#676 - Politics and the English Language

The British philosopher Bernard Williams had a great phrase to capture the sort of constructive equivocation Luke is talking about: "intelligible obscurity." In his view, there is a lot to be gained by being clear about what we're unclear about, and avoiding the urge to try to analyze things when doing so would get in the way of understanding them. He used this phrase specifically when talking about moral blame, but I think it's useful in loads of contexts.

sinesynced

When I teach this essay, students sometimes get hung up on the contradictions; for instance, Orwell's glib recommendation to break the rules he sets out. In these cases, I often invite students to review the piece for the motif of *labor*, starting with the first line: "Most people who bother with the matter." At bottom, he advocates being "scrupulous" and going to the trouble of producing good writing, and condemns "readymade" phrases. I try to help students see that Orwell isn't prescribing a certain aesthetic, necessarily -- he's not saying that all good and politically sanitary writing will be concise or share any other stylistic quality, and his rules for writing are not a formula. What I try to convey is that Orwell helps us see that meaningful writing, and productive politics, requires constant work and revision.

Jackson Ayres

Have you read A Clergyman's Daughter? It contains a chapter that is clearly Orwell's attempt to mimic Joyce, and fails.

Jackson Ayres

Luke, I think you make a good point about that final scene with Chigurh: that he remains mortal, vulnerable to those forces of ill luck and random violence. This largely runs against your interpretation, but my read on that scene has always been that the collision occurs precisely because he violates his own rule of violence, chance, and choice/responsibility. He tells Kelly MacDonald's character, "I can't call it for you." Yet he kills her anyway. He committed a violent act that was unwarranted. Or he took the decision out of her hands and made it for her--and the universe corrects the overstep. Maybe that gives Chigurh too much power in the world (though McCarthy did like those characters who serve as an elemental force, usually embodying great evil) or maybe it's too neat for McCarthy's worldview and his penchant for the merciless randomness of the universe and the smallness of our existence in it. But my two cents.

Graeme Pente

I found out this George Orwell guy's real name is Eric. What else he trying to hide?

giant gorilla

That’s meaningless on its own though. Noam Chomsky and dumbfuck Rebecca Watson are in the Epstein files.

Johnny 5

I feel like Orwell would be in the Epstein files if he was around today.

Jacob

Well I must say I was deeply disappointed that at the end of the film, the Tommy-Lee Jones character doesn't sit back in his chair, clutching his coffee mug, sigh and say 'this really is no country for old men' - roll credits with 'What a Wonderful World' playing

Ciaran Colley

Orwell was making the same point you are here, unless I am misunderstanding you: his “modernized” version takes the evocative, easily scrutable passage from Ecclesiastes and replaces it with an unnecessarily long-winded paragraph of academic jargon and purple prose. In his essay, he refers to the KJV verse as good and his translation as “English of the worst sort.” That instruction manual quality was a spoof of what he saw as—and we both agree to be—bad, but fashionable, prose, that paled in comparison to the original text.

Tyler Plunkett

The only thing more destructive to language and thought than the internet is a PowerPoint presentation. https://norvig.com/Gettysburg/

George Duckson

Horseloverfat

Miguel y Nosotros

David

In undergrad I always acted too cool for Orwell because of things like this, claiming he was just “jealous of Joyce” for what he was doing with language lol

Charli Rogers