Douglas Murray - What Christopher Hitchens Taught him About Regret
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- Опубліковано 16 чер 2024
- Douglas Murray explains what Christopher Hitchens taught him about regret. How does Douglas Murray believe Christopher Hitchens dealt with regret? What is Douglas' personal approach for decision making? What would Hitch regret now?
#douglasmurray #christopherhitchens #regret
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I absolutely love this lesson. Big love you beautiful humans. Watch the full episode here - ua-cam.com/video/07PZ6fyS_Bo/v-deo.html
Would have helped to have had Hitchens's actual remarks quoted somewhere, say, in description.
I keep this quote on my desk. In business, life, love… this is a powerful insight.
I was lucky enough to meet Christopher while he was on a speaking tour in Montana toward the end of his life. He was a giant of a personality. We all miss him.
"Never be a spectator to stupidity or unfairness. The grave will provide an eternity for silence" - Some bloke... Probably.
We are all guilty of this one-just from living in the UK for the last 20 years and not removing those in power.
@@dimension9680 - Or remaining silent when the authorities spout the latest idiotic dogma of the transgender lobby.
@@dimension9680 How would you have done that? Even an "off" would just result in the next shark tooth poping up.. Never choose illegal measures, if for no other reason, that you plant the seed of that becoming "the way", destroying some of the best things about democracy ("Democracy - the system that replaces of idiots deciding with weapons, to a system of idiots deciding with votes". Knud Vedel ca. 2010)
Better'n Hitchens.
A chain-smoking, slobbering drunk/alcoholic, Wikipedia intellect whom had to protect his naked posturing with threat of vitriol and, that redoubt of all frauds, talking over challenges. 'Gad-fly' was his obvious ambition both reflecting his utter absence of
substance and phony 'anti-hero/outlaw/dangerous' schtick.
Good one.
He was very lucky to have known Hitchens.
My regrets seem to only exist in the realm of missing a opportunity to be kinder to certain people in hindsight I realised how nice they were.
An old guy once told me
"Looking back the only regrets in life I have is the things I didn't do, not the things I did!
We need Christopher Hitchens now more than ever. He would have despised all the radical identity politics.
One spends a good bit of time wondering, “ What would Christopher Hitchens have to say about this … “
You do, the internet will keep him on life support until we lose electricity in some petty ideological dispute.
@NolanEP for some reason can't reply to your alpha question where you placed it???
By 'alpha' read characteristics of the alpha. Courage, resilience, self-dependent etc.
True, but he has been dead for quite some time now. All we can do is to do the best we can to embody the qualities that we admired about him and continue on.
@@peterclark6290 Or until someone thinks, “Hitchens is too dangerous and must cancel him, even in death.”
You beautifully illustrate why I don't trust people who lead with a no regrets philosophy, it reveals a lack of conscience.
When I heard this portion of the discussion, I had to stop it and replay it. Then I wrote it down. Then I played it again, so it would sink in. I cannot thank you enough for this!
I believe you have dementia...
I've always admired Christopher Hitchens. I admittedly agree with him less over the years on certain issues, but i still love and admire him. I wish he were still here to make sense of the shit show we all live in now.
A wonderfully verbose mouthpiece for the elite. No more no less.
There are no regrets when you learn from your errors. You can only learn from your errors by asking God to show you. That's why Hitchens ended up with regret.
Same.
@@robertdouglas8895 Bullshit
Christopher Hitchens said much that was thought-provoking; but not everything he believed is necessarily empirically true, and in fact he moderated his views on various subjects across his time in the spotlight.
I liked him for the most part. It warmed my spirit that he and Peter reconciled in time. And that was an even bigger lesson: that there are aspects to this life that are more important than all else. Accepting and living by differences (which we used to do), and understanding that hearing isn't the same as listening.
Both Hitchens brothers have experienced life in ways few others of comparable intellect will. We are blessed to have had Christopher, and continue to have Peter.
He put it slightly better than how Douglas is presenting it, Hitch said "all of life is a wager, you choose your future regrets."
