Member-only story
- It is a very bad idea to leave Shakespeare up to Shakespeareans — actors or scholars; but that means the general level of culture of non-Shakespeareans needs to be much higher.
- America has the worst kind of culture: idiots and specialists; or rather, idiots who know too little and idiots who know too little.
- Culture is pragmatic, it must be for something; unfortunately, we don’t know what culture’s for — the practical purpose of reading Whitman or Dickinson or Dante has been completely lost. And what is the practical purpose? To live closer to the divine (defined however you like, as long as it’s radiant).
- We tend to talk about stupidity in terms of what people do (can’t believe they did that!) or what they say (can’t believe they said that!), but we rarely talk about stupidity in terms of what people have willfully avoided (serious culture): the stupidity of not only the average American — but nearly every American.
