The world's twelve worst ideas

 Fred Halliday on Open Democracy rounds up some of the stupid assumptions that are likely to mess things up for us in the coming year. Here are a couple that stand out for me.

Number five: We should welcome the spread of English as a world language

It is obviously of practical benefit that there is one common, functional, language of trade, air traffic control etc, but the actual domination of English in today's world has been accompanied by a tide of cultural arrogance that is itself debasing: a downgrading and neglect of other languages and cultures across the world, the general compounding of Anglo-Saxon political and social arrogance, and the introverted collapse of interest within English-speaking countries themselves in other peoples and languages, in sum, a triumph of banality over diversity. One small but universal example: the imposition on hotel staff across the world, with all its wonderful diversity of nomenclature, of name tags denoting the bearer as "Mike", "Johnny" and "Steve".

It's been said over and over again: the fact that other peoples speak English does not mean that we can have good relations with them, without learning foreign languages. Even though I have learned Slovak the seductions of the internet mean that I've been spending far too long in a solipistic Anglo-American dream land this winter. It's time I got back to my original idea of becoming a vector for drawing alien ideas into the anglosphere.

But as an interesting note to this, my wife and I have started going to a Korean hairdresser in Zilina. She has come over with the factory managers, probably so that the ladies in the party can keep their looks up without having to learn Slovak. She doesn't speak Slovak at all and her English isn't amazing. She asks to be addressed as Jenny though. Do all Asians adopt western names for English purposes. And when  do they choose it. When they start learning or when they move abroad. I'll have to ask her. So far I've only been in once and then my hair was cut by her Slovak employee.

Number three: Diasporas have a legitimate role to play in national and international politics

The notion that emigrant or diaspora communities have a special insight into the problems of their homeland, or a special moral or political status in regard to them, is wholly unfounded. Emigrant ethnic communities play almost always a negative, backward, at once hysterical and obstructive, role in resolving the conflicts of their countries of origin: Armenians and Turks, Jews and Arabs, various strands of Irish, are prime examples on the inter-ethnic front, as are exiles in the United States in regard to resolving the problems of Cuba, or policymaking on Iran. English emigrants are less noted for any such political role, though their spasms of collective inebriation and conformist ghettoised lifestyles abroad do little to enhance the reputation of their home country.

I feel a bit like posting this to Slovensko.com but they don't take kindly to provocation there (though spasms of collective inebriation and conformist ghettoised lifestyles might entertain some people who want a new way to describe the resident anglo-troll). I must say, this does frighten me a bit about how I'll end up. I certainly am rather cut off here, spending too much time with my computer and it could well be that instead of the splendind cross-pollination of Slovak and English that I dream of, what I'll actually get is a jaundiced or rose-tinted outlook that fantasises both and understands nothing. Maybe there is a way to fly by those traps, as Stephen Daedalus thought when considering his emigration from Ireland. We'll see.

Well, I think it's a useful list that may help to clarify thought.

Reference: A 2007 warning: the world's twelve worst ideas Fred Halliday - openDemocracy