Thats even more nuanced, than just being about regret. He's saying life is a cost/benefit analysis.
Integrity has a price; situational “ethics” does too. Choose integrity, and to hell with those who choose otherwise.
Exactly. That simple. We make it that simple, on purpose, so we can’t find reasons to weasel out if it.
Regrets will eat you alive, make a decision good or bad and live with it, always forward..never back. Can't be changed, learn and adjust..
I agree completely. Regrets are pointless. If you chose wrong, fix it. Undo-ing is not an option. If you want something different, choose different. The only unchangeable action is death.
Slightly disagree. There are certain actions that demand personal regret for a lifetime. By that I mean actions that were taken ... and not the being caught for taking them. Unfortunately, many of the people who take these actions are not capable of regret .... you require a conscience to be able to regret! Just saying!
Love Christopher Hitchens
Unless you are prepared to surrender everything...surrender nothing.
I realised all by myself that there is an opportunity cost to every decision so, depending on your perspective, you're damned if you do and don't. You could always think "what if?". Every major decision is a sliding doors moment. Personally, I try to use a combination of logic and instinct. The reason I went to uni, travelled to Australia and currently live in Korea is knowing I'd regret not experiencing those adventures.
"when you reach the end of your days and look back over your life, be sure your regrets are for things you did, not for the things you never did."
I’d rather be sorry for something I did than something I didn’t do……
That's actually quite flawed if you don't restrain it in some form. If it involves a gun then you rather not....even be there. If it involves loosing one opportunity to be honest...then....
The people who disagree but accept that you do things your way are more valuable than all the “friends” condemning you for it. The thing I value most in friends is consistent and open character.
I could not be friends with people who are incapable of hearing anything I have to say. I don't like narrow minded or weak people.
@@ohsweetmystery agreed
You just want a safe space for as long as possible, and I don’t think it’s worth it anymore
Murray has the most charming impish smile in all of letters.
Thank you, both of you.
This reminds me of strive for problems and minimize dilemmas.
Excellent positive energy as always.
This hit me hard! I’ve always had a passion for food and cooking. 4 years ago I fell ill and left an awful job (bookmakers). 2 months ago I was ready for work and I went into a job with great progression opportunities. Having said that, I’ve wondered about getting a job in a kitchen and working my way up because I’m so passionate about it. But(!) it’s very long hours and I’m on dialysis 5hrs x 3 days a week. (My new job allows for this). Maybe one day.
Well said love from South Africa.
Douglas Murray is one of our generations best voices during and after Christopher Hitchens, who I idolized as a teen to understand my own thought processes and having healthy/rigorous debate even if people may get offended. Douglas has been pitch perfect on multiple subjects to threats to the West for decades, but hearing this talk was a healthy introspective understanding of regret or things to bare that I knew subconsciously was there lying in wait, but to verbally express it and make sense of it as “a feature” and “not a bug” put it in perspective.
I love Douglas too, but no one alive is even close to being the polemicist as Hitch was.
The west colonised the entire planet , and this guy titles his book war on the west? Lol
I think the criticism made is valid, I hated the Iraq and Afghanistan War 20 years and don’t think government learned anything, nor respects the people that served and colonization happened, but even recognize whether it was the British Empire or American Empire a lot of atrocities occurred without question. I still value the importance of protecting Western civilization, because it is the best, but is being rotten from the inside out by people who want to sabotage it and undermine the public.
Hitch was a genius, Douglas is nothing more than a zionist twinkle toed sophist shill. That is all.
Love you guys; God bless you thanks so much
Legendary lesson right here
Excellent reflection and analysis
I don't have a single regret. Believe what you want. I've done so many things that I am ashamed of. Things I wouldn't do today. Or would do differently.
You know why? Because I did them. That is how I know not to do them again. No regrets. Each bad decision or mistake is growth.
I thought I was the only one! Thanks
Well put
The 'things you are ashamed of'..... you obviously do have regrets. Regrets are essential, otherwise you would be saying you are not ashamed of the things you did, as if you didn't care either way. You clearly do.
