The Cheshire Cat meets George Orwell.
“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thought-crime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.”
– George Orwell, 1984
“Diversity” has become a catch phrase used to whip anyone having the temerity to suggest fundamental differences exist between/among human beings. The contention is, “All individuals are the same, except when subverted by socio-cultural-political oppression. Any difference in outcome is ipso facto evidence of racism, sexism, xenophobia, or some other pervasive bias – conscious or unconscious.” Diversity is taken to mean, “If we’re not all living the same life, it’s because of a conspiracy.”
Call it “Damore Derangement Syndrome,” after the engineer fired by Google for suggesting the possibility that different people might make diverse choices. He isn’t alone. Psychology Today explains the science. Highly recommended:
The Truth About Sex Differences
Fact: As a percentage of enrollment, there are more female science majors in Burma, Oman, and Morocco than in the countries of Scandinavia.
Fact: American women are 15 percent less likely to reach a managerial position in the workplace than are men—but in Sweden women are 48 percent less likely, in Norway 52 percent, in Finland 56 percent, and in Denmark 63 percent.
Whatever the differences in men’s and women’s psyches—empathy, jealousy, cognitive abilities, mate preferences—many theories in psychology assume that they result primarily from direct gender socialization by parents, media, and societal institutions. As a result, it is often expected that sex differences will be smaller in cultures with higher levels of gender-related egalitarianism, as in Scandinavia, where socialization and roles are more balanced between men and women and sociopolitical gender equity prevails.
Surprisingly, several large cross-cultural studies have found this is not at all the case. Whether scientists measure Big Five personality traits, such as neuroticism; Dark Triad traits, such as psychopathy; or self-esteem, subjective well-being, or depression, empirical evidence shows that most sex differences are conspicuously larger in cultures with more egalitarian gender roles—as in Scandinavia…
Culture matters in explaining psychological sex differences, but not in the way most people think. It’s not harsher gender socialization by parents and media, stringent societal gender roles, or institutional sociopolitical forces that widen the differences between men and women in the most progressive nations in the world. When you treat everyone the same, as in the Nordic countries, it’s only genetic predispositions that produce the most observable individual differences. Extremes of sexual freedom beget larger psychological sex differences. Or as explained by Israeli psychologists Shalom Schwartz and Tammy Rubel-Lifshitz, it may be that having fewer gendered restrictions in a culture allows “both sexes to pursue more freely the values they inherently care about more.”
People pushing homogeneous “Diversity,” while complaining about “cultural appropriation,” don’t grasp the definition of “oxymoron.” Shouldn’t total cross-cultural appropriation be their goal? Shouldn’t we all aspire to be NPCs?
Not if more choice means more actual diversity.