With 'diversity' we once again have a byword denoting a nebulous concept that has legions of half-baked reformers making a fetish of it and promoting it as a social panacea. They remind me of the Projectors in Gulliver's Travels. (In my generation's childhood the byword was 'potential'. It was not good for the quality of education.)
The first time I heard diversity used in the sense under scrutiny was from a college instructor in the 1970s who quoted President John F. Kennedy from his American University speech in 1963. Here's the complete paragraph:
"So let us not be blind to our differences, but let us also direct attention to our common interests and the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. [Emphasis added.] For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's futures. And we are all mortal."
My instructor misquoted him as saying, "We must make the world safe for diversity." But notice that Kennedy was emphasizing commonality throughout the excerpt and relegating the securing of diversity to a last-ditch role.
I've seen diversity in business project teams touted as promoting more effective problem-solving on the supposition that the various backgrounds of the team members lead to fresh points of view and approaches that might never be thought of if all its members hailed from the same country, ethnic group, etc. But Dr. Charlton's article has me asking a few questions. Is not the common grounding of the team-members more instrumental in their success than their backgrounds? It certainly would have been instrumental in the team's formation; just ask the manager who put the team together. And if it's an engineering team wouldn't all the members of necessity be grounded in mathematics and their branches of engineering? They would speak a common language, needless to say. The age of the members or the newness of their acquaintance should be factored in. Teams together for a long time may start to think alike.
Human variegation in various matters is a fact of life, to be observed, dealt with, celebrated in poetry, lamented, but not enshrined.
Diversity within an ecology creates a robust ecology that can withstand quite severe events before forcing the ecology into a chaotic state - such as occurs during an extinction event. Bringing an invasive exo-species to a relatively isolated ecology can create significant changes, as is demonstrated by what we have seen when humans bring exo-species into different ecologies and through scientific experiments.
My feeling is that some of what applies to biological diversity within isolated ecologies may apply to social diversity within countries and cultures. A healthy society can have a robust diversity within limits. Those limits have to do with people who enter a society and carry with them invasive exo-societal values that are fundamentally incompatible with those of the local society. If the values they carry and practice are aggressively pushed, immutable and incompatible, then conflict will arise which places the local society at risk.
That said: Provided integrity can be maintained at the level of a country's borders, there is no reason why exposure to some of the ideas of other peoples cannot contribute to and enrich a society. All societies change over time, but the rate of change is the most important consideration. Where a change occurs that throws previous societal norms up in the air, it is one which is dangerously disruptive or revolutionary - depending upon how you look at it. Examples include not only the effects that invasive exo-values have on a society, but also the effects that innovations bring. e.g. The birth control pill was an innovation which had tremendous effects on Western societies. The Internet is another innovation that has shaken societies and brought about unintended changes.
An ideal society probably has the following characteristics: 1) A core set of fundamental rules and values that are well suited to the sustaining of the society; 2) A level of constraint that limits the growth of and isolates the society from other societies, (i.e. like an island ecology); 3) Engages all members in useful and meaningful participation - even those with serious limitations; 4) Is able to and creates sufficient reserves to withstand most events; 5) Supports a very limited set of innovative individuals who are relatively free to research, and whose discoveries and creations must be vetted so as to not be so radical as to introduce revolutionary change to the society. (The danger of innovation is the law of unintended effect, and that makes the effects of innovation difficult to predict.) 6) Is isolated to such a degree as to inhibit contamination via incompatible and aggressive exo-societal ways of thinking and behaving.
For all practical purposes we are unable to build and maintain such a society, so these characteristics are utopian. In the aftermath of an event that destroys a massive percentage of the human population, it may be possible to create these types of societies, but only until some society that is technologically advanced and aggressive imposes itself on other societies it encounters. The problem requires boundaries that cannot be crossed.
13 October 2015 at 23:50
Bruce B. said...
Steve Sailer has written about how there are (speaking of societies not organizations) two types of diversity: external and internal. Steve points out that they, mathematically speaking, directly conflict with one another. The more internal diversity, the less external diversity. Thus, multi-cultural, multi-racial London just looks like (and this will increase in the future) any other big, multi-cultural city.
14 October 2015 at 12:03
Bruce B. said...
“I've seen diversity in business project teams touted as promoting more effective problem-solving on the supposition that the various backgrounds of the team members lead to fresh points of view and approaches that might never be thought of if all its members hailed from the same country, ethnic group, etc.”
Actually this is pretty much THE standard justification for diversity in the business world – it’s promoted by Human Resources departments and diversity offices –all companies have these now.
It’s complete hogwash. I work at a defence (I spelled it your way Bruce!) company. Having a homosexual, black, female Buddhist doesn’t help us to build better bombs.
