Tell It To The Samaritans

Rosa Brooks (she of the Obama-is-the-Messiah school) and Will Wilkinson talk about reproduction, yielding this priceless line from Wilkinson (which I am obviously taking out of context):

“You can replace immigrants with robots.”

The more serious point is that Wilkinson is not terribly concerned by the demise of this or that culture.  Okay, so we have established again that many libertarians are not concerned about cultural identity, but we knew that already.  The reason why potential demographic collapse in the West seems worrisome to non-libertarians (a.k.a., 98% of the population) is that the demise of our culture does worry us if for no other reason than that it is ours and that we want to impart it to the more than 2.1 children we are having in our desire to avoid “deplorable solipsism.”

Of course, it’s true that cultures come to an end.  It’s true that cultures change.  However, cultures seek to reproduce themselves, and the way that they do this is through the convictions of those who bear this culture that it is worth preserving and passing on to the next generation (which rather assumes that there will be a next generation to which one can pass the cultural inheritance to).  It seems to me that the habits of perpetuating cultural traditions and teaching them to the next generation on the assumption that your culture actually has some value and is worth keeping for its own sake, quite apart from any happiness it gives you, are so deeply engrained, indeed so normal and widespread throughout every traditional society, that it is difficult to regard with equanimity a rather blase and indifferent reaction to the death of our own culture.