Multiculturalism has little to do with learning other languages, normally a critical component of any culture and the venture to understand it. Globohomo is about an interconnected world that communicates through individuals only in “your” language, not theirs. They learn about you, in “your” world, not you about them. Not that there is anything wrong with studying another language as a hobby, but devoting yourself to it for the purpose of furthering your career or to better communicate with people from other parts of the world—exactly what you would think the global village is supposed to be about—is all a waste of your time.
You are already in the privileged position of speaking the language that every people who would like to be a part of the global village wants and is working very hard to learn—that is, to keep our discussion simple, English. In the great meeting place of our global village, you are busy enough surviving, surrounded by the recently arrived people of the planet without paying so much attention to a whole other language, never mind numerous other languages.
Multiculturalism teaches individuals to communicate in “our” language. It does not teach cultures or societies, to communicate in each other’s languages. For the most part this means Other people doing what it takes to understand “us,” whereas “we” do nothing to understand them. We can think of the backpacking American heading off to some exotic location for a whole year to “find themselves” without speaking a word of the local language. Multiculturalism teaches us to get along with people, not with cultures. The global village works because of this arrangement of ab uno disce omnes (“from one, learn all”).
After all, the global village is set up to accommodate Others, not to accommodate you and make you an expert on the infinite cultures of the world—an impossible task. Forget that learning about the world’s cultures is one of the original principles of the “cultural revolution.” If it wasn’t made to run this ignorantly, it wouldn’t work. Culture shock is meant to describe an experience you have going to another culture, faced with something alien, not something you repeatedly experience in your own society. Technology has broken down all of the barriers between us, noted McLueless (Marshall McLuhan). Yes, “we” are an “interpretive community” (whatever the heck that actually means), but only within Politico-rectopia and only using a shared language medium between individuals.
McLueless had a tumour and thought in “probes” and “mosaics,” much like everybody else in the sixties. He did at least have the decency to say, “If people don’t like my ideas, I have others.” His ideas, however, don’t go much past the importance of our watching TV, not what we are watching… whatever that really means. When barriers have been broken down, as this McLunacy philosophy states, what nitpicking do we really need to do to understand the world better anyway? A lack of diversity of opinion was good enough then, in the 1960s, and good enough now. It is enough for the Taker generation (Older White generations) to believe that we are now better informed just because everything has arrived!
In the West, the presence of foreign languages is often invisible to us. If we don’t hear them, we won’t get annoyed and label them as “foreign” in our minds. However, they are very much present, and in fact it is the “foreign” quality that now makes up the character of the new West. All languages of the world are welcome to be spoken here to make it a “colorful” place, a place where the world gets together, learns about each other, and understands each other on a one on one basis. This is, of course, provided the languages are spoken by their authentic carriers, not by you—an outcome that just wouldn’t be the real thing, and would not contribute to communication or diversity.
Not only do we not learn foreign languages but we have to be careful even saying “foreign languages.” The word “foreigner” draws a distinction between yourself and another human being. The prog wants to limit the use of this word and the thoughts that it brings up as much as possible so the average person will not know who is a foreigner and who isn’t; whether they have done the paperwork and become just like you. The prog wants to turn the Chinese Vince Li (who already has an English first name) into Will Baker even after he beheaded a Canadian on a bus. Chances are the Others already speak some English, so you will not need to speak their language. As a sidenote, in the country where our fellow citizen Mr. Baker comes from, you had better believe that if you commit a murder, the front page news will remind the citizenry for weeks on end of your non-Chinese identity.
Most of you in Politico-rectopia are only exposed to a small sample composed of those people who figured out how to get here. This group of “internationally educated professionals” are usually not the illiterate desperadoes that the prog supremacist imagines they are just because they are non-White. The globe-trotter you meet is one in a million and often not a very good cross-section of the society that they are from to begin with. Even if this person is a fairly good representation, let’s say a refugee, you are still meeting the cream. It would be the equivalent of the top wealthy 1 percent of your country—which, let’s face it, we all hate—willingly moving off and on to another country for their own advantage, and there being worshipped as a “diverse” representative of “your” whole culture and thanked for choosing their new “home.” This global citizen is a tiny self-serving elitist who is hardly like his majority fascist brethren.
Travelling to try and properly learn something about the world, you will usually meet up with the same global citizenry that you might encounter in New York. For the most part, you will not be meeting with the tens of millions the world over—let’s call them representatives of the authentic culture—who would also like to come to your country. This global elite of trans-migrants, who are capable of looking after themselves anywhere, often speaks the global language. For the most part it takes at least a few words of English to make it to Politico-rectopia, along with bags of cash, an education, and good connections. When overseas you meet the same “global” people. Maybe they are not here yet, or maybe they are sometimes there and sometimes here, or maybe they are always there, but they could be here if they wanted to. As a track to understanding a culture, partying with these people hardly cuts it. They are merely the ones who understand how the world works to “communicate” with us on “our” terms. Any attempts by yourself to actually learn something about Others is usually taken up with these sorts of people.