The good thing is I see more employees questioning the rationale publically – so far without being fired or punished.
@BB - Yes, that justification is subsumed within functionality - you simply appoint the best people to do the job, insofar as you understand this and are able to do it - and there is no reason to take account of the 'diversity' categories.
14 October 2015 at 13:15
JP said...
@360,
The kind of diversity that JFK meant was ideological, and specifically that Soviet communism and American capitalism could co-exist in the same world. To state or imply he meant the "modern" kind of diversity is fundamentally dishonest.
These days, ideological diversity is of course totally impermissible. Indeed, dishonest "diversity" is used as a club to beat ideological diversity into submission (i.e., we must have a multiplicity of racially/ethnically/sexually "diverse" voices who all say the same thing and shout down any opposition to PC dogma).
14 October 2015 at 14:30
1. Diversity is never what the organization is about.
The organization is about Christianity, or education, science, military effectiveness or something like that: some function.
So a policy of diversity in-principle weakens functionality: always.
2. Diversity is a blank cheque for destruction.
Even in theory 'representativeness' is impossible because there are an open-ended number of ways in which representativeness can be demanded, and of situations in which it can be demanded.
Achieving the impossible is... impossible.
Actual real-life examples of allegedly-desirable diverse categories that 'ought' to be represented include: race (including sub-races) and skin colour (which somewhat cuts-across defined races); religion - and rival/ hostile denominations within religions, and types of no-religion; nationality and also the regions within nations; language use; immigration/ migration status; political views; age (old and young); sex - initially men and women but now now including inter sex and self-defined gender; sexual preferences between and within sexes (and there are a lot of these)...
Diversity requires first representation; then proportionate representation.
Even mere representation is impossible to attain. Simple representation of all diversity is mathematically impossible in almost all relevant situations.
But once proportionate representation rears its head - which it always does - then the mathematical impossibility of achieving proportionate representation at all significant levels and in all segments of society becomes even more obvious and less deniable. Just attempting to achieve it will inevitably be destructive.
Diversity demand representativeness, but does not limit representativeness. There are ever-more categories which are demanded representation leading onto proportionate representation. Further, diversity is continually abolishing its own definition of progress by continually introducing new categories - so the scale of 'injustice' remains fresh and urgent; justice remains ever out-of-reach.
All this is obvious; and if it wasn't obvious to dumb or naive people twenty-five years ago it is obvious now.
Therefore the proponents of diversity are deliberately and strategically destructive.
The advocates of diversity do not, not, NOT have 'good intentions' - insofar as they demand diversity for organizations and nations which have some good to their functionality - then their intentions are evil; because they are demanding the destruction of the organization by a principle which will displace its proper goals and which is impossible to achieve.
Diversity is not just a nice idea which can be abused, as most conservatives apparently suppose: it is a fundamentally wicked idea - it is an idea whose very principles are cancerously fatal.
We need to recognize the simple truth that the supposed 'ethical principle' of diversity is evil: root and branch - and not by accident, but by calculation.
Therefore, we should never acknowledge that 'diversity' is a desirable goal, we should never approve even just a little local bit of 'diversity' to be good, welcome or nice; because this is opening the door to evil, and asking it to enter.
Diversity is neither desirable, nor a goal.
**
Note
added:
Diversity
is insatiable: Diversity is Ungoliant - the primal she-spider of
Tolkien's Silmarillion.
Diversity lusts
to consume all that lives, grows and is Good. But its hunger is never assuaged,
not in the slightest degree. If we feed Diversity, it grows in strength but is
never satisfied.
Ultimately
Diversity would consume the world - and then, when nothing else was left to
eat, consume itself.
"The two main reasons why 'diversity' is a bad thing"
6 Comments -
With 'diversity' we once again have a byword denoting a nebulous concept that has legions of half-baked reformers making a fetish of it and promoting it as a social panacea. They remind me of the Projectors in Gulliver's Travels. (In my generation's childhood the byword was 'potential'. It was not good for the quality of education.)
The first time I heard diversity used in the sense under scrutiny was from a college instructor in the 1970s who quoted President John F. Kennedy from his American University speech in 1963. Here's the complete paragraph:
"So let us not be blind to our differences, but let us also direct attention to our common interests and the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. [Emphasis added.] For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's futures. And we are all mortal."
My instructor misquoted him as saying, "We must make the world safe for diversity." But notice that Kennedy was emphasizing commonality throughout the excerpt and relegating the securing of diversity to a last-ditch role.
