[lbo-talk] Time to Get Religion

[ravi]

At around 5/12/06 5:52 pm, Doug Henwood wrote:
> On Dec 5, 2006, at 5:42 PM, Jerry Monaco wrote:
> 
>> The point is not to deny the
>> usefulness of a notion of ideology, just to say that we don't need
>> obscure speech to talk about it, point to it, and look at how it
>> functions.
> 
> The fetish for "clear speech" is yet another ideology. It assumes that
> truth can be made easily transparent. But, as the Old Man said, "There
> is no royal road to science, and only those who do not dread the
> fatiguing climb of its steep paths have a chance of gaining its luminous
> summits."
> 

Neils Bohr said similar things about elegance, parsimony, etc. So, I see
the point, but IMHO you are over-interpereting or even misinterpreting
"clear speech". You can climb the mountain and it may be arduous etc,
but you still need to do it in baby steps. You don't get to climb it by
leaping around behind bushes (however arduous that may be) and
suggesting you climbed it anyway.

There is an alternate criticism of clear speech -- sometimes we have to
stumble around blindly before we find the path to a result, often
arriving at the result beforehand (I would suggest that this is how
children learn things -- in their use -- but I don't want to go all
Heidegger on Jerry at a point when we may actually be in agreement ;-)).

But once someone's been there, as a Manhattan socialite no less than
Sandy Pittman, Doug Henwood should be able to call upon the sherpas to
drag him up the damn hill ;-).

	--ravi