4 ms·

I dislike reading this kind of article, where it feels like the author swallowed a thesaurus and is using every second word to (often unnecessarily) display how

• deleted 3y ago
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• smokefoot 3y ago
  I was about to make the same comment. Literary magazines tend to encourage this style.
• fakecontent000 3y ago
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• gumby 3y ago
  The vocabulary does not seem extraordinary to me. The only oddball words are actually neologisms of Illich’s (e.g. “pleonexia”) which are quoted and explained. I doubt someone like, say, Orwell, who complained about the stultifying use of language, would have any objection to this essay.
  • smokefoot 3y ago
    Not so much the vocabulary but the excessive use of adjectives and the overall verbosity. It took ten paragraphs for me to understand anything new about who this guy was and what his worldview was.
  • coldtea 3y ago
    Pleonexia might be used in some certain way by Illich, but it's not his neologism. Or particularly new either. It's an ancient Greek word meaning greed or literally "apetite for (ever) more", where pleon = more, coming from PIE root for the same meaning.
    • gumby 3y ago
      Thanks. Makes the point better than my misunderstanding did (or should have): words the author thought the reader might not know were called out.
  • RationalDino 3y ago
    Average reading level consensus from https://readabilityformulas.com/readability-scoring-system.php https://readabilityformulas.com/readability-scoring-system.p... is "college graduate". Most people read well below their theoretical grade level. For example about half of high school graduates read at a grade 8 level or below. There have been a number of surveys of adult proficiency in reading. For instance the 2013 PIAAC. From that, I would estimate less than 2% of people can read this. If you're in that number, great! So am I. But the complexity of the language still limits the potential audience.
    • markhahn 3y ago
      is reading level really a binary threshold? to me it's always seemed like a smooth gradient, so people have a comfort level mainly reflecting the amount of effort they're willing to put in. in that case, writing in the complex style is really selecting for audience effort. this might be desirable, and might even be efficient. I usually avoid that style, but mainly because it feels so performative.
• coldtea 3y ago
  Perhaps they're just using words that they think every person with a well-rounded (as opposed to exclusively vocational or STEM focused) education and/or interest in humanities would/should be familiar with? I mean aside from, say, pleonexia (greed) and iatrogenic (harm caused by medical intervention), I don't see anything out of the reach of an average well read person - and English isn't even my first language. I mean, what would the difficult terms be? Paternalism? Credentialism? Interlocutor? Cascading? Certitudes? (We want them to take down those "difficult" words, and then we go off lamenting how "Idiocracy was a documentary")
• itsoktocry 3y ago
  >Note how actually clever texts (probably including the source texts that this is about!) are rarely written like that. Please provide some examples that aren't STEM texts? There's a whole other world of literature out there that isn't how-to books.
• KnuthIsGod 3y ago
  Reads like pretty normal English to me, even though English is my second language.
  • draven 3y ago
    Same here, but my native language is French and words with latin or greek roots are perhaps more familiar to me ?
• liquidpele 3y ago
  Holy cow you were not kidding…. > Illich’s central contention was that persons are relational beings embedded in a matrix of the natural cosmos, convivial community with others and, as a fallen but still faithful priest, God’s grace. As the maverick thinker saw it, Western modernity rent asunder this multidimensional oneness of “Life.” The whole thing is full of this… sounds like Depak Chopra level word salad trying to hide the obvious behind confusing vocabulary.
  • bryanrasmussen 3y ago
    It might be nice if >As the maverick thinker saw it was just "As he saw it" and maybe take out the fallen but still faithful priest bit as well. but the rest of the text is pretty straightforward what is meant. Synonyms suggested - torn apart instead of rent asunder.
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  • nakedneuron 3y ago
    ChatGPT to the rescue: Illich's main argument revolved around the idea that individuals are inherently social creatures, connected to the natural world, their communities, and, in his view as a religious person, to God's grace. He believed that Western modernity disrupted this holistic interconnectedness of life.
    • glfharris 3y ago
      That's so much more readable, even as someone who's read some Illich.
      • maegul 3y ago
        I haven’t read Illich, but I like both. Obviously the original from the article is more verbose, and if one doesn’t like that or finds it difficult or distracting, I am by no means going to hold it against them and in fact sympathise. But there is a certain degree of imagery to the original text that I benefit from and enjoy. Rending asunder is quite different from “disrupt”; the generality of “relational beings embedded…” is meaningful compared to the somewhat trite “social creatures” … etc. Generally, many journalistic writers could really benefit from realising they are and probably never will be novelists or poets and that their job is to educate, edify and provide information and insight, which is often impeded by their insistence on exercising their literary rather than communication skills. But also, digging into the expressiveness one can muster with their language can work well for those willing and able to digest it when the topic or mood suits the language. Personally, I got the feeling that this article falls more in the latter than the former, though I can see the friction some would have with the style.
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• oa335 3y ago
  I disagree, I thought it was well written and clear.