Trapped in a national box*

Recently I had a chance to stay and work in one of the European capitals for a whole week. When not in the office I was hanging around with people from different regions of Europe. Due to the fact that I am living in relatively small city, which is not really multicultural in nature, my experience in this city has been opening several questions. Firstly how come that we are living in so separate worlds in Europe? In USA there are 300 million people living together in a system and cultural form which enables them to exchange ideas and communicate in other ways. Similarly this can be said for South America, India and China. But this is not the case in Europe. We are living in around 35 countries in geographical area of Europe which is in similar size as Sahara desert.

National box

I am not searching for historical or sociological reasoning which could explain special European situation of cultural segmentation. I am simply stricken by the idea that we are living in so separate worlds in our little country. Just think about it. What do you know about people living in region which is 300 or 500 km away? I don’t know for other countries, but in Slovenia you can get an impression that what is going on in our country is the most important thing in the world. We don’t know and care about worries and thoughts of people living in other countries. We often think that we are ones who are inventing our political or social situations. At least this is the impression you get from watching our media.

Universal challenges

As much it is true that people are smiling, crying, dancing and mourning everywhere in the world, the same mostly holds for other situations like in social conflicts and political issues. In a different degree but in some level everywhere in the world societies have similar problems.  Corruption “tries” to spread always when it can, politicians from everywhere are rather following business interests that interest of people who elected them. And everywhere people are trying to fight these things. If we would be open enough to first communicate and then listen and learn from one another, we could be more successful in addressing those case specific but common issues.

Language – bridge or a barrier

At one point of my week out of country I was impressed by the fact that I can freely talk and exchange ideas with people from totally different cultural and social horizons. We all can talk and cooperate because we all speak English. This is wonderful. I think everybody should learn language which can help them to start exchange their worlds with people out of their national zone. It doesn’t matter if its English or Esperanto, but I am sure that position of being locked in your own language is wasteful loss of opportunity. Maybe I am thinking this way because I am interested in ways people live and think in other countries. I can imagine that my reasoning doesn’t count for big language communities like Americas, China or India. But country with two million people should be open to hear what other 99, 97% of people on the planet has to say.

Business leads the way

I am not specifically interested in following business models as a way for society to follow. But this time it is interesting that successful organizations, mainly business oriented, are already doing what I call for. In business world English is as fundamental as wearing a suit or having an email. Business man and women know that one cannot address specific business problems if they don’t pay attention to solutions which already exist. This openness saves them money and makes them players. Why aren’t we doing the same when it comes to politics and society? Why are we national inventors when it comes to main social issues we are confronting? Are we the only one who is dealing with issues like alcoholism, depression, feeling of alienation and environmental degradation? We shouldn’t be locking ourselves in from rest of the world. The fact is that we are not alone in most of our worries about society or politics. We could open ourselves to the world more freely and try to saw what people from other countries are seeding when inventing their way of overcoming their own challenges. If more heads knows more, why stick to two million? 

* V duhu vsebine članka današnje razmišljanje poteka v jeziku, ki sega čez meje nacionalne države – angleščini.