I originally posted about the little-known conlang Babm here in the pri aliaj lingvoj forum.

This post concerns this lengthy but interesting blog entry about Babm (and Esperanto). The blog is in English, one reason why I'm posting in this forum.

Here are the last two paragraphs:

However, I must note, thirdly, that Fuishiki Okamoto did not present his newly invented language as a simple solution to such problems, but instead tries to impress the reader with his "universal" philosophy throughout the volume (and this, too, seems more like something out of 17th century Europe than it does 20th century Asia).

There's a lesson to be drawn from that last point, too: if you're trying to provide your reader with a tool, be certain that you do not first burden it with an ideology; the tool of language is one that will be plied to the making and unmaking of every ideology, and, I fear, no language will last long if it is bound to any one ideal. This seems to hamper the language of science no less than the language of religion.

Hmmm. Wasn't Esperanto, too, "burdened with an ideology"? Zamenhof first proposed something called "Hilelismo", a somewhat secularized version of the philosophy of the Jewish philosopher Hillel, followed by an even more secularized version called "Homanarismo", right?

Does the present-day "interna ideo" or "etoso" derive from those?

So ... is ideology really such a "burden"? Would Babm have been more popular without an ideology? Would Esperanto? Would Okamoto or Zamenhof have stuck with their projects without an ideology? (Schleyer thought God was dictating Volapük to him, so Roman Catholicism was the ideology driving him).

I'm thinking the opposite is true - that an ideology is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a conlang to get anywhere at all. And, even more so, for the creator to have the stick-to-itiveness to finish the project.

Babm's failure to thrive came from other faults, well-documented in the rest of the linked blog post.

Bruso:So ... is ideology really such a "burden"? Would Babm have been more popular without an ideology? Would Esperanto? Would Okamoto or Zamenhof have stuck with their projects without an ideology? (Schleyer thought God was dictating Volapük to him, so Roman Catholicism was the ideology driving him).

Well, Internet is boone and bane at onces. To highlight nowadays beside doozens of alternatives needs different handling than it was at time of Volapük and birth bloom of Esperanto. Nearly everything - including ideologies - competes each others inside (non-filtered) Internet clouds, too. Some online promoted ideologies can docking new supporter offline, some can docking search engine crawlers online only. In my opinion significant competions will be done offline (Internet) means number of participants who finally will show up at conlang events says more about state of some conlang community than number of members of Internet forums can do. Not to forget I don't believe in any finally fixed community activity (winner) state of some conlang.

Bruso:I'm thinking the opposite is true - that an ideology is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a conlang to get anywhere at all. And, even more so, for the creator to have the stick-to-itiveness to finish the project.

Naturalistic conlangs don't need some 'ideology coat' because they are intented to extract most ideal shared grammar and vocabulary to prototypes out of its living and well-practiced source languages. Of course that way naturalistic conlangs are somewhat limited to its source language 'capabilities' but due to its prototyping concept some user of naturalistic conlang can put lot of motivation out from its pool of source languages (done by regarding language culture institutes). Most big challenge to spread some naturalistic conlang could be to convince native speakers of regarding conlang source languages to use simplified dialect of their native language. Probably language purists will never use some simplified dialect of their native language if that simplified dialect looks and sounds 'babyish' in some aspects. I.e. non-reflected usage of verbs.