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Re: Re Pri humaneco.
- Subject: Re: Re Pri humaneco.
- From: Steven Belknap <sbelknap@uic.edu>
- Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 18:15:02 -0500
I would suggest that the lojban/loglan schism is not a strange and terrible
abberancy. Rather it is an interesting phenomenon which should be viewed as
data being generated by the experiment that Dr. Brown began. Such schisms
are worthy of study in their own right. Humans are tribal creatures. We
live in a world in which tribal behavior is often antithetical to the goals
of the "tribe." I believe this is the case here.
Tribes like to distinguish themselves from others. One way of doing this is
through culture and language. Lojbanistanis/loglanders may find it
interesting to review the research of Muzafer Sherif, a Turkish-born
social scientist. (Sherif, M. et al. Intergroup conflict and Cooperation:
The Robbers' Cave Experiment. Norman, Oklahoma: Univesity of Oklahoma
Institute of Intergroup Relations 1961.)
In these studies, boys at a camp were divided into two groups. Simply
dividing them into groups resulted in their competing vigorously with
eachother. The members of each group expressed dislike for for members of
the other group. The two groups were then put in a situation where
cooperation would be advantageous. The members of each group then expressed
friendship towards members of the other group.
Similar observations have been made about churches, political parties, and
most other organizations. There is a tendency to schism, and once schismed,
there is a tendency to feel dislike for the members of the other group.
Some may argue that such analogies do not apply here. One party may cite
the bad behavior of some other party as justification for continued bad
feelings. The other party may also have citations at hand. I've heard the
story from members of both camps, and I'm not convinced that the nominal
issues are the real point of the dispute. These are distractions which may
obscure the origin of the dispute, and more generally the schismatic nature
of human tribes.
If members of the Loglan camp and the lojban camp are interested in healing
the schism, it might be possible to do this by picking some project of
common interest, and working together to accomplish a mutually agreeable
goal. I've suggested this before, but apparently this is unthinkable.
The entire Loglan/lojban schism is fascinating to me. It may be the most
interesting result of Dr. Brown's experiment to date. Could the gradually
drifting of languages apart from eachother be due to more than geographical
isolation? Could this be a general phenomenae due to tribal neologism? It
is interesting that human tribes, from hip hop culture to the American
Society of Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics develop jargons which
make it difficult for outsiders to understand what the tribe is saying.
Much of this jargon is unnecessary, and may actually interfere with
scientific discourse, in the case of scientific tribes.
-Steven
>Vjacxeslav' Ivanov' scripsit:
>
>> You seem to accuse me of being maybe even a racist! It's not fare
>> of you. I don't feel hate to any language or nationality, maybe
>> because I am so fond of languages. I live in the Caucasus and we
>> have here so many languages of every language family, that I don't
>> devide already languages into "human" and "not-human".
>
>I am very glad to hear it. My Esperanto is not all it could be;
>perhaps I misinterpreted your use of "humane".
>
>> Let us stop
>> the discussion of how the Lojban sounds. To tell you the truth, I
>> never heard Lojban speech. The only thing that I want to say again
>> and again, is that for me , as a young member of Lo??an society,
>> it's a very great pity, that we are in different camps now. And
>> the camps are too often military ones, uu.
>
>So say we all.
>
>> You say that Dr.Brown
>> is higly appriciated in all Lojban texts. Maybe. But why haven't
>> you appriciated him then, when your people made that split?!
>
>At that time, the Loglan Institute was claiming a copyright on
>every word of the language, and as a result, on everything published
>in it, written by whatever author. (Private conversations and
>letters were allowed by license.)
>
>I have written documentation of this claim.
>
>Lojban is and always has been in
>the public domain, as to its basic word lists, machine grammars, etc.
>and even our published grammar book has a very generous license
>allowing reproduction without payment to us.
>
>> There
>> cannot be any excuse. You could lead your negotiations till some
>> peace. And now, know it, the younger generation on both sides is
>> very angry of both sides' chiefs, who made the movement be twice
>> weak in both directions.
>
>I agree; but we have tried for a rapprochement several times with
>no success. The Institute's terms have always been the same:
>total capitulation or no discussion at all. We cannot accept this.
>
>As one who never knew Dr. Brown personally, I regret this state of
>affairs immensely. I have no resentment toward him or the Loglan
>community.
>
>--
>John Cowan cowan@ccil.org
> e'osai ko sarji la lojban.
Steven Belknap, M.D.
Assistant Professor of Clinical Pharmacology and Medicine
University of Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria