The philosophical roots behind the idea of diversity were noble. All men (and women) are created equal. But, we are all creatures of race, sex, and nationality, and that comes with its own set of biases. Too often we forget that all of us are Homo sapiens, even if it doesn’t always seem that way. By creating more diverse communities, so that blacks, Whites, gays, etc. are all interacting with one another, an understanding of each person’s innate humanity is realized. We overcome our biological inclination towards our own kind, and come to accept each other as fellow human beings.
Even for one as jaded as myself, I couldn’t help but believe–just a little bit—in what I just wrote. It’s hard, what with seeing Ferguson burn, and militant SJWs pushing for bestiality and the death of the White man, to step back and realize that the idea represented by diversity is actually something very honorable. That does not mean that it is something to be agreed with, but it does not do to feel hatred towards it. Diversity was a good idea destined for failure, much like the Hindenburg.
There are quite a few different ways to tackle the inevitable doom of diversity, but one that I have yet to hear, or at least yet to find, is an in-depth analysis on how the current diversity movement is bankrupt on the philosophical level.
Rather than talk about diversity in the community, let’s talk about it in academia, which is an area where the problem is more readily illuminated. One of the core tenets of diversity is the importance of having different perspectives when seeking to understand a difficult problem. I have absolutely no disagreement with this. After all, I generally run a paper through several editors prior to publishing it, and each person often brings insight that allows me to improve upon the piece.
But there’s part of this I’m not telling you, and something that academia is definitely never going to tell you. You’ve been conned, not through an outright lie, but rather through the omission of information (which is the best kind of lie). Now, academia being what it is, that con has been perpetuated by the younger generations without ever having realized that the ol’ switcheroo even happened in the first place. Here is the Great Deception. Allow me to add on a tiny sentence fragment that will alter the entire meaning of diversity: “One of the core tenets of diversity is the importance of having different perspectives…in order to better arrive at the objective truth.”
That last bit may seem incredibly banal and pedantic, but far from it. A diversity of opinion is obviously important in that no one man has all the answers, but maybe only a tiny percentage. By seeking out different understandings of the world we begin to piece them together in an effort to understand the truth. The mistake (or willful deception) that academia made was to support diverse opinion for its own sake. Diversity is meaningless insofar as different opinions have value. The vast majority of great thinkers and scientists have been European men, and the idea was that various subaltern groups might have diamonds hiding in the mud. After all, who was to say that the next Isaac Newton wouldn’t be a mestizo peasant from Ecuador?
The natural result of this shift was to focus on perspectives that had been historically “ignored.” We’ve heard all we can from European men, what do women have to say? Or the bushmen? That’s not to say that these groups and others have no place in academia, but do they have a place simply because of who they are? Are they contributing towards a greater truth?
Well, usually they are not. One of the implications of the practice of having diverse perspectives was that it refocused priorities on subjective opinion. So, a female scholar is not understood as a fellow human being seeking to understand the world through study, but rather a woman who brings a unique voice to the question at hand because she is a woman.
The floodgates of subjectivity opened up, and to use the favorite word of academics, caused a paradigm shift, where personal opinion—the more vibrant the better–was more important than seeking an objective truth.
Uh oh. Something has happened, did you catch it? I started this article with a little definition on diversity, and part of what I said was:
“…an understanding of each person’s innate humanity is realized. We overcome our biological inclination towards our own kind, and come to accept each other as fellow human beings.”
That’s the problem right there. A movement and idea that was based upon universal brotherhood ending up further highlighting our differences. The entire idea behind diversity was reached by looking at the world in an objective (I know I’ll get flak for this one, but bear with me) way, and coming back with cultural relativism. Cultures were shaped by historical and geographical forces, and since they were relative, we could move beyond them and embrace each other, understanding these differences as meaningless consequences of history.
That, my friends, is an attempt at an objective (if flawed) understanding of the world. But the idea was not so easy to put into practice, as can be seen by the cesspool that is academia today. It’s become a den of subjectivity, the original purpose of diversity–a search for bright minds who were once ignored–was lost.
And it has created slaves, as the title of this piece implies. Diversity, as it is currently understood, chains people to their provincial origins. These people–female, minoritiy, or otherwise–are not told to rise above the petty circumstances of their lives and seek truth, but rather wallow in the gutters of what it means to be a black woman in today’s world, or some other such nonsense…even though the entire goal was to be deracinated, desexed, and basically treated like White men. The exact opposite has happened, and identity (in the demographic sense) has become more important than ideas.
But, this is an Identitarian publication after all, so what is the point of a pseudo-defense of the idea of diversity without a corresponding polemic to take it all out? Well, to be honest, I don’t have one. Others have done so, and this is not the place to discuss the dilemmas of the “ideal” diversity that I referenced.
What I will say is this: Western thought has its intellectual roots in classical philosophy, which held very high the use of reason to come to conclusions about the world (just read Plato’s Republic, the entire work flows so smoothly from premises to conclusions you wouldn’t believe it), and its spiritual roots in pagan-influenced Christianity, which believes in a truth that it takes to be universal and objective.
The current multicultural and progressive movement which we so ardently oppose has its root in this same Weltanshauung that we so fervently wish to restore. Do not hate the SWPLs and SJWs, understand them as wayward cousins who have lost their way. The greatness of Western civilization is in its emphasis on objective fact, not subjective feelings. What are those facts? Well, race realism and human biodiversity are great places to start, as well as understanding the factors that contribute to the decline or rise of societies. Find truth that is grounded in philosophy or science, and Identitarianism will be your ultimate conclusion. Then speak and embody that truth, and you will both be living up to our Western ideals, and strengthening our movement. After all, we have aligned ourselves with reality. How can we fail? The Western soul wants truth. It is up to us to provide it.
