Compare and contrast

So, having finally realised how little time I have left to get through at least some proportion of my Hefty Cambridge Reading List, I've started doing some reading. I foolishly thought it would be a good idea to invest in Western Political Theory in the Face of the Future by John Dunn, which I finished this morning (not very much the wiser) and which goes down as one of the most incomprehensible books I've ever read (behind Nietzche: A Very Short Introduction). While I'm offering out special prizes, a prize will also go to anyone who can decipher the following paragraph for me:

"If the civil liberties and substantive pluralism of capitalist democracies are thoroughly established, if notably untranscendent, goods, it may be proper to take a fairly sardonic line about these, indicating tartly, historically speaking where they got on and morally speaking where they get off. But if they are wholly historically contingent, in no way guaranteed, embellishments of the human political future, then the terms of trade between cultural fastidiousness and political commitment ought perhaps to shift rather sharply and the culturally exigent come to adopt a more modest tone."

A large proportion of the bloody book was like this. It was a shame, really, because I got the feeling it would have been very interesting if it wasn't like wading through treacle.

Now, the book I've just finished making notes on, Durkheim by Anthony Giddens, is another matter entirely. Ah, it was so interesting. And so very much better written. See, I think that big long words and big long sentences are a sign of bad writing rather than cleverness. Academia annoys me sometimes. Anyway, here is my favourite bit from the lovely book, to compare with the extract above:

"A democratic society is one in which the state is independent and strong enough to accomplish these tasks, but is nevertheless in close communication with the ideas of the mass of the population. A democracy is a 'political system by which the society can achieve a consciousness of itself in its purest form. The more that deliberation and reflection and a critical spirit play a considerable part in the course of public affairs, the more democratic the nation. It is the less democratic to the degree that lack of consciousness, uncharted customs, obscure sentiments and prejudices that escape enquiry, predominate.'"

So, according to Durkheim, the society we live in today is way off democratic, because public opinion is largely driven by a mass media with little or no concern for projecting the facts in an unbiased way, and seemingly every concern with perpetuating "prejudices that escape enquiry" (case in point, asylum seekers and the Daily Mail). Well, I just found that interesting. Incidentally, anyone bored enough to write me an essay comparing and contrasting those two paragraphs is free to do so. I promise to mark it and everything.

Also, sorry about the ridiculous length of my last two blog entries. Anyone who got to the end of this one deserves a prize, at any rate.