I'm a fan of precise speech, and I believe that adages, terms, and philosophies which are merely a product of unexamined in-group/out-group biases, are quite, well...boring. William Zinsser is adamant about economizing speech wherever possible and reminds us to trim from our vocabulary words that aren't "doing any work," as he says. This practice is rarely seen in modern non-fiction, but its doppelganger, minimalism, is everywhere in modern poetry, so much so that the art is indistinguishable from its former glory. But I digress.

Zinsser’s offer to both fledgling and veteran writers alike is the power of clarity which is developed by the discipline of cleaning up the language. In his book On Writing Well, Zinsser cites Orwell’s style to illustrate the urgency of communicating clearly and without using obfuscation so common among politicians. In an article written for Horizon in 1946, Orwell wrote “Our civilization is decadent and our language – so the argument runs – must inevitably share in the general collapse.” He goes on to dissect examples of problems that he believed pervaded modern English, but the most egregious sin was concealment and misdirection.

“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity,” Orwell wrote in the same article after demonstrating that pompous and unnecessarily complicated language is used by politicians to conceal the truth. Naturally, politicians are an easy target, and we are now so accustomed to this tactic that we become ecstatic when there is even a hint of plain dealing in a person’s speech. In fact, the counter-operation to post-Nixon political rhetoric has become its own brand, used by other content creators to ingratiate themselves to their “no-nonsense” consumers. Once again, we are trapped by our vices and the corruption of the language. The sword of Damocles has two edges, after all.

Moreover, we are constantly bombarded by thoughts, words, ideas, and images which do no work whatsoever except that which aggrandizes and satiates the egos of those who spread them. Anyone can look up anything and become smarter, but no one does. Like the Sorcerer's Apprentice, we are victims of servitors (algorithms) which are always running in the background, delivering dopamine to our bottomless cisterns of self-satisfaction. The piffle others create is poured upon us by broomsticks which, when cut in half, double in number and speed, drowning us in a Niagara of incoherent babel; bucket after bucket of bilge and bile from the dungeons of human narcissism.

The un-ironic purpose of the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s 1984, you may remember, was to change the raw information and communications of the nation, past and present, to corroborate the current narrative of the state, altering the past to control the present. But one should be equally wary of those people and entities who claim to be the antidote to such debasing projects. We should be skeptical of all those who claim to know the truth, and especially skeptical of those who come to deliver us from ourselves. The only person who has the power to save you from this confusion is you, and I have hope, faith even, that we can elevate each other and our language before it becomes an inescapable quagmire of untruth and bitterness.