Buzzwords form the vocabulary of elites and Diversity sits somewhere at the top in this list jostling for space with 'secularism, liberalism' among several others. So sacred has Diversity become that there is a creeping eagerness to be seen as a flag bearer of diversity. Anything that is remotely anti-diversity is dismissed with contempt. In fact it is not a stretch to say that one can risk a career if identified with and on the wrong side of Diversity.
It is safe to say that one of the biggest casualty of our great modern civilization is Diversity. In the realm of biological life forms it is of course self-evident. It does not require any deep study - although there are loads of data to corroborate this fact - common sense would suffice. Yet, there is insufficient understanding as to why Diversity has been such a huge casualty in the modern world. It is often attributed to industrial revolution, consumerism, materialism, urbanization and rapid growth. That indeed is true but the comprehension is superficial. It is our conviction that since we have impoverished the world of its rich diversity, physical impoverishment exists elsewhere.
There is yet a critical question that begs an urgent answer. Why do we need Diversity? We have established answers for the same. Nature is pro-diversity. Diversity is in fact omnipresent and is experienced everywhere
1. Killing Diversity may be extremely dangerous for the sustenance of life itself on the planet. Any manipulation of nature beyond a limit, results in terrible fury. Hence, this amounts to destroying the very branch of life. To put it in simple words - it is sheer stupidity to come in the way of nature's Diversity.
2. Man has no moral right to kill diversity. Every life-form has its rightful place on Planet Earth. We ought to use our bestowed/evolved powers for the larger good of all beings. It would be cruel, unjust and immoral to eliminate spaces for other forms thereby driving them to impoverished living and extinction.
3. Our own lives become severely impoverished if there is no Diversity. How monotonously tiring would it be to live in an unilateral world. I enjoy Diversity hence I have a right to Diversity.
I have tried to abstract a set of answers under three critical concepts. Thus sustenance, moral empathy for all forms of creation and life experiences amalgamate together as central pillars in our concern for Diversity. Each has a reflection on the other and altogether they result in great depth and breadth of sensitivities with amazing entanglement.
Having thus understood Diversity, it is necessary to outline this concept of Diversity - else there can be many interpretations leading to instant criticisms and counter-defenses.
Diversity is nothing but distinctness and differences in multiple aspects of life all of which can be collated into the following.
1. Life Forms
2. Geographical Forms
3. Intellectual/Thought Forms
4. Forms of Objects Created
5. Representational Forms
6. Instrumentation/Method Forms
Life Forms and Geographical Forms need no explanation. These two have suffered severe damage in the last 300 years. Seeing is believing. We know and we trust those experts who have spoken and written about Diversity in Life and Geographical Forms having suffered. There is a tremendous interest in Dinosaurs as a result although we humans have not been responsible for its extinction. For example, a massive machinery has been deployed all over the country to save Tigers - the endangering of which has been the assault on it by humans in the last 100 years. Project Tiger has been a laudable success in India. My daughter's 3rd standard text book on Environmental Science has a chapter on Endangered and Extinct animals and the schools run quizzes on the same. So there is awareness and there are actual programs to safeguard these forms of Diversity. One hopes that this sustains and results continue to be positive in terms of facts and figures.
Yet, there is an important difference between the first two forms and the rest. It is beyond humans to create Diversity in the former. The best we can do is to ensure that we don't upset the equilibrium that would result in the destruction of Diversity in this realm. That is to say - the former is either damaged by civilizations or protected. It is rarely created and even when it is created it is as per the principles of nature with humans providing some shelter.
The latter, however is very much about the civilization created by humans themselves. It is about how civilizations accommodate diversity and its implications both within and without its boundaries. If anything our focus on this been pretty sketchy in the way this concern has permeated itself across civilizations.
Intellectual Forms correspond to philosophies, ideologies, art/craft and thought imagined by humans that shape all civilization activity. Forms of Objects represent physical forms created by humans as part of civilization such as cities, infrastructure, technology etc. Representational Form is further more inward looking. It corresponds to how much of a representation we provide to different sections of people belonging to Life forms, Geographical forms, Intellectual forms. Instrumentation Forms is a specialized subset of Intellectual Forms - rather a bridge between Intellectual and Forms of Objects Created - in terms of how the former is realized to shape the latter. An engineering method is an example of this.
In the last few decades, a guilt ridden and ideological society has made Representational Diversity as its critical agenda. It has also become a victim of political ambition as spurious use of Representational Diversity is for achieving ulterior political motives - but we can keep that aside for now. However its genuine version works under two critical assumptions.
1. Representational Diversity results in Social Justice. Every aspect of human civilization should be represented every diverse form in the humanity at that time. That alone is justice and rest is injustice.
2. Representational Diversity is critically required because it logically results in Intellectual Diversity as people from different sections of life naturally think differently. This in turn results in Diversity of Object Forms because people thinking differently will shape life differently.
However, this is a flawed logic. This arises out of insufficient understanding of what Intellectual Diversity actually means. It consists of the following
1. Institutions that we have created over the years
2. Body of knowledge and philosophy that we have created as a result of these Institutions and that have shaped the Institutions
3. Thinking and Perceiving Human beings
If we have a tight control of the first two- that is destroy Diversity in them and merely emphasize on Diversity in Thinking and Perceiving human beings - there is nothing much that we will achieve in terms of Diversity. The hegemonic control of Institutions and Body of Knowledge (i.e its inherent lack of diversity) will merely convert any thinking person into a mirror image of itself or a robot for its civilization sub-form to proliferate itself.
That brings us to the last form of Diversity - the Instrumentational Diversity. This corresponds to the ability and method to create an Institution, Object or even thought. In this sense this aspect of diversity is recursive in nature by default. Instruments of Creation have two serious implications.
1. If Instrumentation Diversity is not rich it can then convert any input to the Institution into a monochromatic output. Institutional/Intellectual Diversity subsequently can have only so much of an impact. In that sense its potential to create damage is equivalent to that of evangelical proselytization.
2. If Institutional/Intellectual Diversity is not rich, any amount of Instrumentational Diversity is of no value. Institutions and its intellectual monochromatism will simply absorb anybody from any background into itself and one will not easily perceive difference in the forms of objects created thereafter.
Thus the damage potential of the instruments are high but the sustenance potential is weak.
What we see today in our world is impoverished Intellectual/Institutional Diversity as a result of either insufficient focus or hegemonic control. What's worse we are fooling ourselves by excessively focusing on Representational Diversity and sometimes Instrumentational Diversity.
That sadly is the tragedy of Diversity in the modern era.
(With Editing support from Ganesh P K)
(With Editing support from Ganesh P K)
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