Politics & Power Quote by Thurston Moore

Moore’s line catches a quiet cultural flip: Buddhism didn’t “arrive” in America so much as it got rebranded into something legible, polite, and résumé-safe. The phrase “socially recognized” is doing the heavy lifting. It hints that acceptance isn’t purely spiritual curiosity; it’s a stamp from institutions - universities, corporate wellness culture, celebrity self-help, even HR departments. Buddhism becomes a “religious philosophy,” a category Americans reserve for belief systems they want to borrow from without fully converting to. “Religion” can feel binding, communal, and demanding; “philosophy” sounds individual, portable, and intellectually flattering.

Calling it “exotic” points to an older America that treated Asian religions as foreign spectacle: incense, robes, “mysticism,” a backdrop for bohemian rebellion. Moore, coming out of the downtown art-and-noise scenes where Eastern ideas were once countercultural accessories, is alert to how that aura has faded. What used to signal outsider taste now reads as mainstream self-management. Mindfulness moves from zines to apps; meditation shifts from sanghas to boardrooms.

There’s also a musician’s skepticism here: when a practice becomes “recognized,” it risks being flattened. The subtext isn’t anti-Buddhism so much as anti-domestication - a warning that American culture has a talent for turning disruptive traditions into tasteful ambience. The line lands because it’s less a celebration of tolerance than an inventory of how acceptance often comes with translation, dilution, and a little self-congratulation.