Some thoughts about Diversity as a Characteristic of a Healthy Population

Diversity not just a buzz word, but an all-pervasive reality of humanity and beyond

This post isn’t part of my ‘Meme Essays’ series, but I’m going to start with a quote meme anyway

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"Nature doesn’t just accept diversity—it survives because of it. Strip that away, and ecosystems collapse. Maybe it’s time some people stop pretending humanity works any differently."

— Paul Avellino

Diversity is a sort of buzzword, and sometimes - at least on some corners of the internet, so I suppose in certain [sub]cultures in real life too- it’s even looked at as very ‘political’, and if so then usually used in a very narrow sense. Which is a pity, because in the end diversity is just a basic fact of life, and the state of any healthy ecosystem. It’s a basic characteristic of every society, group or organisation of humans that you can think of, and that’s a good thing. For example, think of St. Paul's parable of the body parts, which doesn't apply just to the church, but to every sort of human group or organisation and to society in general:

1 Corinthians 12:15

Suppose the foot says, “I am not a hand. So I don’t belong to the body.” By saying this, it cannot stop being part of the body. 16 And suppose the ear says, “I am not an eye. So I don’t belong to the body.” By saying this, it cannot stop being part of the body. 17 If the whole body were an eye, how could it hear? If the whole body were an ear, how could it smell? 18 God has placed each part in the body just as he wanted it to be. 19 If all the parts were the same, how could there be a body? 20 As it is, there are many parts. But there is only one body.

21 The eye can’t say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” The head can’t say to the feet, “I don’t need you!” 22 In fact, it is just the opposite. The parts of the body that seem to be weaker are the ones we can’t do without.

I think it’s very clear that this metaphor applies very broadly, and not just to churches as Paul applies it here. People in a group, family, organisation, or society will complement each other, in very diverse ways, whenever they come together. That is the beauty of our diversity. And like everything, this diversity can and will pose challenges too. It’s clear that sometimes differences cause friction.

But that doesn’t change that diversity is normal and needed, for a healthy population. A completely homogeneous population would be unhealthy and a lot of roles wouldn't be filled in either, and the sort of collectivism that wants complete homogeneity is very dangerous anyway, and more rooted in theories about what humans are than in the reality of humans and being human together.

And here I am aware again that the word 'diversity' in internet lingo is often used more specifically for what Americans call 'minorities', which are then usually seen as marginalised too compared to the 'majority', which in itself not a well-defined term either. This is a paradigm that I don't really agree with, and a bit of a naive misunderstanding of democratic ideals that don’t really work that way either so I won’t waste much space on that misconception. Anyone who studied a bit of history knows that usually the majority too is marginalised and oppressed by a certain privileged and sometimes very small minority or ruling class, but that’s not for this post.

The point here is also that not just the minorities, but also the majority of the population will always be diverse too, in endless ways. And this applies to so many aspects, not just the ‘usual suspects’ of buzzword-diversity. People have different heights, eye colours, and levels of intelligence, but also different personality types and talents and preferences and views on reality and whatever as well as different religions, sexual orientations, neurotypes, languages, ideologies, cultural identities and so on. And unless that poses a danger to others and for their lives, or for the nature we live with and rely on, no form of this diversity should be seen as a problem.

And usually that problem is that people will want to erase the diversity of humanity to make everyone like themselves…

And here we see that there are 2 opposite but equally important forces at play: individualism and collectivism. Every person is important as an individual, but a society also needs to work together for the common goal of being a society and caring for all of its people, and being responsible for the nature we live with and rely on for everything, as well as our heritage and history and traditions and whatever.

(Not that we should uncritically keep every tradition handed to us, there are other factors too, but a shared history gives some responsibilities to keep the good things of it, and pass them on.)

Both the caring for each other aspect and the heritage aspect need a lot of working together, and will require a form of collectivism and cooperation evidently, but in the end the collective is there for the individual as much as the individual for the collective. You can only have a society if you work together for each other and have some common goals anyway.

Let’s not forget too it goes both ways, in the end the people aren’t there for society, society is there for all the people. All of them, no matter how different they are. Except maybe those who want to destroy society or other people around them, or the nature we have to live with and depend on like I already mentioned. But to have that society, we need all different kinds of people, and all different people need a good society to find a place in the same society together. We need people who are good with working with their hands, we need writers and musicians, we need responsible bosses, we need kind baristas, and so on.

Diversity is the life-blood of a healthy population. We need everyone, and we need to make a home for everyone, no one is more or less important than the other. And that means that we need to make place for differences. Not everyone is the same. Not everyone wants the same things. Not everyone has the same needs, and not everyone has the same goals. And that’s okay, as long as you don’t want to erase others, be it minorities or the majority. Differences of personality type, lifestyle, looks, behaviour, etc should never be a problem. No-one is the norm anyway, diversity is.

Think here of the old 'do what you want to do, unless you hurt someone' thing. People who feel triggered by differences that don't actually affect them might say they feel hurt or 'offended' just because someone isn’t like them, but their discomfort should never dictate how others live. Everyone has the right to be what they are.
Unless you actually overstep the line and do harm that is. Saying that your religion forbids my hairstyle for example and be weird about that -a silly example, but as a man with long hair I actually have heard it a few rare times in my life.

People just being different is never a legitimate reason to mistreat them, dismiss them, or anything!!!

Diversity as a reality plays out in every aspect of being human. Men and women are different for example, but also within the sexes there are extreme differences. Humans can have extremely different personality types no matter what sex they are, and the same applies to intersex or non-binary people. Take any personality type indicator, like MBTI or the Enneagram or whatever you prefer, and you will find descriptions of wildly different personalities that all exist among humans, and that also exist in both men and women.

And then there's also the neurodiversity thing. Like with ‘diversity’ in general which is sometimes only used for certain minorities -a very strange ‘us and them’ rejection of the fact that the majority is always part of diversity too- some people seem to use 'neurodiversity' solely for those people who are clearly not neurotypical (ADHD, autism, and a lot of other things), but it doesn’t make any sense at all to exclude the majority from diversity. ‘Neurotypicals’ are actually a wildly understudied group that has a lot of diversity, and can have their own pathologies as much as neurodivergent individuals, and they are as much a part of the humans neurological diversity as anyone else. But it seems that some of them are triggered by that idea. I mean as in an actual psychological trigger reaction. There seems to be a personality type that gets triggered by differences and ‘things that are not normal’ (according to their perception). This can be one of the biggest problems for diversity in a population.

While I am all for sensitivity for triggers, getting triggered by differences is quite dangerous. On the other hand they are also ever useful for totalitarian regimes for example, who want conformity, and activating the ‘triggered by differences’ part of certain personality types can be easily weaponised then.

So, to sum up: diversity is in every way a characteristic of human populations, and should be. Without diversity we get very unhealthy groups. And since diversity will always be there we don't get an actual situation 'without diversity', just a lot of people who are hiding their true selves and masking. Conformity never makes people the same, it just makes a lot of them fake and unhealthy.

The main principle here, I believe, should always be the golden rule from every side, but not in a rigid way. Treat others as you’d like to be treated, and don’t do to others what you don’t want to be done to you.

But with all that we said we should use some wisdom here, and not forget that not everyone has the same wants and needs. We should not try to force others into what we like, and respect the differences. In the end we should make space for each and every one of us to be fully themselves. Only then we have a healthy society that doesn’t miss its point!

(Golden Rule Poster via Scarboro Missions)

What do you think?

peace

Bram