Linguist, Psychologist, and author Claude Piron authored an interesting essay, which I just came across, on Psychological Aspects of the World Language Problem and of Esperanto (English Translation), which has some interesting parallels to the cause of classical liberalism.
On a fervent desire to have one’s movement go forward more quickly, substitute classical liberalism / laissez faire / libertarianism for Esperanto in this selection: “The widespread idea that Esperantists have, that their cause is not going forward fast enough, has its source in one of the most important parts of the human psyche, that is: desire. We want Esperanto to go forward, and we react to that desire like a little child; we do not want to see all of the obstacles that stand like great walls between our desires and their fulfillment. So we feel frustrated. When we feel frustrated, instead of facing the fact that we were not realistic in the first place and, because of that, that the mistake was our own, we look outside of ourselves for people to blame; those will be the outside world which does not pay attention to us or in those bunglers in the Esperanto world who fail to act effectively and purposefully.
“This is childish. When I say this I am not being critical. I am only expressing something about the way the human psyche normally works; when strong desires emerge, we tend to act like little children. Impatience because Esperanto is not making enough progress and looking around for guilty parties to blame is completely normal and natural. This is how normal adults react in most areas of their lives. We are really mature only in some aspects of our lives. In many areas, such as politics, metaphysics and human relations, we continually react like little children.”
This impatience regarding true liberalism was indeed a phase I went through as a libertarian. It took me a while to realise that a mature response, such as Mises’s proposal to build a “Liberty College” and adopting a long view, were the most sound investments for the friend of freedom. On the composition of the movement when hope wanes thin, I see here Rothbard’s description of modal libertarians of the 1970’s, and feel free to substitute Rothbard’s name for Privat’s:
“As I see it, psychologically Esperantists fall into one of two categories. On the one hand there are people who are not well adapted to communal life, who feel themselves somewhat isolated from what is currently fashionable, from society, from the prevailing ideas and ways of acting. They are individuals who have gotten used to the fact that they are different from most people or who feel themselves rejected by most people. It is not easy to take on the burden of the fundamental solitude of human existence. That is why people who feel themselves different from the majority tend to group together and, with others like themselves, form a community in which they can feel at home. They then get together and keep on telling each other how right they are and how wrong the exterior world is. This is perfectly normal and human. Esperanto gives many who are not well adapted to society a place where they can find others like themselves who are also not well adapted, a place where it is possible to find the consolations and the strengths they need in order to make life more bearable. This was especially true in the period after the first hopes for an immediate world-wide adoption of Esperanto were shown to be illusory and before the body of arguments favorable to Esperanto became sufficiently strong and factual; in other words, between the First World War and the seventies and eighties. A large percentage of the Esperantists of that period consisted of neurotics, that is, individuals who had either more emotional problems or greater emotional problems than you find in an ordinary person.
“We owe an enormous debt to those neurotics, to those individuals who suffered from crippling emotional problems, because without their efforts the language would have simply died off. It is naïve and unjust to look down on them, as some proponents of the “Manifesto of Rauma” do. In the historical circumstances in which they found themselves, those rather sectarian wearers of the Green Star were needed so that the language might develop. Normal people could not get interested in Esperanto and use it and keep it alive. If the language were not in constant use, if nobody wrote in it, if it were not utilized in correspondence, meetings, and congresses (even if these consisted mainly of eccentrics) it would not have been able to develop its linguistic and literary strengths, it would not have been able to enrich itself, it would not have been able to gradually lead to a deeper analysis of the world language problem. I am convinced that after some centuries historians will consider these people to have rendered an enormous service to mankind by keeping the language alive and developing it, even though their motives in part lay in a kind of psychological pathology.
“Besides the neurotics, the eccentrics about whom I have just spoken, Esperanto attracted people whose personalities were especially strong. People who enjoy full mental health can be part of a nonconforming group only if their personalities are so healthy that they can face the great majority basing their positions on foundations that are so clear, so well-tested, of such consequence that they can feel that they are right without being arrogant about it. Happily, many people of this sort were found in the Esperanto world from the very beginning. One of them, for example, was Edmond Privat. We owe a great debt to them too, because they helped things go forward and because, in various circles, they gradually demonstrated that Esperantists were not only a bunch of fanatic oddballs.”
There are other interesting parallels, but this blog is already too long. And, yes, I’m an Esperantist. Horrors!
