Diversity of thought makes us stronger, not weaker. Without diversity, we die off as a species. We can no longer adapt to changes in the environment. We need each other to survive.
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Diversity is how we survive as a species. This is a quantifiable fact easily observed in the biological world. From niches to natural selection, diversity is the common theme of success for both the individual and the group.
Take the central idea of natural selection: The genes, individuals, groups, and species with the most advantageous traits in a given environment survive and reproduce in greater numbers. Eventually, those advantageous traits spread. The overall population becomes more suited to that environment. This occurs at multiple levels, from single genes to entire ecosystems.
That said, natural selection cannot operate without a diverse set of traits to select from! Without variation, selection cannot improve the lot of the higher-level group.
Diversity of Thought
We often seem to struggle with diversity of thought. This type of diversity shouldn’t threaten us. It should energize us. It means we have a wider variety of resources to deal with the inevitable challenges we face as a species.
Imagine that a meteor is on its way to earth. A crash would be the end of everyone. No matter how self-involved we are, no one wants to see humanity wiped out. So what do we do? Wouldn’t you hope that we could call on more than three people to help find a solution?
Ideally there would be thousands of people with different skills and backgrounds tackling this meteor problem, many minds and lots of options for changing the rock’s course and saving life as we know it. The diversity of backgrounds—variations in skills, knowledge, ways of looking at and understanding the problem—might be what saves the day. But why wait for the threat? A smart species would recognize that if diversity of knowledge and skills would be useful for dealing with a meteor, then diversity would be probably useful in a whole set of other situations.
For example, very few businesses can get by with one knowledge set that will take their product from concept to the homes of customers. You would never imagine that a business could be staffed with clones and be successful. It would be the ultimate in social proof. Everyone would literally be saying the same thing.
The Stormtrooper Problem
Intelligence agencies face a unique set of problems that require creative, un-googleable solutions to one-off problems.
You’d naturally think they would value and seek out diversity in order to solve those problems. And you’d be wrong. Increasingly it’s harder and harder to get a security clearance.
Do you have a lot of debt? That might make you susceptible to blackmail. Divorced? You might be an emotional wreck, which could mean you’ll make emotional decisions and not rational ones. Do something as a youth that you don’t want anyone to know? That makes it harder to trust you. Gay but haven’t told anyone? Blackmail risk. Independently wealthy? That means you don’t need our paycheck, which means you might be harder to work with. Do you have a nuanced opinion of politics? What about Edward Snowden? Yikes. The list goes on.
As the process gets harder and harder (trying to reduce risk), there is less and less diversity in the door. The people that make it through the door are Stormtroopers.
And if you’re one of the lucky Stormtrooopers to make it in, you’re given a checklist career development path. If you want a promotion, you know the exact experience and training you need to receive one. It’s simple. It doesn’t require much thought on your part.
The combination of these two things means that employees increasingly look at—and attempt to solve—problems the same way. The workforce is less effective than it used to be. This means you have to hire more people to do the same thing or outsource more work to people that hire misfits. This is the Stormtrooper problem.
Creativity and Innovation
Diversity is necessary in the workplace to generate creativity and innovation. It’s also necessary to get the job done. Teams with members from different backgrounds can attack problems from all angles and identify more possible solutions than teams whose members think alike. Companies also need diverse skills and knowledge to keep a company functioning. Finance superstars may not be the same people who will rock marketing. And the faster things change, the more valuable diversity becomes for allowing us to adapt and seize opportunity.
We all know that any one person doesn’t have it all figured out and cannot possibly do it all. We can all recognize that we rely on thousands of other people every day just to live. We interact with the world through the products we use, the entertainment we consume, the services we provide. So why do differences often unsettle us?
Any difference can raise this reaction: gender, race, ethnic background, sexual orientation. Often, we hang out with others like us because, let’s face it, communicating is easier with people who are having a similar life experience. And most of us like to feel that we belong. But a sense of belonging should not come at the cost of diversity.
Where Birds Got Feathers
Consider this: Birds did not get their feathers for flying. They originally developed them for warmth, or for being more attractive to potential mates. It was only after feathers started appearing that birds eventually began to fly. Feathers are considered an exaptation, something that evolved for one purpose but then became beneficial for other reasons. When the environment changes, which it inevitably does, a species has a significantly increased chance of survival if it has a diversity of traits that it can re-purpose. What can we re-purpose if everyone looks, acts, and thinks the same?
Further, a genetically homogeneous population is easy to wipe out. It baffles me that anyone thinks they are a good idea. Consider the Irish Potato Famine. In the mid-19th century a potato disease made its way around much of the world. Although it devastated potato crops everywhere, only in Ireland did it result in widespread devastation and death. About one quarter of Ireland’s population died or emigrated to avoid starvation over just a few years. Why did this potato disease have such significant consequences there and not anywhere else?
The short answer is a lack of diversity. The potato was the staple crop for Ireland’s poor. Tenant farms were so small that only potatoes could be grown in sufficient quantity to—barely—feed a family. Too many people depended on this one crop to meet their nutritional needs. In addition, the Irish primarily grew one type of potato, so most of the crops were vulnerable to the same disease. Once the blight hit, it easily infected potato fields all over Ireland, because they were all the same.
You can’t adapt if you have nothing to adapt. If we are all the same, if we’ve wiped out every difference because we find it less challenging, then we increase our vulnerability to complete extinction. Are we too much alike to survive unforeseen challenges?
Even the reproductive process is, at its core, about diversity. You get half your genes from your mother and half from your father. These can be combined in so many different ways that 21 siblings are all going to be genetically unique.
Why is this important? Without this diversity we never would have made it this far. It’s this newness, each time life is started, that has given us options in the form of mutations. They’re like unexpected scientific breakthroughs. Some of these drove our species to awesome new capabilities. The ones that resulted in less fitness? These weren’t likely to survive. Success in life, survival on the large scale, has a lot to do with the potential benefits created by the diversity inherent in the reproductive process.
Diversity is what makes us stronger, not weaker. Biologically, without diversity we die off as a species. We can no longer adapt to changes in the environment. This is true of social diversity as well. Without diversity, we have no resources to face the inevitable challenges, no potential for beneficial mutations or breakthroughs that may save us. Yet we continue to have such a hard time with that. We’re still trying to figure out how to live with each other. We’re nowhere near ready for that meteor.
Article Summary
- Visible diversity is not the same as cognitive diversity.
- Cognitive diversity comes from thinking about problems differently, not from race, gender, or sexual orientation.
- Cognitive diversity helps us avoid blind spots and adapt to changing environments.
- You can’t have selection without variation.
- The Stormtrooper problem is when everyone working on a problem thinks about it in the same way.