I've seen diversity in business project teams touted as promoting more effective problem-solving on the supposition that the various backgrounds of the team members lead to fresh points of view and approaches that might never be thought of if all its members hailed from the same country, ethnic group, etc. But Dr. Charlton's article has me asking a few questions. Is not the common grounding of the team-members more instrumental in their success than their backgrounds? It certainly would have been instrumental in the team's formation; just ask the manager who put the team together. And if it's an engineering team wouldn't all the members of necessity be grounded in mathematics and their branches of engineering? They would speak a common language, needless to say. The age of the members or the newness of their acquaintance should be factored in. Teams together for a long time may start to think alike.
Human variegation in various matters is a fact of life, to be observed, dealt with, celebrated in poetry, lamented, but not enshrined.
13 October 2015 at 22:32
On Social and Ecological Diversity
Diversity within an ecology creates a robust ecology that can withstand quite severe events before forcing the ecology into a chaotic state - such as occurs during an extinction event. Bringing an invasive exo-species to a relatively isolated ecology can create significant changes, as is demonstrated by what we have seen when humans bring exo-species into different ecologies and through scientific experiments.
My feeling is that some of what applies to biological diversity within isolated ecologies may apply to social diversity within countries and cultures. A healthy society can have a robust diversity within limits. Those limits have to do with people who enter a society and carry with them invasive exo-societal values that are fundamentally incompatible with those of the local society. If the values they carry and practice are aggressively pushed, immutable and incompatible, then conflict will arise which places the local society at risk.
That said: Provided integrity can be maintained at the level of a country's borders, there is no reason why exposure to some of the ideas of other peoples cannot contribute to and enrich a society. All societies change over time, but the rate of change is the most important consideration. Where a change occurs that throws previous societal norms up in the air, it is one which is dangerously disruptive or revolutionary - depending upon how you look at it. Examples include not only the effects that invasive exo-values have on a society, but also the effects that innovations bring. e.g. The birth control pill was an innovation which had tremendous effects on Western societies. The Internet is another innovation that has shaken societies and brought about unintended changes.
An ideal society probably has the following characteristics:
1) A core set of fundamental rules and values that are well suited to the sustaining of the society;
2) A level of constraint that limits the growth of and isolates the society from other societies, (i.e. like an island ecology);
3) Engages all members in useful and meaningful participation - even those with serious limitations;
4) Is able to and creates sufficient reserves to withstand most events;
5) Supports a very limited set of innovative individuals who are relatively free to research, and whose discoveries and creations must be vetted so as to not be so radical as to introduce revolutionary change to the society. (The danger of innovation is the law of unintended effect, and that makes the effects of innovation difficult to predict.)
6) Is isolated to such a degree as to inhibit contamination via incompatible and aggressive exo-societal ways of thinking and behaving.
For all practical purposes we are unable to build and maintain such a society, so these characteristics are utopian. In the aftermath of an event that destroys a massive percentage of the human population, it may be possible to create these types of societies, but only until some society that is technologically advanced and aggressive imposes itself on other societies it encounters. The problem requires boundaries that cannot be crossed.
13 October 2015 at 23:50
Steve Sailer has written about how there are (speaking of societies not organizations) two types of diversity: external and internal. Steve points out that they, mathematically speaking, directly conflict with one another. The more internal diversity, the less external diversity. Thus, multi-cultural, multi-racial London just looks like (and this will increase in the future) any other big, multi-cultural city.
14 October 2015 at 12:03
“I've seen diversity in business project teams touted as promoting more effective problem-solving on the supposition that the various backgrounds of the team members lead to fresh points of view and approaches that might never be thought of if all its members hailed from the same country, ethnic group, etc.”
Actually this is pretty much THE standard justification for diversity in the business world – it’s promoted by Human Resources departments and diversity offices –all companies have these now.
It’s complete hogwash. I work at a defence (I spelled it your way Bruce!) company. Having a homosexual, black, female Buddhist doesn’t help us to build better bombs.
The good thing is I see more employees questioning the rationale publically – so far without being fired or punished.
14 October 2015 at 12:09
@BB - Yes, that justification is subsumed within functionality - you simply appoint the best people to do the job, insofar as you understand this and are able to do it - and there is no reason to take account of the 'diversity' categories.
14 October 2015 at 13:15
@360,
The kind of diversity that JFK meant was ideological, and specifically that Soviet communism and American capitalism could co-exist in the same world. To state or imply he meant the "modern" kind of diversity is fundamentally dishonest.
These days, ideological diversity is of course totally impermissible. Indeed, dishonest "diversity" is used as a club to beat ideological diversity into submission (i.e., we must have a multiplicity of racially/ethnically/sexually "diverse" voices who all say the same thing and shout down any opposition to PC dogma).
14 October 2015 at 14:30