Diversity is our Weakness

Debunking a vulgar platitude

It’s foolish to attempt to discuss "diversity" without defining it. In our Orwellian age, most debates consist of people defining terms wildly differently, then acting as though their audiences share their definitions.

For liberals, the family on the left represents the height of “diversity”. But the family on the right depicts no diversity whatsoever. This obscene double standard is obviously racist, a “neo-racism” if you will.

Frankly, that should be the end of the conversation, as the clarion call of 'diversity' is clearly nothing more than a neo-racist dog whistle. Such hateful nonsense should be mocked to the greatest extent possible and given no quarter whatsoever. Full stop.

To discuss an alternative, little-used definition of "diversity" is more of an academic exercise than a meaningful policy conversation and risks distracting from what ought to be the focus - opposing the neo-racists. I do so here because I like academic exercises, but we should remember to keep perspective.

The “motte” in the motte-and-bailey fallacy that the neo-racists present is the notion that the world is full of people who could be part of wholes that are greater than the sums of their parts if only they found the complementary parts that are out there waiting for them.

For some reason, it is vital that these complementary parts be identified as complementary via their skin color and other ethnic traits, and similarly vital that their "diversity" not consist of any ideological deviation from far-left beliefs. One can see how this notion finds a home among collectivists, who are always thinking of people as parts of groups and never as individuals.

To use a simple analogy, these people imagine that you and everyone like you are peanut butter, and if you find some jelly to hang around with, you'll make a far better sandwich together than either of you could separately. This analogy is helpful in that it quickly exposes the fallacy in even this "motte" case for "diversity": Like all left-wing views of the world, it's drastically oversimplified.

A realistic version of the analogy would have us all being a huge variety of foods, most of which taste terrible together. Peanut butter and olives? Jelly, Skittles, and carrots? These are not sandwiches that anyone wants to eat! Well, maybe a pregnant woman (person!).

While complementary perspectives and mentalities do exist in this world, the far, FAR more common case is for differences to interact counterproductively. People have communication barriers. Cultural barriers. Ideological barriers. Truly "diverse" groups are unlikely to even want to cooperate (just look at "red" and "blue" America!). The likelihood of a random grouping yielding a positive result is very low. Very, very low!

Almost certainly, a random genetic mutation in a human will result in Quasimodo rather than a superhero depicted in X-Men that some liberals might imagine.

I like to use a scenario in which Mexicans and Japanese are forced together as an example. Japanese are famously punctual, while Mexican culture is... the opposite. Force these two groups together, and they're going to argue over timeliness. Does their "diversity" lead to some sort of "best of both worlds" compromise? Highly unlikely. The outcome will be animosity. If you actually wanted the two ideologies to collaborate and compromise, the way to do it would NOT be to coerce unwanted interactions but rather, to allow each camp to become aware of the other and then to allow those that have interest to explore the opposing camps. Let a Mexican tourist visit Tokyo and a Japanese expat spend time in Mexico City. Like any decent guests, they should honor the customs of their hosts. Then let them return home and act on anything they've learned.

In general, letting different cultures preserve themselves in their native lands avoids a lot of conflict and reaps a lot of benefits.

Real-world “diversity” advocates understand this well; they are fierce advocates of preserving native cultures that they like (and even more fierce advocates of displacing and infesting the homelands of cultures that they hate!).

Overall, we can’t seriously discuss this subject without acknowledging that cultural alchemy(I’m patenting that term!) is far more likely to have negative results than positive results. That’s just common sense. And very old sense, too - what did God do in the Bible when he wanted the builders of the Tower of Babel to stop working together? He made them speak different languages!

Diversity was literally God’s way of making people cooperate less!

There are few Ministry of Truthisms more overt than “Diversity is our Strength”.

Laboratory scientists in the modern world can afford to do the sort of experiments that fail 99 times out of a hundred. We accept this, and we’ve realized some nice advances by accepting it. But social science is different. Cultural alchemy’s high failure rate is far too costly to endure in the vain search for successes that, to-date, have not been significant. People’s lives must not be so casually gambled. We have a far better alternative in the form of voluntary migration and association.

In years past I would state that ethnic diversity has the benefit of being a symptom of tolerance (non-bigotry), but that benefit seems too trivial to mention, especially in an era where you’re a white supremacist regardless if you’re to the right of Karl Marx. No, the time for conceding anything decent about “diversity” is past.

“Tolerance” (the real kind) is where today’s battle lies.