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Do you want Peace and Brotherhood?

I think first and foremost we should reject the divide-and-conquer agenda set about by world leaders and learn to appreciate one another's diversity
First of all this is wishful thinking: you propose no realistic policy, you simply wish that humanity will stop being humanity.

Second of all what does it mean to "appreciate another's diversity"? Share your territory and political power with them? Under which terms? Your own liberal framework, or for example half of your liberal framework and half of the Sharia? Do you expect that you culture will prevail with a little exoticism or do you intend to destroy both of your respective cultures by blending them?
 
First of all this is wishful thinking: you propose no realistic policy, you simply wish that humanity will stop being humanity.

Second of all what does it mean to "appreciate another's diversity"? Share your territory and political power with them? Under which terms? Your own liberal framework, or for example half of your liberal framework and half of the Sharia? Do you expect that you culture will prevail with a little exoticism or do you intend to destroy both of your respective cultures by blending them?

Jesus ****ing Christ, dude. I wasn't talking about implementing Sharia law.
 
Then everyone needs to be able to communicate with each other. Well almost everyone anyway.


Humans mainly interact in three ways: cooperation, trade, or force... and variations thereof.


In only one of these is communication less vitally important... guess which one.


It is difficult enough to engage in trade or cooperation with those whose culture, customs and norms differ dramatically from what you're used to... add in an inability to communicate clearly and the difficulties became almost insurmountable.

Diplomats have first-class translators to help them understand the people they are negotiating with, including parsing nuances in the language.


You don't have that. When you find yourself in a potential conflict or misunderstanding with people who don't speak any language you know, resolving that conflict is going to be extremely difficult.... let alone feeling comradely or brotherly towards those whose words and intentions are unknowable to you.


Forcing everyone to learn all of the world's languages is not the answer. There are at least 6,500 languages currently spoken on Earth. Even if we limit it to the relatively common ones, there are 23 languages spoken by about half the world's population.


Most people have enough trouble learning ONE new language, maybe two. There's a reason people who speak 5 or more languages are rare. It is difficult for most people to learn new languages.


The answer seems obvious: everyone learn one language, the SAME language. It can be a second language, in addition to your native one, but it needs to be the one everyone else learns... then communication is far easier, trade and cooperation become much more feasible and violence less likely.


At present, English is the most common second language in the world. That's a good start, but English or something needs to be taught universally as a 2nd language if we expect to ever have even the slightest chance at this "peace and brotherhood across the planet" idea.



The current number of English speakers, both native and second language, is estimated to approach 1 Billion already. 55 nations officially teach English as a second language; English speakers can be found individually in almost any nation in some numbers. Seems like an obvious choice.

Or if you don't like English fine offer an alternative, but SOME single language needs to become the Common Tongue of Earth if we're ever going to get anywhere together as Species Humanity.

Having some facility - though not necessarily fluency (however you define that) - with multiple languages is uncommon in America but it is common in the rest of the world. I know a half dozen people who are conversant in at least 4 languages: two Europeans, one from India and three from the Middle East. In the case of one emigre from the Middle East he speaks 6: Farsi, three tribal tongues, English and Russian. I can't vouch for the others but his English is as good as mine. It helps a lot when you're exposed to it on a daily basis.

English is already the official language of aviation - all pilots are expected to be able to communicate with ATC in English. Listening to pilots communicating with NY Approach Control while enroute to/from JFK many foreign pilots seem to have, at best, a tenuous grasp of the language.

It's also the unofficial language of business. I fairly regularly attend conference calls with people in Europe and Asia and they are always conducted in English. The attendees speak with varying degrees of fluency and there are certainly misunderstandings but it works and I honestly admire the effort those folks put into trying to communicate with us.

Learning foreign languages - especially ones from radically different cultures - is hard work. It's not just learning words and grammar. You have to learn the culture and the thought processes of the people as well because those are inextricably tied to language. That's one of the reasons why I'm dismayed that we don't really demand that Americans learn - really learn - 2nd languages. It isolates us to an extent from the rest of the world as much as the oceans did back in the days of sailing ships.

It would be goodness if there was a single common language that we could speak in addition to whatever our mother tongue is. Unless we're talking some made up language like Esperanto, English or Chinese are probably the obvious choices.