@@hookooekoo2 If I never did those things, we wouldn't be having this conversation. Ashamed is not regret. I am grateful that that I can grow. So in a way, I am more grateful of having done things I am ashamed of than I am regretful of doing things that I am ashamed of.
Words mean something a little bit different to each of us. I have no place in my life for your definition of regret.
@@Tian.S So you are glad you did the things you are ashamed of?
This was a fantastic exploration.
Excellent men.
What a great insight!
Love these guys.
Reminds me of how Jordan Peterson always says that you have the blessing of picking your poison, but you don't have the ability to not choose a poison
Reminds me of WHO ASKED YOU???
@@barryswinton3224rude
Thank you a lot
Great accomplishments are usually preceded by failures, don't be afraid to fail.
Man. Does he hit the nail on the head with the bit about isolation.
1:13
Choose your path, choose your poison, choose your regrets.
Life is too big and you may value some expirrences more then others. And that's ok.
Try to fulfill the important ones. Imo.
And try to get side quests
The words of Hitch will out last us all.
Murray, what a man
Highly relatable.
For myself, regret is something more than this. It is the feeling you chose WRONG.
It isn't always that way though pal you can choose "right" and still regret it
@@stoicsavage509 I think there needs to be a word that differentiates the feeling you get from choosing wrong. I don’t know what that word would be if not regret.
@@tombombadyl4535 ye I agree but you can make decision that is deemed right at that moment only to regret it later... Right or wrong... Regret or not, its not written in stone
@@stoicsavage509 You could argue that every decision you’ve ever made has come at a cost. I think most commonly the word is used to mean you regret their choice. It’s semantics.
@@tombombadyl4535 thats a completely different argument though bro... We were talking about regret
I like that he said I speak the truth as I see it, but surely that’s true of the other ‘side’
Freakin’ brilliant.
Have you had similar thoughts? Perhaps articulated differently? Then you are equally brilliant. He is just more famous, that’s all.
Anxiety about the future and regret are two sides of the same coin, one looking forward at things you can’t change, one looking behind at things you wish you could change.
We've got one that can see
@@vlnow I would humbly suggest that all things perceived for the future CAN be changed (other than the certainty of death of course). Indeed I would go further and suggest that almost certainly all perceptions of the future WILL change for either better or worse. Just saying!
The best insights seem to be the ones that are obvious to all of us but which we ourselves never couldve so eloquently expressed. This is such a negative yet accurate and realistic way to say, "do what you think is right."
It is similar to hitchens' advice on how to know you really want to be a writer. Rather than saying "do it if you love it," he says (paraphrasing), "do it if you couldnt stop even if you wanted."
Summed up nicely this lone wolf dilemma I've been living with
Definitely the first time I ever said to myself "I didn't think Douglas Murray smoked weed."
Fear of Failure, the fear to fail at one's adventure into business or some project one wants to pursue. This fear then in time can become a regret. So can we assume that "Fear of Failure" is the predisposition before any Regrets for some action we did or did not take? 🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇿🇦🇿🇦🇿🇦
Wasn’t sure if Murray was completely cogent about Christopher, but the quote mentioned in comments is his , we absolutely miss his articulate view on what is happening in our world , he would be dismayed but would have put in a way we would never forget , rip Christopher
"Regret is the certainty that you are not everything you could have been"
I dont know who said this, if anyone does know please let me know.
My regrets always involve uncertainty. If I am 100% certain about any thing , I usually comply to that thing in a way which will cause no regrets . My regrets always conjure up when I lack knowing things about life.
there is some old country and western song that says " I'd rather be sorry for something I've done than something that I didn't do"
Everyone has this, and the decent ones, say the thing, anyway.
↔️ 'Two roads diverged in a yellowed wood and I took the one less traveled-and that has made all the difference.'
-Robert Frost (1874-1963)
Love is in the air
.. speak truth
I learned two great lessons from two teachers in high school. One was from my U.S. History / Psychology teacher who told us not to have any regrets. You cannot have regret, he said, because all it does it eat you on the inside and continues to do so. Do not regret. At first I thought that it was impossible to have regrets; I even had many of them as an adolescent. I eventually learned that it is a matter of not letting yourself regret because, if you had not done something you had done in the past, you might not have enjoyed all the great experiences, relationships, etc. that you have had since then.
