Cultures exist so that people can know how to get food and put a roof over their head, how to cure the sick, how to cope with death, how to get along with the living. Cultures are not bumper stickers. They are living, changing ways of doing all the things that have to be done in life. Every culture discards over time the things which no longer do the job, or which don’t do the job as well as things borrowed from other cultures. Each individual does this, consciously or not, on a day to day basis. Languages take words from other languages, so that Spanish as spoken in Spain includes words taken from Arabic, and Spanish as spoken in Argentina includes Italian words taken from the large Italian immigrant population there. People eat Kentucky Fried Chicken in Singapore and stay at Hilton Hotels in Cairo. This is not what some of the advocates of diversity have in mind. They seem to want to preserve cultures in their purity, almost like butterflies in amber. Decisions about change, if any, seem to be regarded as collective decisions, political decisions. But that is not how any cultures have arrived where they are today. Individuals have decided for themselves how much of the old they wish to retain, how much of the new they found useful in their own lives, in this way, cultures have enriched each other in all the great civilizations of the world. In this way, great port cities and other crossroads of culture have become centers of progress all across the planet. No culture has grown great in isolation. But a number of cultures have made historic, and even astonishing advances when their isolation was ended, usually by events beyond their control.
