People are Idiots. But Which People?

This is why it’s OK to want to axe-murder those relativist types who attack the Western canon and campaign for us all to study Alice Walker instead of, I dunno, Erasmus or something.

The whole reason people studied the humanities in the first place was out of duty. They inherited this from generations of staid, un-fun professors who believed unquestioningly that knowing about iambic pentameter and the Battle of Hastings was essential if you wanted to be a member of the ruling class. (In the US, replace “ruling class” with “middle class.”) They believed that all educated people needed to share a set of knowledge.

Then the 60s came, and with it student attacks on universities — including attacks on restrictive curriculum rules — and a bunch of academics who theorized that everything was relative anyway. This was lucky for the students, who pushed through reforms saying it was OK to satisfy your literature requirement with a class about Carlos Castaneda, or even that you didn’t have to take English at all.

Ultimately, this has not only allowed earnest young future Peace Corps workers to do their senior theses on Persepolis, it’s enabled know-it-all science nerds — who never understood the point of English class anyway — to get out of college without learning anything about iambic pentameter, Erasmus or any other non-motherboard-related topic. Not only that but, thanks to relativist curricula, they never learn that 1) These topics are just as important as science stuff; 2) These topics are just as difficult as science stuff.

The result?

This one person at the Battlestar Galactica wiki. He transcribed the nonsense utterances of a BSG character called a “Cylon hybrid.” And when, noting down the hybrid’s declaration that “Throughout history the nexus between man and machine has spun some of the most dramatic, compelling and entertaining fiction,” he experienced a spasm in the maimed and shivering lump of brain matter where he was supposed to keep his non-motherboard-related knowledge. And he splurted out a footnote: “This is a breakdown of the fourth wall, as it is a comment about science fiction.”

No, no, honey, a breakdown of the fourth wall is that window they pass the food through at Denny’s.

I mean, I’m no Midge Decter fan, but jeez.

… There’s also the movie Beowulf, in which Grendel sucks. Grendel sucks! This looks like a deliberate assault on the legacy of one of the few stories from the Dark Ages with the meaty immediacy to entertain … well, me, when I was forced to read it in high school. Dicks!!
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