There are lots of compelling thoughts in Wade Davis’ short speech to the TED conference from 2003, exploring the complexity and fragility of the world’s cultural ecosystem. With fabulous photos, and tales of his global travels, he spins out the idea of an ”ethnosphere”:
…the sum total of all thoughts and dreams, myths, ideas, inspirations, intuitions brought into being by the human imagination since the dawn of consciousness. The ethnosphere is humanity’s great legacy. It’s a symbol of all we are and all we can be as an astonishingly inquisitive species.
Davis suggests that the ethnosphere is just as important to the earth’s health and well-being as the global natural ecosystem we call the ”biosphere,” but he claims the former is degrading far more quickly than the latter. No biologist would suggest, for example, that half of all species on earth were on the edge of extinction. And yet the number of world languages has dropped at least by half in our lifetime. Every two weeks, he claims, ”some elder dies and carries with him into the grave the last syllables of an ancient tongue.”
While some might say such attrition in the world’s cultural diversity is the inevitable result of globalization and a shrinking world, Davis makes a compelling argument that we should be concerned. The loss of language is just an indicator of the larger loss of stories, insights, metaphors, world views, and entire civilizations that threatens the richness and sustainability of our ethnosphere.
Yes, yes! Language reflects (or forms) the basic assumptions behind our thinking. My favorite tale underlining this idea is as follows:
Fifty-some years ago I heard a speaker on China. I remember exactly ONE thing he said: “In Chinese, there are almost no abstractions or generalizations. For instance, you cannot say ‘old man.’ You can say a man with a limp, or a man with a long white beard, or a man who has lived ninety years, but not just ‘old man.'”
Being me, I said, “How can they study science? Science is based on abstractions and generalizations.”
Said he, “FIRST they learn German or English. THEN they study science.”
So what are we losing when a language disappears? A unique insight into the world, that’s what.
Although I agree generally with the idea of preserving cultures and the threat of globalization to cultural diversity, I think there must be a balance between preserving the world’s cultures and letting things evolve. Evolution, both in biology and culture, necessarily means death of some things, or at least some forms of things. While it would be a tragedy if dreams, images, art, culture were eradicated by a monoculture (arguably Hollywood or english), we also have to allow human culture to continue to evolve and change without mummifying what came before.
Playing the devil’s advocate, there are also new cultures and languages being created all the time that allow for new ideas, myths, identities to be expressed. Many of these are facilitated by technology, globalization and the interaction of cultures that was never possible before.
To respond to the above post, Davis has been quick to point out in the past that no anthropologist would seek to preserve a culture like a museum specimen. It couldn’t be done anyway.
Instead, Davis presents the case that cultures and languages are disappearing not because of the natural way of things, but rather from the actions of those with more power, actions that may be coldly calculated, blindly indifferent or sadly misguided. China’s eradication policy in Tibet; the Penan of Borneo forced from their forests by timber interests; Canada’s appalling treatment of its native population, are three respective examples.
True: languages and cultures emerge, evolve and fade away. But I would argue that at no other time in our history have so many vanished so quickly. And it’s the alarming suddenness of this phenomenon, and the overwhelming sense of loss that it evokes, that is cause for concern.