Well, that too. But I was specifically thinking about ignorance. Have you never heard an American taking pride in a fact that whole world speaks his language and therefore there's no need for him to learn any foreign language? I sure did. Baffles me when people are proud of their ignorance and lack of education.
That happens in Paris and London as well. It's not unique. To be fair the US is a huge country in which one language is dominant. Europe is a quilt of ancient countries with a large mix of languages. There is a great deal more need, opportunity and motivation to be a polyglot under those circumstances. If Europe was one country that spoke French, for example, and French was still the lingua franqa I'm sure there would be as many monolinguists in Europe as there are in America. The fact is that a person can get on famously in the world today, only speaking English.
That said, I learned Spanish after marrying a Spaniard. I can say learning another language has enriched my life and I would encourage all monolinguists to do the same.
You absolutely don't understand what I'm trying to say here. If an entire group of people stop caring about the survival of their group on the long term, these individuals are not actually affected by that. That's the extent of what I'm saying. What if in a century Sharia law is applied everywhere in Europe? I'll be dead. It only matters to me in the extent that I have irrational empathy towards animals according to their genetic similarity with me, even those I imagine far in the future. I'm not offended when you tell me how the world works, I know very well how the world works. I simply don't see any actual, rational motive to care about "my people" being replaced sometime in the future. The same reasoning applies to virtually anything really. My goal in life is not to be an instrument of some greater enterprise, whatever it may be. So what if everybody had the same line of reasoning? Well, obviously not everybody had that line of reasoning. It's not even a question worth asking.
What makes you think it will take a century to impose Sharia law in whatever locale you are in?
The rationale for caring about what the future is, (even though you as an individual will not be there) whether you care about human progress or not. If your judgement is that Sharia law is extemely regressive rather than progressive and you think the human condition should not get worse (even if you are dead) it is rational to promote a system that fosters human betterment and to resist a system which degrades it.
