Message-Id: <9105060155.AA26039@its.rpi.edu>
To: lojban-list@snark.thyrsus.com
Subject: (ethno?)centricity (was: Re: The culture gismu)
Date: Sun, 05 May 91 21:54:14 -0400
From: Arthur Hyun <cbmvax!uunet!rpi.edu!ash>
Status: RO

Folk--
  IMO, there is one thing clear:  the importance of concept, be
it what is a "major" (and thus deserving of a gismu) language,
culture, chemical element, or *whatever* is strictly relative to
whatever culture or subculture you happen to be a member of.
If Einsteinium is your fave element, and the subject of your
life's research, you damn well want it a gismu.  If you happen
to be the sole survivor of a race, it too, in your mind, is worthy
of a gismu.
  The point is that if anyone wishes to maintain the pretense of
lojban being "culturally neutral", then *every culture* is going
to have to be considered the same.  This is clear since whoever
has to judge what is "important" or less so WILL have a bias.
Therefore, either give up trying to claim "neutrality" or treat
them all the same.  That is either 1) give everything their own
gismu or 2) require le'avla of the lot.
  Mind you, this is true of not only cultures and languages.  Who
is to say that any one concept is worthy or not of it's own predicate?
Who is the qualified objective judge when all of us are born into and
raised with our own cultural, linguistic, aestheitic, and conceptual
biases?
  If lojban does not claim to be "culturally neutral", then I fear that
there is no argument here.  All that needs to be said is that lojban
is angled towards a specific culture, and one culture/language/whatever
is relatively unimportant to that culture and is therefore unqualfied 
for gismu-hood.  It is totally arbitrary.
  Either way the subject is unarguable.
							cheers,
							arthur