Politics & the English Language Revisited

(Yet another essay for my school paper, the Volante. Find the published version here.)

Reading Matt Hittle’s column last week, I found myself nodding in agreement. Writing and speaking well are valuable skills, not only in the business of passing exams, but in the businesses of the world outside these college walls as well. Unfortunately, they are also skills to be had at a premium among many college students. However, I believe that being able to write and speak well are important for other reasons as well.

In his seminal essay “Politics & the English Language”, George Orwell argues that sloppy writing is reflective of sloppy thinking. Although the essay was written in 1946, Orwell’s thesis remains valid today, perhaps in the current age of Twitter more than ever.

Allow me to use a metaphor familiar to many college students to illustrate Orwell’s point. When I pour a can of condensed soup into a saucepan, lurking amidst the amorphous chunks of potato and reprocessed meat lumps may be a host of preservatives and trans-fats of which I am totally unaware. If I had read the label carefully, I would have known all about the soup’s nefarious contents. But I was too lazy to do so, and now all those nasty chemicals are going into my body.

So it is with writing. Take a common word like “democracy”. Most of us would probably agree that democracy is a good thing, that our political system is democratic to one degree or another. But what precisely does democracy mean on an etymological level? On a practical level? Does it just have to do with elections? With the rule of law? Is capitalism a necessary part of democracy? Does it mean the same thing as “freedom”? If not, why not?

These are all important questions. Yet many people uncritically use democracy as a catch-all, without considering what it is they might actually be saying. And if we do not really understand our own words, how much more difficult is it for others to understand us?

That is not the end of the story though. “If thought corrupts language,” Orwell wrote in 1946, “language also corrupts thought.” To use another metaphor, if you want to become a professional accordionist, you cannot practice diligently every once in a while and muddle through the rest of the time. You must practice diligently every day. If you leave off practicing for, say, six months, when you return to the instrument, you will have to work twice as hard now to bring your skills back up to snuff.

So also language. When we allow ourselves to indulge in poor writing, we not only dull language’s usefulness in communicating with our fellow human beings; we dull our own ability to think critically and meaningfully about the concepts language expresses.

This insight was the basis of Newspeak in Orwell’s classic 1984. By trimming down English to a few hundred words and reducing complex notions to mere slogans, Big Brother used language itself to destroy people’s critical thinking skills and, thus, their capacity for resistance. By forbidding people from talking about things, the government forbade them, in a very real way, from thinking about them.

In this age of instant messaging especially, we have become our own Big Brother. Our digital conversations consist of monosyllables punched mindlessly into a cell phone keypad, if they consist of words at all. The fact of the matter is that critical analysis is not so easy when we confine ourselves to 140 characters. When even our politicians – people we expect to have thoughtful discussions, seeing as how they are running our country and all – begin to Tweet, we know something has gone drastically wrong.

By using muddy, unthoughtful language, we become muddy, unthoughtful thinkers. And when that happens, it becomes all too easy for others to use language to manipulate and dominate us. When we force ourselves to write well, on the other hand, we force ourselves to really think about what we want to say. We become not just better potential employees (although that we do become), but better citizens and better people as well.

Updating Obsolescence

(A column I wrote for the school newspaper at the University of South Dakota, the Volante. You can read the original at the Volante's website here.)

Upon returning to USD for the fall, I discovered that the library had purchased all-new computers for the Academic Commons. My first thought was, “Ooh, shiny!” However, as I began to use these new computers – my first encounter with Windows 7 – I began to have other thoughts, specifically, “How the hell do I draw a table?”

Once again, Microsoft had rearranged the toolbars for the new edition of Word, along with a myriad of other “improvements.” They did not reinvent the wheel entirely, of course. They left it in a shape familiar enough that I could still use it, but not so familiar that I could accomplish my goal without a lot of needless confusion and frustration.

This is a great example of planned obsolescence, an idea pioneered by General Motors during the 1930s. GM discovered that if they released new models every year, instead of waiting five or ten years until they had actually made substantial improvements to automotive design, they could make a lot more money. GM made so much money, in fact, that other car companies got on the planned obsolescence bandwagon, followed by the rest of the manufacturing community.

Today, planned obsolescence is an integral part of our consumer culture, from the cars we drive to the computers with which we design them. Obstinate as I am, I continue to use Microsoft Office 2003 on my laptop. However, laptop is also pre-programmed to download the latest Microsoft auto-updates, updates designed for the latest versions of program. It is at this point that the computer gets confused: “Wha-wha-what? What is this ancient software doing here? Does not compute!”

In the titanic struggle that ensues, more than one computer has been laid low (e.g., mine). In effect, you have to upgrade in order to continue using Windows, whether you (or your computer) like it or not. Obsolescence is not merely planned; it is forced.

In the JFK assassination of planned obsolescence, however, Microsoft is far from a lone gunman. For example, my iPod recently decided to go haywire on me. This would not bother me so much – sometimes technology just malfunctions, after all – if it weren’t for the fact that I bought the thing two months ago, in order to replace my last iPod, which was itself a replacement for another failed piece of hardware.

One would think that, given the technological wizards employed there (and the prices we are expected to pay for their creations), Apple could make mp3 players that function for longer than half a year. Then again, if Apple will have a new, more expensive iPhone ready to sell next quarter, why would they want the product they release today to last any longer than that?

Another, well, textbook example of the inanity of planned obsolescence is the college textbook. How much do I really gain when I have to spend a hundred dollars on the eighth edition of a research methods textbook, when the seventh edition is identical in almost every way and costs ten dollars? I have aced more than one course, all the while using the earlier, inferior, and vastly less expensive version of the book.

My complaint is with no one company, nor with any one industry. My complaint is with the culture of consumerism that undergirds the release, every two years, of yet another “upgrade” to a perfectly serviceable system. The examples above, all too familiar to the modern student, beg the question: how much is that revised introduction worth, anyway?

It makes more sense to me to wait five or ten years, until most of us have figured out how to use the wheel in the first place, until manufacturers have had time to work out the kinks and actually make meaningful, useful adjustments, before we go about reinventing it. It’s less wasteful of time, talent, and resources, not to mention less frustrating for you and me.

Then again, that’s not the point. The point is to get us, as consumers, to consume more. And consume we do indeed, as people are forever drawn by the allure of the new. It matters little whether anything is actually better than before. It’s newer; therefore, it must be better. For my part, I’m happy with Microsoft Office 2003.