[Foundation-l] Klassical Chinese

Thu Sep 11 11:56:42 UTC 2008

Geni, there is one basic misconception in all your arguments. You are 
speaking about reduplication of effort and about efficiency. But it is 
not the goal of the foundation to cram the minds of all the world's 
population with as much information and knowledge as possible. We don't 
want to rear brain machines. Wikimedia has no social agenda to change 
society. Being dumb is okay. It's okay if you don't know the basic facts 
of history. It's okay if you don't know the differences between McCain 
and Obama, between Merkel and Steinmeier or between dos Santos and 
Samakuva. It's okay if you don't know any foreign languages or even your 
native language poorly. It doesn't matter. We don't want to force people 
to learn. But if people decide, they want to learn something, Wikimedia 
is there to help them. That's our goal. To provide the possibility.

Your philosophy matches the Borg philosophy. Assimilate as much species 
as possible to become as efficient as possible. Do you remember that in 
Star Trek every species has one characteristic feature or topic? The 
shortest possible description of the Borg is "Hive", of the Klingons 
"War", of the Ferengi "Commerce", of the Vulcans "Reasoning". The topic 
of the Humans is "Humanity". You are a Borg, not a Human.

Personally, I would rather die, than to live in a world speaking one 
language, subject to one legislature, all people watching the same 
movies and reading the same books. Diversity and imperfection is what 
makes life interesting. It was you, who said "Totally bi-lingal 
situations are not long term stable". That's true. Therefore don't 
enforce global bilinguality. It would inescapably end in a monocultural 
world.

When I was a child, I loved our holidays in Denmark. It was exciting. 
Foreign language, foreign mentality of the people, foreign food etc. The 
differences made it interesting. Today some things have changed since my 
childhood days. Many typical discounters of Denmark where replaced by 
international discounters, for example Aldi (for the US guys: Aldi is 
the German equivalent of Wal-Mart [Aldi is present in the US too, but 
not as well known as Wal-Mart, I guess]). You can buy typical German 
food in Denmark and typical Danish food in German discounters (well, 
most "typical" Danish food is going to be unknown even in Denmark 
itself, only "stereotypical" Danish food is sold elsewhere). Wherever 
you go, there are Burger Kings and McDonalds (in almost every single 
country in the world). Diversity is the salt in the soup of life. But 
globalization (and a "common language" is part of globalization) makes 
the soup very insipid.

Marcus Buck