The Esperanto conference all came off without a hitch. The schedule we'd arranged worked and there were few problems. I find Esperanto conferences typically a little depressing. Sometimes a lot depressing, but this one was just a little depressing. Each year there seem to be fewer esperantists and the ones that there are seem older and older. Of course, this isn't a problem with Esperanto only -- most, if not all, organizations in the US have experienced a sharp decline in participation. A year ago I received Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam that describes this trend and its effects. On the overleaf it says
A hundred years ago, at the turn of the last century, America's stock of social captical was at an ebb, reduced by urbanization, industrialization, and vast immigration that uprooted Americans from their friends, social institutions, and families, a situation similar to today's. Faced with this challence, the country righted itself.
I started reading this book, when I received it, but never finished it -- I need to do that now.
The most healthy thing about the conference (other than the walking) was an admission by Humphrey Tonkin that English is the de facto International Language which solves, for most people in the world, all of the practical issues associated with the language problem. It has been obvious to me for years that, for most people in the US, there is no "language problem" and it was hard for me to not roll my eyes when esperantists would talk about the "language problem" like it was some dire issue that people desperately needed to solve. Many esperantists have understood this, I think, but the movement hasn't. Humphrey Tonkin said what needed to be said. He finally admitted what the Esperanto movement has been afraid to say. There is no "language problem" in any practical sense for people in the US. In a moral sense, and an ethical sense, there is a real problem with a world that is forced to use the language of the dominant power -- where those in power have the advantage of language in addition to all of their other advantages. Furthermore, he provided a bit of history which offered an interesting insight. In the early 1900s there were two camps of Esperantists: the Eastern Europeans, including Zamenhof, who were deeply concerned with these ethical, moral issues (homaranismo and all that stuff) and the French, who were more concerned with practical issues. Being concerned with practical issues, they wanted to make a bunch of changes to the language -- to make it more acceptable (to the French -- in other words to make it more like French). When their changes weren't accepted, they "took their marbles and went home" -- they created the language Ido and broke away from the Esperanto movement. Humphrey suggested that one reason Ido didn't succeed (or succeeded less than Esperanto) was that it did not attract people from an ethical, moral standpoint, but solely on issues of practicality and that that wasn't enough to build a succesful community upon.
I hope we can see the Esperanto community move forward from positioning itself as Don Quixote titling at mythical "language problems" and instead become something that offers "value added" to international contacts and travel. It would be nice if Esperanto could be as respectable as, well, I was going to say "baseball", but let's aim lower and say "bowling". I'll start by reading Bowling Alone.