T.S. Eliot:
. . . in the relations of any two cultures there will be two opposite forces balancing each other: attraction and repulsion. Without the attraction they could not affect each other, and without the repulsion they could not survive as distinct cultures; one would absorb the other, or both would be fused into one culture. Now the zealots of world-government seem to me sometimes to assume, unconsciously, that their unity of organisation has an absolute value, and that if differences between cultures stand in the way, these must be abolished.
If these zealots are of the humanitarian type, they will assume that this process will take place naturally and painlessly: they may, without knowing it, take for granted that the final world culture will be simply and extension of that to which they belong themselves. Our Russian friends, who are more realistic, if not in the long run any more practical, are much more conscious of irreconcilability between cultures; and appear to hold the view that any culture incompatible with their own should be forcibly uprooted.
The world-planners who are both serious and humane, however, might--if we believed that their methods would succeed--be as grave a menace to culture as those who practise more violent methods. For it must follow from what I have already pleaded about the value of local cultures, that a world culture which was simply a uniform culture would be no culture at all. We should have humanity dehumanised. It would be a nightmare. But on the other hand we cannot resign the idea of a world-culture altogether. . . .
(W)e must aspire to a common world culture, which will yet not diminish the particularity of the constituent parts. And here, of course, we are finally up against religion . . . . Ultimately antagonistic religions must mean antagonistic cultures; and ultimately, religions cannot be reconciled.
T.S. Eliot, Christianity and Culture, pp. 135,136
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