In the Esperanto-speaking world: Helper, Separatist, or Antinationalist?
There three viewpoints relate to the future use and purpose of the language. Should Esperanto-speakers be…
a) Promoting the language as a neutral tool for all to use, a tool that facilitates communication among different groups… but it’s only a tool, subordinate to one’s existing culture and allegiance (this was the original idea);
b) Just enjoying the culture that has grown up among Esperanto-speakers on its own terms (including, potentially, creating our own home, however that might be defined), and forgetting about trying to implant Esperanto in other cultures or nations; or
c) Declaring that national languages and allegiances are the problem, not the solution, and that Esperantists should actively try to replace existing languages and allegiances with an equal international rule.
For individual Esperanto-speakers, the positions are seldom that clearly distinguished.
People who follow Viewpoint A look at the status of the language in the present day, note its lack of large-scale use, and conclude that, according to the founder’s original idea, the language has been a failure.
Opponents come back by saying that Esperanto wasn’t a failure; instead, it was either suppressed for political reasons (as an unauthorised channel for peer-to-peer communication, which dictators disliked) or ridiculed for psychological reasons (people couldn’t get over their emotional attachment to their mother tongues, and wouldn’t consider Esperanto with an open mind).
Others say that this debate is irrelevant and reply with Viewpoint B: a self-sustaining community has coalesced around the language in the past hundred years, and Esperantists should now be taking ourselves on our own terms, like any other cultural community of the same size and numbers.
This leads into discussion about ‘linguistic minority rights’, where some people support smaller lingustinc and cultural grouops, and oppose large languages steamrollering over smaller ones. Often they propose some sort of state support for smaller cultural groupings.
Proponents of Viewpoint C oppose this proliferation of small groupings, and say that breaking up into smaller groups is the problem, not the solution. Everyone should speak Esperanto and participate in a world-wide democracy, with equal rights for all.
At which point the proponents of Viewpoint A come back and say, goven the way the world is at the moment, that’s clearly never going to happen; we should settle for what we can get, and stop annoying the national elites by trying to replace them. And around and around it goes.
Large books have been written on this debate. As far as I can tell, it will continue indefinitely.
), but also from reading We Were Soldiers, written by a reporter present at the Battle of Ia Drang Valley early in the Vietnam War, with interviews from numerous soldiers who reported repeated problems with the M-16 (reinforcements sent to positions previously occupied by platoons which had been badly depleted in earlier attacks found themselves having to pick up rifles left by wounded or dead soldiers when their own rifles jammed).
