[lbo-talk] How to Deconstruct Almost Anything

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Fri Dec 22 12:05:50 PST 2006


Jerry Monaco wrote:
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> I don't like institutions that perpetuate intellectual priesthoods.

On this point, it is no different now than it was 50 or 100 years ago. Veblen's proposed sub-title for his _The Higher Learning in America_: "A Study in Human Depravity." And 75 years ago it was admirers of Shelley who were The Priesthood, defending Western Civilization against the Barbarians at The Gate.

But further: Those institutions make possible people like you and me. Without those institutions someone like me, a bright son of a rural school teacher (already at 12 showing signs of depression) would have ended up in a dump heap someplace.

We have to live in the World we are born with, and while we have to seek to destroy the world you and I happened to be born in, we don't forward that task by kvetching about particular people who are just themselves trying tosurvive in it.

Carrol



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