Note how actually clever texts (probably including the source texts that this is about!) are rarely written like that.
I doubt someone like, say, Orwell, who complained about the stultifying use of language, would have any objection to this essay.
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.
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.
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")
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.
> 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.
>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.
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.
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.
ChatGPT is a remarkable achievement in machine learning, but this demonstrates exactly why it can’t be used to accurately summarize complex ideas.