Or perhaps over time the worlds more common languages will meld together. The vocabularies of many languages already contain a significant number of 'loanwords" from other languages because of the interactions between their speakers. Maybe in a couple hundred years most people will speak some weird - to us - amalgam of English, Spanish and Chinese. Or something.
 
Jesus ****ing Christ, dude. I wasn't talking about implementing Sharia law.
I didn't say you were. I asked whether "appreciating another's diversity" actually means for you living together on equal terms, which implies to sacrifice things important to you to make room for things important to them.

As for me, I do not want to sacrifice things that are important to me in my own country. This is why I oppose further immigration.
 
There's been civil wars with very similar language, as you know. North and South Korea in particular loath each other. As well, there's been a crazy number of languages spoken within a single country or allied force that managed to band together. Look at world war 2 alliances (german and japanese and italian, english and russian). Geo-political barriers, ideology, and economic interests have more to do with such conflict i suspect.

Yes, at times 'the other' gets dehumanized to the point of oppression, and language is a huge part of being different. Would we ever build a wall around canada? Mexico, being a foreign language is easier to vilify, but that's only part of it. They also just *look* more different than canadians. But i believe that's about the extent of the damage that can be done, in modern times. No one will risk war due to language barrier. The higher ups have plenty translators also

You make a sound point about the two Koreas in your first paragraph and then ignore it in your second. There have been many conflicts between Spanish speaking Latin American countries where people both look and sound much the same.
 
In other words you want to destroy all human cultures but a single one in order to instigate your little totalitarian internationalist project. And of course since people will disagree you will have to enforce it upon them with bullets to create peace.

No, thanks, I prefer sovereign nations: my country, my culture, your country, your culture. Tourists welcome, immigrants not so much. It is stable, democratic, it works, and it makes mankind more diverse, richer and interesting.



Heh. You don't know me very well or you wouldn't think I had such intentions.


If it sounded like I was advocating anything coercive, I wasn't. Also, I'm not some New World Order type, nor a World Government advocate. As I mentioned in a later post I am highly skeptical that humanity as a whole will ever achieve global peace and brotherhood etc.


But a lot of people are for it, though often in a vague sort of way without much apparent thought on the details. I wanted to discuss one of those "details", mainly the need for everyone to be able to communicate.
 
Universal translators are being created already. Pilot earpiece


If they become effective, commonly available and reasonably cheap, that would go a long way towards universal communication. Computer translations are always somewhat questionable at present, of course... they frequently miss nuances and sometimes mistranslate bits, but then again the same can be said for a less-than-highly-fluent speaker.

Technology might well be the patch to bridge this gap where all other efforts have failed.
 
1. I can't even understand the English of many Americans.
2. A universal language will not achieve world peace. I point to civil wars as evidence.
3. English is a much more difficult language than many others. I consider Spanish the simplest language.


1. I can't understand some Brits' English, either. Not to mention when a Help Line connects to India.

2. Didn't say it would. Said it might help, or be a start towards helping a little.

3. Spanish is probably one of the easier languages, but like Chinese it is more regionally concentrated and less widespread globally than English.
 
Indeed, the author's premise that conflicts come from communication difficulties is extremely naive.

Modern theories of conflicts emphasize the role of social identities as the most common cause of conflicts. At most language is one of the many identity factors, but there is also religion, skin color, geography, nationality, culture, ...

The best way to reduce conflicts is to account for human nature and minimize conflicting interactions. Partitioning people into homogeneous nations is the surest way to achieve this, along with well designed mechanisms for international relationships, especially trade.

Forcing people to live together and attempting to destroy our nations, cultures and sovereignties will only cause a century of blood baths. Immigration and the EU are highways to hell.



Again, you're making assumptions. Incorrect ones.

I never said inability to communicate was the primary driver of conflict. I said the ability to communicate was highly useful first step towards being able to resolve conflict.


Obviously it is only one of several aspects of same. I'm not trying to build a blueprint for world peace; I'm addressing ONE issue I consider a prerequisite, the ability to communicate with reasonable clarity.

I'm certainly not advocating "forcing people to live together".
 
Obviously it is only one of several aspects of same. I'm not trying to build a blueprint for world peace; I'm addressing ONE issue I consider a prerequisite, the ability to communicate with reasonable clarity.
Before I answer this, let me apologize first as it seems that you do not want this language to replace others but simply for people to be able to communicate through another (foreign for most us) language.

