40 minutes. It feels like a waste of airtime in a way, but to be fair, I don't think that was Hitchens' fault. He appears to have thought that because these two called David Duke out for cowardice, they would at least be willing to stand-by their convictions, and he's as disappointed as anyone when they just dance around his questions.
But, what makes this video worth watching is all those classic Christopher Hitchens put-downs. Truly, the man was a master of the dry insult. I was chuckling to myself several times as I watched this. (Even though a few of these zingers I recognized as being part of Hitchens' stock repertoire, they are still deployed brilliantly here.)
Of course, the danger with idolizing this kind of rhetoric too much is that it can be used for evil just as much as for good. So, when Christopher Hitchens used his famous dry wit and brilliant sarcasm to promote the Iraq War in 2003, then it was less admirable.
On Jordan Peterson
God help me, I actually like Jordan Peterson. Or at the very least, I find him interesting to listen to, which may or may not be the same thing. (I've linked to his videos on this blog before HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE. And I've talked about him in the comments on Whisky's Blog: HERE. If you follow those links, you'll notice I sometimes talk about him in approving terms.)
I've also been following him on Twitter for a while, and it's noticeable that the Jordan Peterson on Twitter is not nearly as charming as the Jordan Peterson on Youtube. The Jordan Peterson on Twitter isn't a thoughtful philosopher, but a typical knee-jerk reactionary rightist.
Here are some random examples from his recent Twitter feed:
You're not an "environmental leader." You're a hypocritical moralist willing to sacrifice whole productive provinces to your own apocalyptic doom-ridden delusions @s_guilbeaulthttps://t.co/9lDIR2YFpE
Those are just examples pulled from the past couple days, but take my word for it, it's frequently like this. Go ahead and follow him for a bit on Twitter, you'll see him angrily railing against environmentalists and Covid precautions in a way that make him indistinguishable from any other right-wing crank.
I'm not sure if this is because of the limitations of the medium, or if this is his true colors coming out. (Or, as I sometimes suspect, Peterson might be mixing his drinking with his Twitter. That's just pure supposition on my part, but it would explain it.)
But either way, it's done a lot to disillusion me.
Jordan Peterson likes to portray himself as a nuanced thinker--and in his videos, sometimes he is--but on his Twitter account, he's full on right-wing, and he's completely embraced the goodguy/badguy tribalism of modern politics.
The issue that gets me the most though is his climate change denier stuff that he frequently spouts off on Twitter. This bothers me partly because I personally am really worried about climate change, but it also bothers me because Jordan Peterson is not a climate scientist, so I don't know where he gets his confidence to make pronouncements in this area.
P.S.--I've been thinking about writing this post for a while. (I expressed these same opinions before HERE), but it was seeing this several times on Twitter today that finally prompted me to opine.
Holy moly. I don't think I can do this. First words out of Peterson's mouth in the Joe Rogan interview are complete self parody. I can't even dunk on it. pic.twitter.com/hIDYPi0KDc
What can I say? Another great episode. I'll write some random observations down below:
As I catch up on the back issues, I'm currently listening to the episodes from Season 3: The French Revolution. So it's interesting to hear that the Bolsheviks were drawing their lessons from the French Revolution.
(Sidenote: I remember my history professor back in college say that one of the reasons Trotsky got pushed out of the party in the 1920s is because everyone in the Russian Revolution was studying the French Revolution, and they thought Trotsky was the most likely to become the next Napoleon. We'll see if that gets mentioned at all in future episodes.) Mike Duncan mentions they were also drawing their lessons from the Paris Commune--Lenin that that the reason the Paris Commune failed was because they weren't vicious enough. (Although that part I actually knew already.)
And speaking of parallels to the French Revolution, it was interesting to hear how ruthlessly Trotsky executed commanders and soldiers who had fled. (This was something that also happened in the French Revolution.) It's a reminder that, although it's tempting to romanticize Trotsky, he really had a lot of blood on his hands. (As I previously noted in my review of Young Stalin.)
As is quite usual with this podcast series, the actual contents of the episode is much broader than the title. This episode is not only about the Terror, but also about the growing civil war, the attempted assassination of Lenin, and the involvement of the allies in the Russian Civil War.
I've heard it said before that Lenin's death in 1924 (he was only 53) was because of the injuries he received in the attempted assassination. Mike Duncan didn't say so in this episode, but maybe it will come up later.
The allied involvement in the Russian Civil War is also an interesting topic in itself. Most Americans have no idea that American soldiers were sent to fight in the Russian Civil War. Mike Duncan mentions this briefly, but I hope it gets expanded on in future. The ending of this episode hints that it be a big theme in next week's episode.
