James Weinheimer wrote :
> Yet, I feel that there is--or should be--a certain
> level of dumbing down that we should not
> transgress.
Sure, pragmatically you're bound to be right. But by
whom and on what basis should that level be
determined, I'm wondering ?
Dumbing down seems to me to be in fact something
we all do need, and have needed for a long time.
Only we presumably shouldn't call it "dumbing down",
because that's not what it is -- except in an arbitrary
sense, from *our* traditional perspective, here inside
our own cozy hortus inclusus, as long as it exists.
To many -- most ? -- in the rest of the world, what
*we* do and how we do it can and probably does look
really really dumb. ( Maybe even pathetic. ) To them,
what we might call dumbing down, they would
probably call smartening up. And why not ? Who are
we to protest ? Whose point of view matters more,
and whose less ? Whence and how do we derive the
legitimization for labelling anything as dumb ?
Shouldn't we think long and hard what we mean, and
should mean, by terms like "dumb" and "smart" ?
( While always thinking all along in the background
why it is we are doing what we are doing in the first
place. )
- Laval Hunsucker
Breukelen, Nederland
Received on Fri Jun 25 2010 - 08:58:46 EDT