Yes I agree. I use that outlook to help cope with difficult situations.
When you zoom out of the difficult experience/regret and imagine it on a giant timeframe of your life, not only will its significance somewhat diminish, but it would also show all of the positive events that only could have occurred because of that catalyst.
In comes the stoicism. An event is not neccesarily good or bad, it is he who interprets it as such.
Sorry, but your teachers failed you. Regrets are a form of introspective apologies and must be owned by the regretor and the apologist with deep sincerity and humility. You apologize to others to obtain forgiveness and your apology must contain a promise not to act in that fashion again. Similarly, regrets are apologies given to yourself and come with the same promise. In that respect, regrets and apologies result from self-awareness and learning experiences and without self-awareness and the ability to learn from our mistakes, we might as well be vegetables.
@@semigeniusreally8988 I think regret is not necessary to recognize a shortcoming and to apologize for it or to learn from one's mistakes. Regret is a much stronger, self-destructive psychological manifestation in my view. It is similar to the way people throw around the word "depression," which is actually a clinical condition, not merely a bout of sadness.
@@Shewib If you think that feeling regret is self-destructive, then so are apologies, which are simply regrets expressed to others rather than to oneself.. Should an operator sitting in a room in Las Vegas feel regret for discharging bombs from a drone in Afghanistan remotely that mistakenly kills 48 innocent adults and 15 innocent children at a wedding party feel regret or remorse (which are the same) for the destruction he wrought? Should a person who, while driving drunk, kills a child's pet but escapes discovery and returns home never to be prosecuted? Should a vigilante feel regret for shooting an innocent person in his attempt to gain revenge for his daughter's rape by shooting at his daughter's rapist? Or what if the alleged rapist was misidentified? The list could go on ad infinitum, but by denegrating the very concept of regret you denegrate our humanity. And by comparing it to depression, you denigrate those suffering from depression. If you have lived a life free of the feeling of regret, you are almost certainly pathologic or sociopathic and you have my pity for having to live with yourself.
All the regrets I have are of things I *didn’t* do.
Don't stagnate on regret.
Go past regret into learning from experience.
Tell the story to your children as a life lesson.
Salvage success from failure; find opportunity in tragedy.
Don't waste you brain's cpu power on regret; learn a lesson then focus attention forward.
words just words i regret.
People are risk averse so generally have few regrets except for what they didn't do. Fortune favours the brave. Take risk and just make sure you can bounce back for the next one.
◙ Let’s face it, we all have regrets.
In hindsight we would have done a lot of things differently.
The thing is not to be bogged down by them, and keep working with what we got, because one can’t go by what-ifs, one can only live by what is.
"I gotta say the thing." -- Douglas Murray
Isolation is preferable to inanity, for which one has a low tolerance. When companionship is occasionally sought, inanity must be briefly tolerated & it's a huge relief when that social interaction ends.
There are prices you pay for throwing yourself against the world. This is Douglas in his most honest and he's always honest
Can I use this clip Mr. Williamson?
1. Don't get into Fights. Be more compassionate.
2. Exercise even a little bit every day and please meditate.
3. Tell people close to you that you love them. Even if u do it under your breath.
Letters to a young contrarian.
Honest regret is leaving those behind you with a burden they do not deserve
Learn from mistakes and then move forward a changed person.
One of the more unbearable outcomes is _trying,_ but being met with only very, very limited success that doesn’t quite constitute failure but failure almost seems preferable to it . . .
"Irving is not just a fascist historian, he's a great historian of fascism" - Christopher Hitchens
I really do miss his insight and brilliance with language
@@xorealslowmd and today we get kids drooling over Jordan Peterson. Oh how far we have fallen...
@@twntwrs Jordan is also good, Hitchens was great, Jordan is very good, he's necessary, he's one of the bulwalks for free speech today, thats very valuable.
