eduBA

Until very recently, even expressing an interest in demographic trends – let alone suggesting that a world with hardly any Greeks, Italians, Spaniards, Japanese, Germans and Russians left among us, would be dispiriting place – was frowned upon in enlightened circles where it was assumed that only right-wingers of a nationalistic bent worried about population decline in countries inhabited by people who are unwilling to have enough children to keep their own particular show on the road.

After all, we were told, the sons and daughters the Europeans and Japanese preferred not to have can be replaced by immigrants from Africa and South Asia who, as time goes by, will dutifully look after their ageing hosts by doing all those ill-paid but necessary jobs the natives find beneath their dignity. Among those who shared this sanguine view was Germany’s Angela Merkel who, to widespread applause, issued an open invitation, which was eagerly accepted, to all who wanted to come, before deciding it would be better to slow the influx for a while because it was causing her too many political problems.

The idea that in the last analysis only numbers matter overlooks the importance of culture, both in the sense anthropologists give to the word and the one preferred by those keen on what used to be called the humanities. If Germany were to be occupied almost entirely by Arabs, Africans or Pakistanis, would it still be Germany? Even if it retained its traditional name and everyone living there agreed to pay homage to Goethe, Kant and Beethoven, it would surely be a very different place. The same can be said about other parts of the world which are still in the hands of people who are on the way out.

For devout multiculturalists, individuals who insist that whatever the Europeans did over the centuries cannot be considered superior to the political, philosophical or artistic achievements of the natives of the Amazon rainforest or New Guinea because all cultures, with the possible exception of those developed by whitey, are equally valuable, it is reactionary folly to worry about the imminent demise of traditions that had lasted for thousands of years until, barely half a century ago, the heirs to them decided to call it quits. Perhaps it is in the grand scheme of things, but bad as some Europeans no doubt were when their lot were enjoying their brief moment in the sun, others have been every bit as cruel and ruthless as the worst of them, as a cursory glance at their histories makes clear.

One must also take into account the attachment some have to the languages, literatures and the like they think of as intimately theirs and which, they believe, help give meaning to their lives. Does the thought that all could melt away, or be swept aside by newcomers who find either contemptible or downright incomprehensible whatever the Europeans or Japanese did when in their naïve way they expected their respective cultures to last forever, trouble them at all? As far as most people are concerned, it evidently does not.