Thursday, March 8, 2007

The central message of Buddhism is not "every man for himself"

At Salon.com, Tom Lutz, reporting back on the ongoing range war between writers and theorists in English Literature, notes in passing that the linguistic/analytic tools of contemporary literary criticism have been seeping into nonacademic conversation for some time now:
These days even Tucker Carlson uses "deconstruct" and George W. Bush has developed quite a fondness for "ideology."
The same point was made, in surprisingly similar fashion, in 1988:
Otto: Apes don't read philosophy.
Wanda: Yes they do, Otto, they just don't understand it.
Okay, everyone, back to your work.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

that whole series of "don't call me stupid" lines from Jamie Lee are classic. Great film. I knew immediately where the headline came from.