@@twntwrs well compared to the likes of Richard Dawkins Peterson sure is a step forward.
@@DaniboyBR2 Yeah, he's a "bulwalk" alright. Not only talks bull but walks it too, straight to the bank...
Great admirer of Murray here, having read several of his books, but I fail to see that what he says in this video is anything other than commonplace.
Agreed?!!! Stating the bloody obvious
5:10 Funniest story I’ve heard in ages 😀
“You're going to pay a price for every bloody thing you do and everything you don't do. You don't get to choose to not pay a price. You get to choose which poison you're going to take. That's it.” ― Jordan B. Peterson
I would say I have few regrets, but not because I always made an optimum decision or pursued what was best for me. Rather, I don’t see the value in regret. I can’t change the decision I made. I can only endeavor to make better choices in the future.
Kirkegaard's either or... It's an incredibly powerful and helpful idea.
Imagine writing a book as good as 'The War on The West'! To put yourself in a position against the grain, perhaps the insight won't fully be appreciated for many decades. To be that isolated hero figure now, not truly understood or belonging. I simply hope that Douglas knows happiness in this moment and not in dreams alone. What will be in this odd reality will be decided by forces beyond the individual. Do we dislike change or do we recognise that which is objectively wrong?
I assumed he was quite happy and content with his lot.
I sure hope that Hitchens finally accepted the truth before he passed. Otherwise, he would be sinking in regret.
So you know the mind of god? Or do you get off on your self righteous judgement of another's soul?
regret assaults our ego. Try not to live without regret, try living with a less fragile ego.
RIP Hitch
Some people get a ulcer starting a shop some people thrive. I think this might be what Christopher Hitchens was talking about. I like the Emyth book which states that when your shop is in chaos it’s the time to expand. This is not something I could bare based on my previous experience.
The incredible development of humanity to this point has been built mainly upon the huge "regrets" of countless brave people throughout history. If they had all made their decisions based upon the luxury of having zero personal regrets, (AKA "the safe option"), we would still be living in caves! Always preferable to adopt the Edith Piaf philosophy - "non, je ne regrette rien". Keep up the great work Christopher and Douglas. Just saying!
what about regretful decisions that are purely self destructive
I regret being too tolerant.
Hi
Christopher Hitchens makes me feel so unworthy. He was so brilliant. I'd feel like a fool saying, "Good morning" to him.
But if you had not said it you may have regret it
that's a small aspect of regret
Yeah Dougy boy,hitting the weights I reckon,?,
I think Hitchens more meant choosing between the many opportunities he had rather than opening a shop or not opening a shop
No free will - no regrets.
Regrets are just bad decisions that teach us to make better ones. The more reflection about them, the less we make them.
Say the dang thing.!!!!
I doubt Christopher can stomach the idea of being friends with someone like what Douglas Murray became.
Congratulations on your influence on the vulnerable Paytron Gendron, who so effectively mowed down so many potential replacements in Buffalo - only the beginning!
📡
Did he tell you he regretted supporting the evisceration of a country based on lies?
"Stupid is as stupid does"-Forest Gump
I don’t think Mr Murray quite formulates the two regrets correctly here. Surely the first regret is not to have tried, the second regret is to have tried - and perhaps succeeded - but at too great a cost to oneself. I don’t think, “I tried but I _might have_ failed,” would - under normal circumstances - be a source of regret.
Trying and not succeeding and then looking back at whether you should have tried at all is the alternative risk. If you try and succeed there is also another risk; “the only thing worse than not getting what you want is getting it.”
Hitchens was goddamn wrong on Iraq and the War on Terror
But you weren’t ever wrong about anything. We were all lied to by the people we should have been able to trust. However anyone still trusting the federal government deserves whatever comes their way.
How about the new current thing in Ukraine? How do you feel about that?
@@BassGoThump Choosing whom to believe is an important aspect of our lives. None of the people promoting the Iraq War and the war on terror had any real credibility to anyone with an objectively critical eye.
Possibly ! but like you’ve never been wrong about anything ? Your ridiculous user name for one thing