Ignorance is Strength: Climate Change, Corporate Governance, Politics, and the English Language
In influential masterpieces near the end of his life, George Orwell dilated on the negative role that obscurantist language and the denial of objective fact could have on the ability of societies to protect democracy and human freedom. His 1984 invented a world where political elites had lost any genuine belief in a cause larger […]
Leo E. Strine, Jr. is the Michael L. Wachter Distinguished Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School; Senior Fellow, Harvard Program on Corporate Governance; Of Counsel, Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz; and former Chief Justice and Chancellor, the State of Delaware. This post is based on his recent article forthcoming in the Journal of Law and Political Economy. Related research from the Program on Corporate Governance includes The Illusory Promise of Stakeholder Governance (discussed on the Forum here) and Will Corporations Deliver Value to All Stakeholders? (discussed on the Forum here) by Lucian A. Bebchuk and Roberto Tallarita.
In influential masterpieces near the end of his life, George Orwell dilated on the negative role that obscurantist language and the denial of objective fact could have on the ability of societies to protect democracy and human freedom. His 1984 invented a world where political elites had lost any genuine belief in a cause larger than themselves, and where “Power is not a means; it is an end.” In pursuing power, these elites manipulated language and the very concept of truth so that their followers would happily embrace any portrayal of reality as a matter of identification with their chosen Party, even while recognizing that the portrayal was objectively untrue.
