Knowledge is not value-free

This isn't The New Yorker, and I'm not writing twenty page essays which flesh out all the nooks and crannies of my thought. When I posted "Linguistic diversity = poverty" I did mean to provoke, make people challenge their presuppositions, and think about what they're saying when they say something. I think knowledge of many languages is awesome. I am weak at language acquisition myself, but, as someone with an interest in Bronze Age Near Eastern history I'm obviously invested in people having some comprehension of Sumerian and Akkadian (not to mention Hittite or ancient Egyptian). And I'm not someone who has no interest in the details of ethnographic diversity. On the contrary I'm fascinated by ethnic diversity. Like many people I enjoy reading monographs and articles on obscure groups such as Yazidis (well before our national interest in Iraq) and the Saivite Chams of Vietnam. Oh, wait, I misspoke. I actually don't know many people who have my level of interest in obscure peoples and tribes and the breadth of human diversity. If you're the type of person who reads monographs on Yazidis not because it pertains to your scholarly specialty, but because you're interested in a wide range of facts and topics, and would like to have discussions with someone of similar disposition (me), contact me with your location and if I swing through town we can have coffee or something. I'm interested in meeting like minds who I can explore topics with (and here I'm not talking about someone who is a Hakka and so knows a lot about the history of the Hakka; I'm not Hakka and I know something about the Hakka and I'm not an Oirat I know something about the Oirat, and so forth). All things equal the preservation of linguistic diversity is all for the good, and not only does it enrich the lives of humanity as a whole, it enriches my life in particular because of my intellectual proclivities. But all things are not equal.