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“Given the shrinking of its population, it is possible that Europe, or considerable parts of it, will turn into a cultural theme park, a kind of Disneyland on a level of a certain sophistication for well-to-do visitors from China and India, something like Brugge, Venice, Versailles, Stratford-on-Avon, or Rothenburg ob der Tauber on a larger scale. Some such parks already exist; when the coal mines in the Ruhr were closed down, the Warner Brothers Movie World was opened in Dortmund. This will be a Europe of tourist guides, gondoliers, and translators: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, you are visiting the scenes of a highly developed civilization that once led the world. It gave us Shakespeare, Beethoven, the welfare state, and many other fine things…’ There will be excursions for every taste; even now there are trips in Berlin to the slums and the areas considered dangerous (‘Kreuzberg, the most colorful district: two hours’)…. [But] even if Europe’s decline is now irreversible, there is no reason that it should become a collapse.
Read the whole thing in the Chronicle Review; it’s a foretaste of his book The Last Days of Europe: Epitaph for an Old Continent. Which of Europe’s traditions and values would you like to keep alive beyond the theme parks? The architecture? Urban design? Liberté/égalité/fraternité? The literature? The university? Religious toleration? Or did you think that was already gone?
