Wednesday, February 11, 2004
To Obtain Equality Among Men, Should We Eliminate Diversity?
"Here labeled as a lunatic, sequestered and content,
There ignored and defeated by the government,
There's an oriented public whose magnetic force will pull,
But away from the potential of the individual,
Against the grain, that's where I'll stay,
Swimming upstream, I maintain against the grain,
The flow is getting stronger with small increments of time
And eddies of new ideas are increasingly hard to find,
You need all that the other has, it's your right to seize the day
But in all your acquisitions you will soon be swept away..." ~ 'Against The Grain' - Bad Religion
That one is a toughie. On the one hand, you would have complete and total Equality, but on the other hand, you would lack Diversity.
Diversity differs from Individuality, in that one can look and act like the popular majority does but still retain one's own individual thought processes. Diversity is more of a mental state of mind, in that when you conform to popular belief, go with the grain, and refuse to run perpendicular to the mainstream, you lose your sense of Diversity and instead become a part of the established norm. Much like a drone, at least in the social sense.
Diversity represents an individual's own personal beliefs, of which were inherited and/or tutored upon them by their parents and/or their peers during the developmental stages of their life. And while there is a strong relation between a person's Diversity and Individuality, what sets them apart is that while a person's Individuality is their own niche of perception in regards to the world and/or society around them, their Diversity is what drives them to be different and to think for themselves, and what ultimately sustains that drive, allowing them to persist upon their own separate path away from a herd mentality.
Let's take, for example, Nazi Germany. It was, by far and away, the perfect plan to achieve purity; to purge the Human Race of all tainted biological oddities and/or undesirable traits. The dream of the Perfect Human and a Master Race wasn't a dream that was created by Adolf Hitler. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) fancied a race of "Supermen" that would ultimately rise above the squalor of everyday humanity and be as different from humans as humans are from apes. The problem with Hitler's philosophy (and let's be frank here; Nazism along with all other forms of political views, are based largely in philosophy) was that it ultimately could not kill human diversity. While the Nazis meticulously attempted to establish a collective thought process throughout all of Germany, at least among the Aryan German population, each German citizen that was accepted under the Nazi banner had still retained their individual thought processes. So that ultimately, when it came time to exterminate a Jew or other ethnic person found to be unfit to live under Hitler's Master Race, there was always that "odd man out" that either could not bring themselves to do it, felt sympathy for the Jew, or felt much regret in carrying out the extermination. Because ultimately, they saw the Jews and other "subhuman" races for what they were: human.
Thus, their own Diverse train of human thought ultimately preserved their own Individuality and caused their human instincts to come into play; to tell them that deep down, the means to Hitler's Final Solution's ends were wrong.
So in the end, eliminating Diversity in the Human Race would ultimately lead to Humanity's downfall, because there would no longer be that occasional spark of genius among the populace that finds it within themselves to rise up and make some small or large bit of difference, and perhaps even advance the entire race as a whole as a result of their contributions. No invention, whether physical or philosophical, is too small or insignificant when it has a real and concrete effect on all of Mankind. Whether it be the invention (and subsequent apt lesson) of Nazism, or the invention of the TV remote, or the invention of the longer lasting light bulb; all of those things, for better or worse, are the result of human diversity. And they are all lessons that should never be forgotten.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go and boot up Postal 2 and slaughter me some Arabs.
If sheep were able to think for themselves, Jesus Christ would have been a pretty useless Hebe.
(0) comments
There ignored and defeated by the government,
There's an oriented public whose magnetic force will pull,
But away from the potential of the individual,
Against the grain, that's where I'll stay,
Swimming upstream, I maintain against the grain,
The flow is getting stronger with small increments of time
And eddies of new ideas are increasingly hard to find,
You need all that the other has, it's your right to seize the day
But in all your acquisitions you will soon be swept away..." ~ 'Against The Grain' - Bad Religion
That one is a toughie. On the one hand, you would have complete and total Equality, but on the other hand, you would lack Diversity.
Diversity differs from Individuality, in that one can look and act like the popular majority does but still retain one's own individual thought processes. Diversity is more of a mental state of mind, in that when you conform to popular belief, go with the grain, and refuse to run perpendicular to the mainstream, you lose your sense of Diversity and instead become a part of the established norm. Much like a drone, at least in the social sense.
Diversity represents an individual's own personal beliefs, of which were inherited and/or tutored upon them by their parents and/or their peers during the developmental stages of their life. And while there is a strong relation between a person's Diversity and Individuality, what sets them apart is that while a person's Individuality is their own niche of perception in regards to the world and/or society around them, their Diversity is what drives them to be different and to think for themselves, and what ultimately sustains that drive, allowing them to persist upon their own separate path away from a herd mentality.
Let's take, for example, Nazi Germany. It was, by far and away, the perfect plan to achieve purity; to purge the Human Race of all tainted biological oddities and/or undesirable traits. The dream of the Perfect Human and a Master Race wasn't a dream that was created by Adolf Hitler. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) fancied a race of "Supermen" that would ultimately rise above the squalor of everyday humanity and be as different from humans as humans are from apes. The problem with Hitler's philosophy (and let's be frank here; Nazism along with all other forms of political views, are based largely in philosophy) was that it ultimately could not kill human diversity. While the Nazis meticulously attempted to establish a collective thought process throughout all of Germany, at least among the Aryan German population, each German citizen that was accepted under the Nazi banner had still retained their individual thought processes. So that ultimately, when it came time to exterminate a Jew or other ethnic person found to be unfit to live under Hitler's Master Race, there was always that "odd man out" that either could not bring themselves to do it, felt sympathy for the Jew, or felt much regret in carrying out the extermination. Because ultimately, they saw the Jews and other "subhuman" races for what they were: human.
Thus, their own Diverse train of human thought ultimately preserved their own Individuality and caused their human instincts to come into play; to tell them that deep down, the means to Hitler's Final Solution's ends were wrong.
So in the end, eliminating Diversity in the Human Race would ultimately lead to Humanity's downfall, because there would no longer be that occasional spark of genius among the populace that finds it within themselves to rise up and make some small or large bit of difference, and perhaps even advance the entire race as a whole as a result of their contributions. No invention, whether physical or philosophical, is too small or insignificant when it has a real and concrete effect on all of Mankind. Whether it be the invention (and subsequent apt lesson) of Nazism, or the invention of the TV remote, or the invention of the longer lasting light bulb; all of those things, for better or worse, are the result of human diversity. And they are all lessons that should never be forgotten.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go and boot up Postal 2 and slaughter me some Arabs.
If sheep were able to think for themselves, Jesus Christ would have been a pretty useless Hebe.
(0) comments
![[ Registered ]](http://www.diarist.net/registry/button3.gif){kind=small}