Anyway, understanding another culture requires living there for long periods of time and speaking their language, which are not things large numbers of Westerners are going to do. English, the language of business, serves them, not you. You may benefit financially and emotionally in the short term, but you learn nothing.
Does global awareness improve? Your talking to the transnational few doesn’t change the fact that there are all those people over there speaking a different language, which, according to many anthropologists and neurologists, might even mean thinking in a different way too. From my experience, I don’t doubt it.
Rationally, learning another language makes no sense. If you spend a decade learning language A, that doesn’t help you communicate with people who speak languages B, C, D, E, and F. “The people,” that is, the diverse population, will therefore understand you better than you understand them, because while they all speak your language, you cannot possibly speak all of theirs. And if ten million people of a particular culture are studying “your” language, what is the point to learning theirs? Let me put it very simply: it makes more sense to stick with the language of business, English, the global village’s language that everyone is using, rather than trying to learn others.
Learning language A will also not help your career. Why would a potential employer hire you when he can now hire Johnny X from foreign country X that speaks his own language a lot better than you ever will, and, to top it off, speaks English very well too? You can multiply this scenario by languages B, C, D, E, and F, ad infinitum. Remember, the global village political and business apparatchik is not working for you (in the way that the Others are working for each other and their own young), but for everyone in the world “equally,” so he is far more likely to hire Johnny X as the “International Cooperation Agent” than send you on a “fact-finding mission.” Not only because he believes Johnny X knows more, but also because it satisfies a politically correct urge to put Johnny X with country X. You can forget about those jobs advertised as “international opportunities.”
The prog’s attraction to the non-White world usually has little to do with language. After attacking for decades the “authoritarian personality” of the West he is often thrilled with the foreign employee. How many of this generation, after all, are nuts for the Japanese vehicle and the overalls that make it, and then turn in disgust at the tattooed ingrates that work at GM? The prog is “Jap happy” and, consciously or not, supportive of a great deal that he would never abide from his own people. Why hire “Whitey” and his problems—a product of the last fifty years of social disaster (which the prog made)—when you can hire a hard-working, clean–cut foreigner who speaks better English.
What is more, the prog doesn’t care to fit language Y with person Y. Why? Because race trumps everything (although this can be complicated by women), and he doesn’t understand diversity enough to actually do it even if he wanted to. Sometimes it is enough that Johnny X is a darker complexion and from a country similar to the one in the mind of the prog because, the thinking goes, he will understand the scene better, even if he doesn’t speak the language. At least he’s not White. Sending a White guy to a head office in Asia might send the wrong message about equality and understanding, especially when you can now easily send someone who is Asian—though he is from Mongolia and you are sending him to Hong Kong. The objective is to fill the position with someone who looks like they’ll understand everything better than a young White man ever could. You can’t tell me that the handlers and visionaries of Barack Obama didn’t choose him for his imagined ability to woo the non-White world, globally and domestically. It is similar to the reason why Canada puts a refugee from Somalia, the Honourable Ahmed Hussen, as its Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship. It is why when Sukarno wanted to make Borneo part of Indonesia in the 1960s, it wasn’t considered colonialism even though Borneo is not part of Indonesia. For the British, it is only Whites who can be colonial. The Brown Indonesians are free to make Brown Borneo part of their Brown country. Black, Brown, Yellow, and White is about as complicated as it gets for the Globaleftist. It is indeed still very much a visual world, despite what McLuless says, and not a world of languages and sounds.
The prog, instead of creating a better world, is just exponentially growing a tower of Babel. In his parlance, it is intentions that matter— and his heart is in the right place. Whether he shows breathtaking ignorance, egotism, the racism of lower expectations, and the hypocrisy of the chattering classes, all doesn’t really matter as long as he is “tolerant” and nice enough to come up with this master plan. He has reduced an amazingly complicated world he is incapable of handling and controlling to about the complexity of the International House of Pancakes. Now he cannot even fit himself, qualified as he may be, into the ambassadorial roles because of the color of his own skin! —actually, let me change that, he can’t fit you into those roles! His generation still had them.
The open society is a “global” opportunity for anyone as long as they speak the host language. Our ethos instructs us that everything is to the Other’s advantage. Of course they are welcome to use their own language whenever it suits them—it’s their right, according to the social engineers. As long as you can communicate with Whites, you are welcome to replace Whites.
So, remember, the “One World” village is not about you going there—that’s called a vacation—it’s about the “world-wide knowledge community” coming here. The utopia is everyone being able to speak to each other, not understand each other.
The Other, however, does understand you.
Just stick with your language. If you study Mandarin, the prog might become suspicious as to why you are not paying equal attention to Swahili.
Learn to tolerate the background noise, and do not take it as a challenge, or even a courtesy to try and understand it.