DEI or DIE
Previously on the show I mentioned I hate music and words. I did not mention I also find everything interesting.
One such Interesting Thing is "diversity”.
In the corporate space you may hear DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) referred to. In the political space 🤮 you will hear the same being (often cluelessly?) advocated for or complained about by the one-sided both-sidists who insist they are all for "rational discourse"*.
Nummies
Think of your favourite meal, then think of your favourite bite. That bit - the bit when you sink your teeth in and get that best bite is how I feel about what diversity offers.
See, diversity is a feature of a properly functioning complex system. I like to think of it as an input - a branch that can cause a system to adapt or self-correct based on the updated perspective it receives from the r-a-n-g-e of information provided. You'll likely have encountered this many times over in your life where some problem or decision you were stumped by was resolved in consulting those with differing (diverse???????????😱) perspectives or lived experience(s).
Tree not Tram
The resolution may not have even been an externally provided "answer" so much as revealing an historically unconsidered path. It doesn't mean anyone is stupider or cleverer than the other, but rather there were actions or opportunities that resode outside of the original field of thought, steering us elsewhere.
Does any of the above stuff sound made up or reality defying in some way? I don't think so, but that's my perspective lmao.
Scurred of the Outsiderrrs
I'd hazard an explanation by way of building on ideas harvested from Iain McGilchrist's The Master & His Emissary and David Epstein's Range that aversion to diversity as a concept is a combination of:
micro-minded threat modelling - viewing unfamiliarity as a threat rather than an opportunity to evolve because there is only one way to do things and one thing to do
a homogenised understanding of reality caused by 'plowing a furrow so deep one cannot see out either side'
resulting in the dominant "logic"* being that of the dog vacantly assuring themselves the growing flames must be a feature, not a bug.
This can be applied to any complex system spanning from organisations to the goddamn ecosphere herself.
If we think it's acceptable to give only half our population opportunity then we will reach only half our potential.
-Admiral Robert Harward, USN (ret.)
If you want something to collapse, make sure it's starved of diversity.
Do you have any examples I might not have thought of where you've seen this happen? LMK.
/EOF
Lore for Today
*Anyone claiming themselves as "rational" or "logical" fail to comprehend how significantly emotions influence decision making, and therefor aren’t either of the things the profess to be
Resode is the past tense of of reside, right?
In the book Range, the concept of IQ was inadvertently unmasked as bullshitry when a remote village being studied was found to have a low IQ population. After changing the way everyone was educated the same population exhibited an increase in IQ. Essentially, they had all been programmed to think in the same stupid way so they'd test better 🫠🙄
There are so many examples of why a lack of diversity results in system failure it'll make your head come off. Economy, environment, nutrition, training, entertainment - you could probably create an infinite list
The diversity quote at the end was in closing questions on a podcast I heard the other day over at Building The Elite, which drove me to go into more detail about this concept. You can listen here. The question about his statement was regarding the progress seen in the US military regarding diversity at 00:34:31 - 'Half of Our Potential'. I'd like to hear someone call an ex-SEAL, then SEAL commander, retired Admiral who ran JSOC, commanded Polish GROM(!) and ran CENTCOM "woke". More about that another day, yessir.