That being said let me play the devil's advocate: the more people will talk to each other, the more interactions they will have and the more conflicts will arise. Incidentally, I think that most of conflicts today take place between people who share the same language or are close enough to speak each other's language a lot.

And we can already see it in motion today with the rise of identitary conflicts all around the world. As the American values are promoted and challenge existing customs, ideas and societies, we see societies divide themselves between those who support those ideas and those who reject them, with a traditionalist backlash. Islamism was to some extent fueled by a rejection against western values adopted by many. So far Islamism has won in most of Muslim countries, not western models.
 
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I didn't say you were. I asked whether "appreciating another's diversity" actually means for you living together on equal terms, which implies to sacrifice things important to you to make room for things important to them.

As for me, I do not want to sacrifice things that are important to me in my own country. This is why I oppose further immigration.

I'm not talking about immigration either.
 
Then everyone needs to be able to communicate with each other. Well almost everyone anyway.


Humans mainly interact in three ways: cooperation, trade, or force... and variations thereof.


In only one of these is communication less vitally important... guess which one.


It is difficult enough to engage in trade or cooperation with those whose culture, customs and norms differ dramatically from what you're used to... add in an inability to communicate clearly and the difficulties became almost insurmountable.

Diplomats have first-class translators to help them understand the people they are negotiating with, including parsing nuances in the language.


You don't have that. When you find yourself in a potential conflict or misunderstanding with people who don't speak any language you know, resolving that conflict is going to be extremely difficult.... let alone feeling comradely or brotherly towards those whose words and intentions are unknowable to you.


Forcing everyone to learn all of the world's languages is not the answer. There are at least 6,500 languages currently spoken on Earth. Even if we limit it to the relatively common ones, there are 23 languages spoken by about half the world's population.


Most people have enough trouble learning ONE new language, maybe two. There's a reason people who speak 5 or more languages are rare. It is difficult for most people to learn new languages.


The answer seems obvious: everyone learn one language, the SAME language. It can be a second language, in addition to your native one, but it needs to be the one everyone else learns... then communication is far easier, trade and cooperation become much more feasible and violence less likely.


At present, English is the most common second language in the world. That's a good start, but English or something needs to be taught universally as a 2nd language if we expect to ever have even the slightest chance at this "peace and brotherhood across the planet" idea.



The current number of English speakers, both native and second language, is estimated to approach 1 Billion already. 55 nations officially teach English as a second language; English speakers can be found individually in almost any nation in some numbers. Seems like an obvious choice.

Or if you don't like English fine offer an alternative, but SOME single language needs to become the Common Tongue of Earth if we're ever going to get anywhere together as Species Humanity.

It is written, "there will be no peace."

Barring some catastrophic worldwide event, such as an asteroid or attack from another species, bringing every nation together in a common goal, world peace is pure folly.
 
It is written, "there will be no peace."

Barring some catastrophic worldwide event, such as an asteroid or attack from another species, bringing every nation together in a common goal, world peace is pure folly.



If you read the thread, I already said I am skeptical of the notion at best, but believe better communication would be helpful in general.
 
If you read the thread, I already said I am skeptical of the notion at best, but believe better communication would be helpful in general.

Yes, in the short term, it might.
 
Ok. Hypothetical...


You're an engineer. Shimoneroni Jebukiuki is also an engineer. You are given the project to build a Moshenator, which will require expertise in both your specialties.

Shimoneroni Jebukiuki speaks only Northern Mesophilian, which you not only don't speak but have never heard of. Nor does anyone else in the company except one guy and he's on a trip to Bermferked Quijipt for the next six weeks.


So... how you gonna build that thing?

Hire a skilled translator. I have actual working experience in this exact kind of problem which is working with others who do not speak your language at all, and having no translators or translators with very limited capacity to translate. There are days you just want to shoot all the people who cant speak your language. I got very good very quickly at Pictionary and pigeon name your language most of which I have forgotten now. You have a skilled translator and the headaches become exponentially less and related to common communication errors we all have and deal with when dealing with others that speak our language. That problem you presented, you hire a translator or wait for other dude to come back. Easier cheaper and just plain better all around.
 
Then everyone needs to be able to communicate with each other. Well almost everyone anyway.


Humans mainly interact in three ways: cooperation, trade, or force... and variations thereof.


In only one of these is communication less vitally important... guess which one.


It is difficult enough to engage in trade or cooperation with those whose culture, customs and norms differ dramatically from what you're used to... add in an inability to communicate clearly and the difficulties became almost insurmountable.

