Uncouth Reflections

Paleo Retiree writes:

In case you were in any doubt about what our state religion now is: A too-big-to-fail bank has just ordered me, a random ATM user, to “unite behind diversity.” If I’ve got this right, I’m not being urged by a fellow citizen to stand up to the Powers That Be in order to demand our rights. Instead, I’ve been commanded by a top-down soul-crushing part of the Plutocracy to stand WITH the Powers That Be in order to stifle dissent and impose a trendy and unrealistic ideal. Hard to imagine why I wouldn’t want to get on board with that particular program …

FWIW, I enjoy living a life in the genuinely diverse style. I’m based in Greenwich Village, which is bursting with gays and Jews, and which is located in NYC, where only 45% of inhabitants are white. Unlike our betters, though, I’d never dream of imposing diversity on others. (I don’t see my preference for leading a life in the “diverse” style as anything but a personal taste.) Why? Well, for one thing, I recognize that many people prefer to live among people more or less like themselves. Whereas the champions of diversity-as-an ideal see any indication of irregularity as suspicious, if not damning, I see clumping-together as what most humans normally tend to do. Why fight it?

For another, managing a “diverse”-type life is a lot of trouble. Every day involves numerous micro-negotiations that simply don’t crop up when you’re among people with whom you share background, language, assumptions and (who knows?) ethnicity. There can be payoffs — my “diverse” life is a pretty darned entertaining and interesting one. But the cost of it, sheesh … Leading the “diverse” life can be extremely wearying; it can really grate on the nerves even if you’re reasonably sophisticated and prosperous. I can only imagine how dispiriting the diverse life can get to be if you don’t enjoy a bit of spare money, space and time. (If, in other words, you don’t have the resources it takes to enjoy the benefits of diversity.) Why impose additional annoyances on people whose lives are already challenging enough?

For a third: I’m just not into forcing utopian ideals on others. Let people live their lives as they choose to the extent that’s possible (and they’re able), you know? And if, in the normal course of events, one neighborhood (or workplace, or province, or country) winds up being more Asian, and another more black, and another more Mexican, and another more white — and another more gay, and another more straight, and another more female, and another more male — why stress about it? Let people sort their lives out as they see fit. Besides, our rulers really do (IMHO) have more urgent things to give their attention to than bulldozing their way into the arrangements we’ve made for ourselves and disrupting them in the name of a silly ideal that people will be laughing about in a decade or two. Ahhhh — banking — choo!

My final thought about diversity this morning is a defense of diversity itself. If every neighborhood/workplace/country needs to be broken into and then re-made into some bean-counting bureaucrat’s idea of “diverse,” isn’t the overall result going to be about as un-diverse as can be imagined? Isn’t the final result, in fact, inevitably going to be something we might reasonably call “uniformity”?

Besides, if you throw all the ingredients in your fridge into the food processor, what you wind up with is inedibility itself. I’d much prefer that life resemble a tasty meal — a banquet of different (maybe even “diverse”) flavors, textures and experiences — than a pot of uniform green/brown sludge.

Short version: It’s possible to enjoy diversity on a personal level and dislike the way our elites are making use of the concept. It’s also possible — heck, it’s even easy — to use the cause of genuine diversity to undermine our elites’ diversity campaign. (“Diversity”-imposers are like “tolerance”-fanatics — giant targets just begging to be shot full of holes.)

I’m reminded of a pair of cartoons by the great Léon Krier:

I found these cartoons in this wonderful book.

Related

• Read more about Krier’s book.
• Learn more about Léon Krier.
• Peter Wood’s “Diversity: The Invention of a Concept” is a smart and nifty introduction to the way diversity has come to be the predominant political — perhaps even religious — ideal of our age.

Curious to hear what others are making of our masters’ determination to use the ideal of “diversity” to crush real diversity.