GENIUS AND GOBBLEDYGOOK

We are accustomed to automatically separate masterpieces of literature from scientific gobbledygook: look, here is proper literature, and here is proper gobbledygook! But is there more to this separation than the difference between “literature” and “science,” the former being addressed to a general reader, and the latter, to a professional reader? What about the difference between good writing and bad writing?

I can be easily suspected of being completely off the wall, as surely there has to be a difference in principle here, but am I so much off the wall, at least in what pertains to the workings of genius? Technical science is a legitimate field of human endeavor, and nobody should ever confuse it with literary work. A professional dissertation never aspires to steal the laurels of Shakespeare, or Goethe, or Pushkin, etc. Yet, this is hardly a trivial and pointless discussion. For we are talking about genius, and every genius is always a pathfinder for humanity. But in order to serve in this role, he must be understood, first and foremost, and who will be able to understand him if he is speaking incomprehensibly?

In J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter saga, gobbledygook is mentioned in passim, with clever casualness, as one of the many languages of magical communication. Drawing a parallel between magic and professionalism, does genius indeed speak gobbledygook, and if he does, who would be able to understand him? Mind you, we are not talking of very complicated formulae, the use of rare symbols, and such. All these are more or less comprehensible to the professionals in the field. We are talking about incomprehensible ways of expressing one’s thoughts.

I say that the “esoteric professionalism” of gobbledygook is all too often just a lame excuse for bad writing, but the worst thing that we can do in a discussion of this nature would be to fail to separate the technicality of any professional subject matter from the literary means of bringing that subject matter to the professional or semi-professional reader. It is true that a scientist communicating with a fellow scientist does not have to decipher his professional gobbledygook for the benefit of a layman. But what if our autistic genius speaks “gobbledygook” not professionally, but precisely because of his handicap?

I insist that in such a case we should build a science of comprehension around him, as any bona fide genius deserves to be properly understood and if that is what it takes, we must learn his idiolect of gobbledygook ourselves, to benefit from his uniquely manifested inspiration.

At the same time, quod licet Jovi non licet bovi. What can and must be forgiven to a genius, must not be forgiven to someone who is deliberately complicating his writing to pass himself off as a superior thinker, who is supposedly, like God, incomprehensible to the mortals. Admittedly, it is virtually impossible for an amateur to comprehend the extreme subtleties of a technical subject matter, or even to know the difference between technical gobbledygook and sheer abracadabra, but how often do we encounter a philosopher, a music composer, a graphic artist, etc., who are trying to impress us not with their substance, but with their linguistic or artistic voodoo, thus hiding that substance, or more likely its absence, behind the impenetrable complexities of form.

But this kind of intimidation is not supposed to work with us. Unlike mathematics, or chemistry, or other hard science where in order to understand we must first qualify, by getting the necessary highly specialized education, which obviously requires years of proper schooling in the subject, the same does not apply to the other areas of human activity. One does not have to take five or eight years of university philosophy, to be a competent philosophizer. One does not have to finish a conservatory of music or an advanced art school to be an aesthete and to be able to distinguish between art and trickery.

By the same token, let us dispel the very popular myth to the effect that politics is a specialized science too, and that a layman simply cannot comprehend its technical nuts and bolts. In reality, the only real difficulty to public comprehension of politics is due to a dire deficiency of available information. Otherwise, I could imagine literally millions of laymen doing a better job at policy-making than most politicians, whose game of wheeling and dealing, pulling the strings and being pulled by the strings, is putting policy-making proper in the most uncomfortable back seat of their policy bus. To this I may add that a layman will surely make a better political commentator than most pundits in the business, unless he, too, is being paid for his opinion.

As for the scholars of politics, the political scientists, take it from me who used to be one, they are the real nowhere men, sitting in their Nowhere Land, making all their nowhere plans for nobody…

…Few are geniuses in this world, but plenty are those who want to pass themselves off as geniuses, and are using gobbledygook to that effect. They are the clever tailors to the emperor, and we the public ought to see through their manipulative cleverness, lest we end up without clothes.