Diplomats have first-class translators to help them understand the people they are negotiating with, including parsing nuances in the language.


You don't have that. When you find yourself in a potential conflict or misunderstanding with people who don't speak any language you know, resolving that conflict is going to be extremely difficult.... let alone feeling comradely or brotherly towards those whose words and intentions are unknowable to you.


Forcing everyone to learn all of the world's languages is not the answer. There are at least 6,500 languages currently spoken on Earth. Even if we limit it to the relatively common ones, there are 23 languages spoken by about half the world's population.


Most people have enough trouble learning ONE new language, maybe two. There's a reason people who speak 5 or more languages are rare. It is difficult for most people to learn new languages.


The answer seems obvious: everyone learn one language, the SAME language. It can be a second language, in addition to your native one, but it needs to be the one everyone else learns... then communication is far easier, trade and cooperation become much more feasible and violence less likely.


At present, English is the most common second language in the world. That's a good start, but English or something needs to be taught universally as a 2nd language if we expect to ever have even the slightest chance at this "peace and brotherhood across the planet" idea.



The current number of English speakers, both native and second language, is estimated to approach 1 Billion already. 55 nations officially teach English as a second language; English speakers can be found individually in almost any nation in some numbers. Seems like an obvious choice.

Or if you don't like English fine offer an alternative, but SOME single language needs to become the Common Tongue of Earth if we're ever going to get anywhere together as Species Humanity.

All sorts of people around the world understand military force, and the language they speak has nothing to do with it. It is a very useful thing for a nation like ours to make clear that it can and will do inflict great harm on nations or groups who dare to cross it. I don't give a damn if any foreigners like the U.S. I care only about making them so sure what will happen to them it they carry out hostile acts against the U.S. that they never dare try.
 
Speaking the same language might help a lot, but as others said, wount be a grant for peace.

IMO it would be great if student exchange programmes would be supportet massively. I´s harder to hate a culture of a land where you lived for a year or some month.

English for me is really one of the easiest languages of the world - might be because it´s quite near to German, especially the northern German dialects. Only with much easier grammar.
 
All sorts of people around the world understand military force, and the language they speak has nothing to do with it. It is a very useful thing for a nation like ours to make clear that it can and will do inflict great harm on nations or groups who dare to cross it. I don't give a damn if any foreigners like the U.S. I care only about making them so sure what will happen to them it they carry out hostile acts against the U.S. that they never dare try.



Shhhh... you're trying to bring reality into a discussion about Whirled Peas. Can't have Reality in Whirled Peas, it makes the flavor too sharp and the Fluffy Bunnies won't eat it. ;)
 
Hire a skilled translator. I have actual working experience in this exact kind of problem which is working with others who do not speak your language at all, and having no translators or translators with very limited capacity to translate. There are days you just want to shoot all the people who cant speak your language. I got very good very quickly at Pictionary and pigeon name your language most of which I have forgotten now. You have a skilled translator and the headaches become exponentially less and related to common communication errors we all have and deal with when dealing with others that speak our language. That problem you presented, you hire a translator or wait for other dude to come back. Easier cheaper and just plain better all around.



Sorry, the Moshenator has to be up and running within four weeks, and translators who speak English and Northern Mesophilian are almost impossible to come by. :)

Seriously, my point being... if you both spoke a common language even as a second language, it would make things a lot easier, no?
 
Sorry, the Moshenator has to be up and running within four weeks, and translators who speak English and Northern Mesophilian are almost impossible to come by. :)

Seriously, my point being... if you both spoke a common language even as a second language, it would make things a lot easier, no?

Oh yea it would be easier. Problem being that herding people is like herding cats, getting them to go in the same general direction takes a fire and a whole hell of a lot of catnip. The problem will be picking the second language and getting people to adopt it. Mandating it wont work near as well as just letting the world shrink some more and let the end result come organically.
 
Oh yea it would be easier. Problem being that herding people is like herding cats, getting them to go in the same general direction takes a fire and a whole hell of a lot of catnip. The problem will be picking the second language and getting people to adopt it. Mandating it wont work near as well as just letting the world shrink some more and let the end result come organically.



You have a point there. To a large degree, English is already becoming the world's de-facto common tongue of trade, science and international what-not... maybe if we keep quiet and don't mention it.... :)
 
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