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I'm not sure that I enjoy the idea of communicating with millions or billions of people. That's not why I use the language I use. The incidental fact that I share a common language with certain other individuals of high status, isn't why I speak this language. Would that I could choose another language, would that be the reason to choose it? If that's true, certainly there are people with more than me, operating at higher status in other languages, so why don't I simply open doors for myself and choose to learn one of those languages? (hint: you can't just walk up to someone and kick it to them, not in any language; there are more rules to the equation, and they are neither trivial nor obvious; I mean look at how I'm disagreeing with you right now, and in your own language, no less!) The reality is that, all I really get from this language is a the house and food that keeps me going. The quantity of people I could theoretically interact with isn't a benefit, because the quality of people I could possibly interect with is much lower than the peaks and unicorns of whatever metric you might use to chart the value of social interaction in an objective manner, which, by the way, is conceptually repugnant to me. So, preserving a dying language, what's that worth? Well, in the sense of using selective breeding to artificially create stunted or distorted animals as curiosities for entertainment, yeah, it seems ethically distasteful to force A child to learn esperanto, without an endgame in mind, other than for the purpose of injecting an artificial sense of nostalgia into a custom that will never see practical use. Under the hood, the mechanics of this almost translate to wasting a child's time as investment in future emotional blackmail. So, then, to look at that idea as a corrolary to preserving and forcing an enclave to remain isolated and backwards because it's so quaint. Or perhaps because it serves as a visceral teaching tool, to demonstrate an interactive example of human existence that predates certain discoveries. What does that really mean? Does blocking access to modernity mean, if not so much (outsiders blocking said access) for the mature members of a primitive clan within an isolated tribe, then moreso it means permitting those older members to engage in what is effectively child abuse. All this transpiring as they foster a new generation of children who will grow up without refridgerators and freezers, and effectively be restricted from knowing the delight of ice cream? Ice cream, Mandrake? Children's ice cream? What could have been? What would we see, as we watch these children blossom into adults (as modern citizens of the global village), were it not for our morbid fascination with the primitive cultures of indigenous peoples? On the one hand, children raised in mud huts could certainly do without the tape worms and eye infections that leave some of them blind, malnourished and half-starved. And what of all the patently wrong misinformation of superstition and ritual? But then again, the hollow, selfish emptiness of modernity, and the auto-immune problems, endocrine disorders and psychiatric medication required to cope with the cognitive dissonance of living beneath an RFID geolocated surveillance ad tech apparatus designed by quantitative economists leaves something to be desired, so where's the goldilocks zone in all this? |
Moral relativism aside, the more civilized approach to produce an effect of nearly the same outcome as murder, is exile.
This is an option that was explored and proven successful by ancient and medieval societies across the globe. When something unforgivable and unforgettable happens, those responsible may be banished instead of executed, and in a civilization of unlimited resources, dungeon-like conditions need not be a term of excommunication.
But, within the context of a scenario like this, where the sterility of contact with the outside world is, in fact, a prerquisite to the concept at hand, the approach to handle the preservation of alien customs apart from society at large demands elaborate effort.
Beyond adopting the effort to carry out what amounts to a charade, one still needs to seek a rational basis for the effort. Why bother? Why should one tread lightly when maybe the life of a child is at stake?
The handy answer is because we can. We can have it both ways. The primitive culture can be preserved, if a channel of willful exile is opened, as an alternative to murder. And having it both ways affords the option of live and let live, which is better.
Perspective may say that this condones something akin to honor killing, as mitigated circumstances, sometimes you have to cut your losses and look at what you still have left.
It would require a carefully designed protocol, to handle the exfiltration of exiled tribal citizens that primitive clans rejected for perceived crimes, but it could be done. Is it worth the effort? I think a quantitative analyst would question how much it costs, and the answer is that it's probably quite affordable.