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[Cioran]

It's okay, Cioran; I, having committed to ruining my life by majoring in Lit / Philosophy, not only tolerate, but actively enjoy rigmarole of this sort. SOME OF US MUST HOLD THE FORT.

Hall: That's a tough statement. You sound as if you are down on all academics.

Shah: Well, in the past few years I have given quite a few seminars and lectures at universities, and I have become terrified by the low level of ability. It is as if people just aren't trying. They don't read the books in their fields, don't know the workings of them, use inadequate approaches to a subject, ask ridiculous questions that a moment's thought would have enabled them to answer. If these are the cream, what is the milk like?

Hall: Are you talking about undergraduates, graduate students, or professors?

Shah: The whole lot. Recently I've been appalled at the low levels of articles in learned journals and literary weeklies. The punctuation gone to hell, full of non-sequiturs, an obvious lack of background knowledge, and so on. I went to a newspaper and looked up the equivalent articles from the 1930's. A great change has taken place. Forty years ago there were two kinds of articles: very, very good and terribly bad. There seemed nothing in-between. Now everything is slapdash and mediocre. Why are so many famous persons in hallowed institutions now so mediocre?

from http://www.katinkahesselink.net/sufi/sufi-shah.html