"You're writing a book? What kind of book?"
"Well, it's got real people in it."
"Real people? But they're made of language, aren't they?"
"Well, yes of course."
"And real people aren't made of language."
"Well, that's debatable. Some people think they are."
"They think they're creations of the words in their own heads? Lunatics. Anyway, tell me about these 'real people'."
"There's one I'm very happy with, who I think is very relevant. He's a great critical thinker of the modern age and the times we live in now."
"He sounds like a right asshole. Anyway, what of him? What are his conclusions, how does he reach them, et cetera, et cetera?"
"Well, he reaches them like everyone else of course. He reads the newspapers and watches the television."
"So he's handed a very crude jigsaw puzzle, assembles it, and then calls the resulting structure his own creation. I congratulate you on your realism. He sounds exactly like the kind of thinker who thrives in 'the times we live in now.'"
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3 comments:
I don't know of any thinkers like that, at least nobody in the public domain, who we can know for sure only watches tv and reads newspapers. We don't call such people thinkers we call them pundits.
And I hate pundits more than I hate thinkers.
Sorry about that comment. I regretted it the moment I let it go. Having a bad hair day.
It's a worthy point, Neil, but there's been an intellectual recession on for quite some time. The previous species of pundit is now a critical thinker, even a philosopher. The previous species of critical thinker is now extinct.
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