Diversity paradox

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It should not be forgotten that none of us lacks the herd instinct completely and that there is scarcely a human being who is totally devoid of the romantic spirit. But while the herd instinct of those “who want to march through life together, along the collective path, shoulder to shoulder, wool rubbing wool and the head down” (José Ortega y Gasset) — is of the animalistic order, the romantic spirit is purely human, divine. The plenitude of life so eagerly sought by the Romantic, as here conceived, is inaccessible to the animal. The terrifying diversity of the total cosmos (visible as well as invisible) has no meaning for the termite or the herdist with their limited existences in their limited buildings.

— Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, The Menace of the Herd, or Procrustes at Large

The paradox — or at any rate tension — at the heart of the diversity, equity and inclusion military-industrial complex: on one hand, pluralism, on the other “inclusivity”.

Pluralism

We value diverse, differentiated perspectives and respect and protect the varying cultural traditions which are their midwife, reinforcing minority voices and ensuring there are as many different ways to react to and deal with the unknown future.

Inclusivity

We expect all citizens to subscribe to an idiosyncratic set of moral and political values which are the end-product of a particular western neoliberal programme, which cautions against in-group formations (seeing as they exclude, by definition) even though the very cultures we seek to protect and sanctify are archetypal in-groups. That is what made them distinctive in the first place.

Equ(al)ity

Equity is the process of ensuring that practices and programs are impartial, fair and provide equal possible outcomes for every individual.

Everyone should be treated fairly and, all else being equal, be given the same opportunity and achieve the same outcome. The “E” in DEI is equity, not equality — equality would be a contradiction too far — but it still begs the question: in what way are outcomes meaningfully equal if one’s operating theory is ceteris diversibus — that all else should be different — that is, not the same?

Warning: Diversion coming up

The momentum is right now with homogeneity, as it chimes with other societal imperatives, in particular the great delamination in which our online selves become ever more homogenised — “marching through life together, along the collective path, shoulder to shoulder, wool rubbing wool and the head down” —— and (perhaps the same thing) the demands of networked scale when the imperatives of profitability require us to recast ourselves into simple, machine-readable boxes.

This is bottom-up legibility — rather than top-down categorisations which miss our informal organisation and local structure qualities, and therefore fail through ignorance — this bottom-up version we have been persuaded to do this ourselves. Top-down homogenisation failed because we reorganised ourselves to flow around the formal structures; bottom-up homogenisation succeeds because we voluntarily flow into the boxes we organise for ourselves. By changing ourselves and our own behaviour to become more legible, we make it easier for machines to categorise us.

That ChatGPT can pass the New York Bar exam is a dead giveaway that we have configured our standards to be machine-readable: we are rebasing the criteria with which we judge human competence on what machines are good at. This is MADNESS.

Back again.

Neoliberalism sanctifies diversity — places it upon a pedestal on which it cannot be interrogated or so much as parsed — while at the same time counselling homogeneity. The silent “al” in equity. It is, ultimately, entropic: once a diverse perspective is identified, it can be absorbed and assimilated (appropriated?) into a global cultural corpus in which everyone is included. There is no longer any diversity. Instead, we insist on formal markers of diversity: we banish cultural appropriation so that before the machine-readable eyes of the system we are outwardly, trivially different, whilst inwardly, categorically the same.

Encouraging ongoing, new diversity — an infinite, forward-looking, open-minded evolution of cultural perspectives, (is that what we want? Historicists might say no?) implies somehow letting people form and protect their own in-groups. Exclusivity must be allowed. It cannot be immoral. (In fact this happens a lot in other contexts: families, businesses, nations, football teams etc. Humans do this naturally.)

Are “Inclusivity” and “cultural appropriation” different ways of saying the same thing?

Now also there is no single coherent argument seeing out exactly how Fukuyama’s post-historical phase of enlightened society is meant to work, or develop. Perhaps — because one is not possible?

See also

• Diversity and inclusion
• Entropy