Stating the Obvious

(Simplicity is the Ultimate Sophistication, by Wesley Fryer)

It would be a shame if human life was to end. If all the bloodshed, the knowledge and the struggle of generation after generation was to amount to nothing. More importantly, it would be a failure to meet the obligation we have towards other forms of life. From the countless animals and other creatures which are subject to the brutality of nature, a brutality only we are likely to uplift them from, to the higher forms or intelligence, our children to come, our extinction would consign them all to oblivion.

The extinction of humanity would be bad.

I long held that clarity is key. That riddling simple ideas and claims with layers of unnecessary explanation was a waste of time, a pain to the reader or, worst of all, a sign of postmodernism. I still believe this and I still believe that many academics, particularly Continentals, write books where sentences would do. But, there are exceptions to every rule.

    The paragraph that opens this passage has the same eventual conclusion as the sentence which follows it, yet it's meaning is far greater. The reason I believe human life is valuable rests on our ability to act as gods, to save current live from the hellish state in which it exists and to create new lives. This reason, this glimpse into my ideology is what the paragraph conveys and the sentence does not. This reason is what makes the eventual conclusion that much stronger. And it is in cases like these that brevity and simplicity can and should be sacrificed.