An ilustration of how people must try to preserve their cultures

Rod Dreher and Christopher Caldwell have excellently made a point of how difficult it is to defend a traditional, sustainable agricultural culture against industrialisation and the resultant secularisation, masculinisation and demographic decline from which only the very countries in which farming is least sustainable escape.

Their point that after winning independence from Britain, Ireland attempted to maintain a traditional culture and was up until the 1980s quite successful is extremely poignant. It does suggest that a country without the metal ores and cheap land necessary for avoiding secularisation and demographic catastrophe in an industrial age has at least some hope if its people and government are committed enough of remaining "prosperous but poor" but sustaining its culture.