It's nothing but a bit of modernist hokum, really, and relatively harmless in itself. Yet every time I see it my first thought is, but you folks on this same page routinely proclaim, 'Diversity is Our Strength' or some such other equally shallow hokum. So my question becomes, can we all rise together if diversity is our strength? Shouldn't diversity, a diversity typically preached above all else, mind you, hinder our rising in togetherness? Their standard of diversity after all means marching to the beat of a different drum, your own drum, as I understand our more progressive friends to mean. But if we're all marching to our own drums, how are we to, in fact how can we, rise together?
Perhaps I'm overanalyzing. I do believe in what I call small d diversity: we couldn't play baseball if everyone insisted on pitching, nor have a football game if everyone was the quarterback. Yet in the instances of sports, to continue that example, everyone is doing their own individual thing but within a certain coordination, with the same goals in mind. If we are truly marching to our own beats we must, almost by definition, be marching away from or into one another. In the football game of our example, the flanker must be allowed to run into the wide receiver on a play if that's what being himself, being inspired by diversity that is, means. He would have the right, indeed the moral imperative, to run the route he chooses. If, that is, it's all about an open ended diversity.
If our aim is to be our own self, no matter what and whatever that means, then we cannot be working together. Someone will, indeed likely many different and varied folks will, be pulling in separate and irreconcilable directions. It must happen.
If anyone can reconcile those two ideas, I'm willing to listen. But as it is, I believe they want the cake and to eat it too. You simply can't have it that way.
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