Why is Cultural Diversity Important?
Back on topic we go!
Why are we trying to develop a method for editing cultures that gives them a higher survival rate and distribute that method to as wide a diversity of cultural traditions as possible?
Why are we not just privately fine-tuning our internal family culture and disregarding the rest of the world? Clearly, we adore our own culture given how much we pontificate upon it; why would we intentionally create cultural competition when our culture is designed to produce a fairly large population on its own?
Suppose a group of scientists knew the world’s temperature was going to drop 50 degrees, but they only had time to genetically engineer 50 species of plants to survive in this new environment. Would it be optimal for them to genetically engineer 50 closely-related species? Of course not; these scientists would select for maximum genetic diversity as doing so yields the highest odds that something survives in this new future.
When a culture dies, you lose thousands of years of history and experiences that are unlikely to be recaptured. Someone told us it is offensive to equate South Koreans’ upcoming demographic collapse to genocide, so allow us to clarify that allowing a people to go extinct is whatever differentially makes genocide worse than mass murder.
[The immorality of letting a culture die] = [the immorality of genocide] – [the immorality of murdering an equal number of people].
There is also a selfish reason to promote cultural diversity: Being in a diverse and healthy multi-cultural ecosystem benefits our family’s culture. Every time we see some white nationalist trying to turn the United States into a white Christian ethno-cultivar nation-state, we can only shake our heads at the stupidity of the endeavor. Do they think their treasured “Western Civilization” evolved in homogeneous ecosystems? That Ancient Greece was homogeneous? That Alexander the Great’s forces were homogeneous? That Rome was homogeneous? That Medieval Europe was homogeneous? Why is their culture so weak now that it can only survive in a hermetically sealed pod?
We have heard some seriously argue that all culturally diverse empires die. This is an insane argument, given that all empires that have ever existed have died. Every one of humanity’s most productive, expansive, and culturally dominant civilizations has been diverse—from New Kingdom Egypt to the Roman Empire, Umayyad Caliphate, British Empire, Achaemenid Persian Empire, Maurya Empire, Qing Dynasty, and American Empire (we actually struggle to think of a single great empire that was culturally homogeneous at its height—maybe the Mongol Empire, but if that is the standard bearer for your goal … yikes).
Other nations have successfully become ethno-cultivar nation-states, so we know exactly how it turns out (just look at Korea or Japan). Ethnically and culturally homogenous societies have some of the lowest birth rates of any cultural ecosystem and are wildly fragile. In contrast, not only are some of the highest birth rate post-prosperity cultural ecosystems incredibly diverse (consider Israel), but when people from culturally homogeneous ecosystems move to culturally competitive ecosystems, their birth rates shoot up.[[65]](#_ftn65)
Is it so surprising that a culture unchallenged by competition would become more fragile than one constantly sharpened by it? We explore this topic in the chapter: “Immigration and Conservative Values” on page 592, but in short, if your culture is on life support, putting it in a hermetically sealed room just gives it a chance to die in peace.
Every time we hear one of these white nationalists talk on this issue, we can’t help but visualize a 150-year-old frail corpse of a man with sunken eyes in a sealed pod (basically Mr. House from Fallout New Vegas) feebly pounding his chest, proclaiming in a raspy voice how superior, strong, and virile he is. When someone reaches for the latch on his pod, he begins pathetically hyperventilating and screaming in a panic that he will die if his pod seal is broken.