Well, part of my job is to explain things "in terms my grandmother would understand." Corporate managers are rational in this way; they understand how obscurity tips the balance of power away from them. In fact, I advise clients to be mindful of how they treat programmers, as oftentimes managers spur programmers to make themselves indispensible by writing incomprehensible code.
I mean, it's not so much that they're out to be obscure, just that the incentive structure gradually erodes clarity, when you're constantly punished for it and rewarded for obscurity.
When something is justifiably obscure, people tend to be almost apologetic and sympathetic to the poor audience.
> They *like* despising intellectuals. They
> *enjoy* it. They get a real hoot out of it because it gives them some
> satisfcation in an often otherwise shit life. that some other people above
> them on the status ladder do too, woot! how cool. we are with the "kewl
> kidz" now. awesome. for once in our lives, we're with the kewl kidz.
Well, who do people keep voting as their favorite intellectual? Do people like him because he's contentless like a Coke commercial? Does he spout pablum?
Is he a demagogue when he claims, "I think one of the healthy things about the United States is precisely this: there's very little respect for intellectuals as such. And there shouldn't be. What's there to respect?"
> all i can see in this complaints is a
> reproduction of that transvaluation of values -- a unwitting desire to
> simply bolster its idiocy in the guise of a misguided attempt to be "for
> the people".
I don't hear "for the people" so much, but rather "for me." There are people complaining that they've understood various concepts from other fields, but certain leftists appear unreasonably obscure. How do we solve this?
> shorter bitch | lab: eat me.
But then you'd blame me for my digestion problems. :)
Tayssir