The Dangers of Multi-Culturalism (a poetic essay)

Number one: That we might learn.

That we might learn to value difference, and realise in that difference that we have more in common than we don’t.
That we might fall in love with the unfamiliar, or come to respect the richness in diversity.
That we might increase our vocabularies with new words.
That we might realise that each language has things that only it can say and things that only it cannot say.
That we might discover new foods, new clothing, new music, new ways of thinking and appreciate them rather than be threatened.

Number two: That we might grow.

That we might discover that similarity is not the basis for empathy, that compassion does not need to understand a language.
That we might realise that guns and bombs and starvation and disease do not kill anonymous numbers, but that guns and bombs and starvation and disease kill children and mothers and grandparents and siblings and friends, all of whom have names.
That we might come to know their names.

Number three: That we might change.

That we might realise that cultural purity is not positive, that purity leads to stagnation and that stagnation is death.
That a society is fed from the outside.
That cultures are like watercolour painting where the light reflects from the paper through the red paint and the blue paint equally, and through the purple where they overlap.
That we might accept what is generously offered with grace and humility, rather than take what we want by force and pretend it was ours to begin with.
That we might realise that everybody has a thing they can do that is uniquely theirs and nobody else can do it as well as them.

Number four: That we might come to understand what it means to be human.

 

September 2025