"He calls this the attitude of irony - not regarding ones own beliefs as fundamentally true, not taking oneself so serious, but still not collapsing into apahty or indifference."

I like this attitude. I enjoyed watching Michael Sandel's series of Harvard lectures, and my favorite part is at the very end, when he says nothing is the absolute truth, but that that fact should not be an excuse to give up discussing and debating and searching for the truth. I think too many otherwise intelligent people of our age forget the second half of that statement.