Linguistic Bolsheviks

We live in a world in which men are becoming increasingly ignorant and increasingly irrational. Our culture already presents a curious analogy to the political chaos of the Dark Ages. As the collapse of the Roman Empire shattered the Western world into thousands of petty and virtually autonomous fiefs, each with its own arbitrary laws and toll gates, so the collapse of our educational system has shattered what was once the common domain of all educated men into petty and virtually autonomous “fields of specialization,” each with its own arbitrary methodology and its academic toll gates. We may say that this is the “inevitable result of the increasing complexity of human knowledge,” just as Medieval serfs could have told themselves that feudalism was the inevitable result of an increasing complexity of human society, but such explanations are mere euphemisms that thinly disguise the loss of a common allegiance and the triumph of the barbarians.

One by one all of the basic propositions that were once self-evident and obvious in the light of common sense are being converted into dark and confused “problems” reserved for debate by “specialists” in a jargon that seems to be modeled on the thieves’ cant used by the “experts” who are looting the public schools.

RO

About the Author

Revilo Oliver

Featured Tags

We live in a world in which men are becoming increasingly ignorant and increasingly irrational. Our culture already presents a curious analogy to the political chaos of the Dark Ages. As the collapse of the Roman Empire shattered the Western world into thousands of petty and virtually autonomous fiefs, each with its own arbitrary laws and toll gates, so the collapse of our educational system has shattered what was once the common domain of all educated men into petty and virtually autonomous “fields of specialization,” each with its own arbitrary methodology and its academic toll gates. We may say that this is the “inevitable result of the increasing complexity of human knowledge,” just as Medieval serfs could have told themselves that feudalism was the inevitable result of an increasing complexity of human society, but such explanations are mere euphemisms that thinly disguise the loss of a common allegiance and the triumph of the barbarians.

One by one all of the basic propositions that were once self-evident and obvious in the light of common sense are being converted into dark and confused “problems” reserved for debate by “specialists” in a jargon that seems to be modeled on the thieves’ cant used by the “experts” who are looting the public schools.