Diversity 2 - comfort, power and counting

By Fred Shivvin

In part 1, I explored the word diverse which means 'various or assorted' and what sits behind the misuse of diverse to mean 'different from me'.

 

Learning to value diversity in humanity involves positive interactions with a variety of people.

 

However, some individuals never have this experience. With their limited interactions, they can grow up to think people 'like me' (according to sex, race, economic status, ability, etc.) are 'us', and anyone 'different from me' is 'them' or 'the other'. 

 

The two mind maps in part 1 explained that these individuals see their 'self' as the 'default human' and the 'other' as a lesser human.

The idea that any person could claim to be the 'default human' is patently ludicrous but it operates subconsciously, deep below our awareness (except for white supremacists and others who promote this idea).

It is far from clear-headed and it spawns unfairness and injustice in the forms of racism, sexism, ableism etc.

 

How can some people never experience a real challenge to such a distorted view of the world that they are the 'default human'?

 

From Isaac Asimov

Wordly Inspiration from Isaac Asimov, who has long inspired me to write:

Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers. 

Diversity - defeated by the default

By Fred Shivvin

Diversity (likewise inclusion) is a word I hear frequently. Diversity appears in technology, education, the arts, music, and science, sometimes accompanied by 'diversity' targets. We hear about the diversity of culture and opinion in Australia. Many companies have Diversity and Inclusion Divisions equipped with KPIs for their annual reports.

 

The driver for diversity is fairness. It entails welcoming all people, ensuring decision-making groups are representative of the broader society, and more people can participate in a greater range of life's opportunities.

But I think diversity and its adjective diverse are most often just buzz words: they make a 'buzz', but they communicate little (likewise inclusion and inclusive).

 

The word diversity should convey an important idea: diversity is a positive characteristic of societies and groups. But the word has been emptied of this idea in many uses. This has happened through a subtle linguistic 'shift' to use diverse to describe individual people, usually meaning a person from a minority group.

 

Is this just a normal change in meaning? Is it just the all too common loss of a useful word? (I've written previously about accepting that words can change meaning over time, even really useful words, see Alternate grief.)

 

Or is there something else going on here? Has this subtle linguistic 'shift' been engineered? Is this way of using the word diverse working to keep people out?

TATKOP 123

There Are Two Kinds Of People: those who know democracy is messy and those who want their leaders to keep things clean and tidy. 

See more in the TATKOP series.

Uncertain 2 - our costly false comforts

By Mike Lundy

In the first part of this post, Uncertain about these uncertain times, I explored a contradiction at the centre of our humanity: wanting to be certain in an uncertain world.

Humans do whatever we can to avoid acknowledging the inherent uncertainty in our lives: cocooning ourselves in safe enclosures, limiting our lives, or planning obsessively to control the future.

We equate 'uncertain' with 'unsafe', to which our primal reaction is to run or make things safe again.

Our response when we perceive danger is emotional and compelling. Only rarely are our actions driven by an objective or factual assessment of information. We can even feel fear of imagined dangers, even when there is no imminent threat. Being told there really is no monster under the bed does not necessarily soothe our fear, and we continue to seek reassurance. We need to feel safe.

We do the same with the inherent uncertainty of life. The driver of our actions is emotion: we want a FEELING of certainty and safety. We want to FEEL reassured that things are certain and safe.

This means we are extremely vulnerable to any information that stirs our feelings of uncertainty and insecurity, regardless of actual threats, or to people who promise us certainty and safety in the face of real, imagined and even concocted threats.

Perversely, the emotional comfort of 'false' certainty is often more compelling than any facts of certainty and safety.

Every successful politician, marketing executive, con artist and cult leader knows this. And they exploit us with this knowledge.

Part 2 looks at the implications of our need to feel things are certain, and therefore safe, and what false promises we will happily accept in order not to feel the fear of uncertainty.

Why bother?

Wordly Inspiration (source unknown): it may be a wound, it may be a hunger, it may be a question, but writing is always worth the bother.

Uncertain about these uncertain times

By Mike Lundy

We are living in uncertain times.

Many of us feel very unsettled, even in the relative safety of Australia. When we are not searching out the latest pandemic news, we are flooding social media with our struggle to find focus or positivity, or we are comforting ourselves with nostalgia on travel, books and music, getting into gardening and busy work.

I sure feel a greater sense of uncertainty than I did this time last year.

The words: 'these uncertain times' are everywhere - news stories, ministerial announcements, articles on physical and mental health, reports, and advertisements for everything from cleaning products to insurance to dating apps. Some go so far as to call our times 'an era of uncertainty'. (Here's an Australian example from 2018.) An American report published in 2004, told us to expect that 2020 would be characterised by a 'pervasive sense of insecurity' related to concerns over job security, fears around migration, terrorism and internal conflicts, and military conflicts .

No prediction of a global pandemic though, the latest source of the ubiquitous statement that we are 'living in uncertain times'.

But are 'these times' truly more uncertain than other times? 

Interestingly, Oliver Burkeman says that every era describes itself as characterised by unprecedented uncertainties and lack of stability. 

Just a few of his examples:

 In 1951, Alan Watt highlighted a contemporary 'feeling that we live in a time of unusual insecurity'… referring to the impact of the breakdown of long-established family, social, economic  and belief traditions.

Writing about the Roman Republic and Empire over three centuries is replete with political instability and social unrest and the impact on people who felt their future was disturbingly uncertain.

The idea that earlier times were more certain and stable than our own experience of life is really nostalgia, based on an imagined and idealised past.

In fact, when you're fully engrossed in living your own life, you face uncertainty all the time.

Because life is irrevocably, constantly and most certainly uncertain. 

The global pandemic reveals a fundamental truth: we humans are deeply deluded that we are fully in control of ourselves, our future, our world. We desperately want to believe we can make our lives certain, set and fixed.