Mason  🏃‍♂️ ✂️

Never read Hitchens but it seems to me the point of @hunterwalk’s tweet is that you only know this one genius because he was able to get to the stage where he could make his work even acknowledged, heard and widely accepted in the west, because he didn’t have those other barriers

Yeah, the implication is that he's one of many, not particularly special in the scheme of things, chosen by fate rather than merit. And that is a giant, steaming pile of horseshit.

My last boss told me this once. He said, “everyone is replaceable”. To this day I pity the man who has such low standards for a human life.

But are there thousands of people who could equally have contributed wisdom or wit or insight to society if society had been structured more equitably? That seems a lot more plausible. He doesn't need to claim that people are fungible to make them equally valuable.

There will never be another Hitch. There have surely been others about whom we would have said the same, if the aperture of our experience had only been wide enough. How do you weigh a known loss against an unknown gain? I’m inclined to start by rejecting the false dichotomy.