"The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink."
George Orwell, Shooting an Elephant
Especially bad in an overlay of a society having leaders who are blatant in violating their own society's standards without any shade of embarassment, not even trying to hide what they have done.
ReplyDeleteIn today's venue, every truth is an inconvenient truth and the wise hide themselves lest their integrity be discovered and stamped out by compromise.
Obfuscating ink may be the only thing to save those who hold higher standards than the standard "the end justifies the means" and "we don't care about the truth as long as we can feel good".
Elephants aren't the things being shot down today.
Wonderful quote!
ReplyDeleteEschew Obfuscation Assiduously!
ReplyDeleteOrwell is a hero of mine. I am fond of another quote of his, from 1984:
ReplyDelete‘Every new political theory, by whatever name it called itself, led back to hierarchy and regimentation.’
You can probably swap 'political theory' for religion without obfuscating things too much.