ten provocative questions

Thomas Mallon wonders aloud what today’s intellectual climate bodes for the future. Here are a few of his musings:

How can American professors learn to write about literature in language that isn’t a crude, pseudo-technical insult to the text it’s supposedly explicating?

[A]re owners of intellectual property willing to realize that longer and longer copyright terms are doing more to inhibit than promote creativity?

Are American writers, artists, and thinkers truly prepared to admit that Islamofascism is a real, and even imminent, threat to everything they are accustomed to thinking, saying, and creating?

That last one is what caught my eye on Andrew Sullivan’s blog. But this one is my personal favorite, because it addresses the question that came up after 9/11 that was never addressed honestly: why “they” hate us.

Are we also willing to admit that the universalization of English is more apparent than real? And that our general failure to know foreign languages is an act of both laziness and arrogance — one that threatens America’s legitimate claims to leadership in the world?

One reason “they” hate us is that we don’t even care enough about any of “them” to even learn their goddam languages or custums. As a nation, we are dangerously self-involved—and smug about it to boot. That has got to change.