(3089/898) Stay out of the bunker

2270) [W]ithdrawal and emphatic reaffirmation of local habits and customs has always been the first, most elemental and popular reaction to novelties that threaten established verities and routines of life. But throughout human history the occasional efforts made by creative minorities to borrow foreign ideas and practices and adapt them to local use have been far more important; for these efforts, when successful – and they have been successful only occasionally – allowed new skills to spread and evolve. The Moslem mastery and elaboration of Greek mathematical skill and the subsequent borrowing and further elaboration by Europeans after the thirteenth century provide a vivid example of such exchanges. The net effect of successful borrowing and adaptation was to increase human wealth and power by enlarging our niche in the ecosystem. This, in fact, is, and always has been, the central phenomenon of human history.

Retreat into a local cultural past – even when it is a reconstructed past that never existed before – can indeed sustain local morale and cohesion in time of troubles. But when the resulting bunker mentality dictates a systematic disregard of, or deliberate inattention to, the ideas and skills alien peoples and cultures have at their command, the end result is to be disastrously left behind by the rest of the world. [...]

If a nation or bloc of nations is to have long-term success, cultural continuity must somehow be combined with close attention to useful new ideas, practices, and technologies from near and far.

William H. MacNeill
"Decline of the West?"
New York Review of Books (1/9/1997)
[review of The Clash of Civilizations
and the Remaking of the World Order
by Samuel P. Huntington]