Post #85: The Four Harmonious Friends (Diversity)

15 Jan. 2024

“I recognized at an early age that I was called upon to decide for myself to what extent my Jewish origins, my surroundings (the accidental circumstance of Chicago), my schooling, were to be allowed to determine the course of my life. I did not intend to be wholly dependent on history and culture. Full dependency must mean that I was done for.”

—Saul Bellow

     My dear Bhutanese friend Yangki just sent me two wall-hangings depicting an old Jataka tale, pre-Buddhist in origin but much beloved in Buddhist lands, about four animal friends—a bird, a rabbit, a monkey, and an elephant—working together to do things they could not accomplish by themselves. The original version tells of how the seed of a tree was brought by the bird, then watered and protected by the others, and how as the tree grew up, the friends would stand one on top of the other to reach its ever-receding fruit. Translated into more general and far-reaching terms, the story illustrates how it is the glory of the human condition that we are able, through friendly cooperation, to take the greatest advantage of our differences. It defines us as a species; it is what makes us great.

     Fables, alas, are sadly misleading on this point. It is doubtful enough whether animals form friendships in our human sense at all; that they will not do so across species, or only in very exceptional circumstances, is all but certain. And not only that, but one might go further and question whether such cooperation is entirely natural even to human beings. For hundreds of thousands of years, the supremacy of the tribe over its members was nearly absolute, and the degree of cooperation between groups, accordingly, limited in the extreme. Alliances happened, but always against the backdrop of unending warfare.

     The emancipation of the individual from the ancestral bonds of the tribe, where it has occurred, here and there in history, has ever been a great civilizational accomplishment, won in the very teeth of our archaic instincts—a mere blip when placed besides the thousands of generations that our species spent in its unmitigated tribal condition, where closed societies reign supreme.* It is no wonder that our collectivist instincts are prone to rebellion; they are much older than civilization and run incomparably deeper, with roots at levels of the mind that do not even deign to explain their ways to our conscious thinking. They don’t need to; they are more ancient than explanation itself. Hence the ease, the relief even, with which we keep reverting to patterns of thought (that is to say, group-think) that are far more robustly grounded in our instincts and collective consciousness than the individualist impulse can ever be.

     To sing the praises of individual freedom is nothing very unexpected, of course, on the face of it. Nor is invoking the power of turning our differences into an asset—both are proclaimed from every rooftop in our day, and have been so, at least intermittently, for generations, if not centuries, at least in some parts of the world. But there has been a turn in sentiment over the past thirty years or so, a most pernicious redefinition, as adherents to the old liberal school would say, of how to understand the differences in question.

     The story of the four friends is so graphic and evocative because it makes the distinctions so easily visible, and there is the same tendency today. “Diversity” has come to mean difference that shows up well at a photo-op, via chromosomes and pigmentation and ostentatiously displayed orientations of various kinds. Few would deny, as a matter of first principle, that a group of individuals looking very much alike at a glance might harbor enormous differences of ideas and experience, while a motley assortment of outwardly “diverse” characters might prove, upon closer inspection, to think along with each other on a disturbingly narrow and homogenous intellectual spectrum. But alas, the admission doesn’t keep things from being arranged as if it were otherwise—because doing so is less complicated, and what is more, because it is easier to point to, whether in praise or in censure.

     The champions of group rights make much of the nourishing and identity-sustaining benefits of communal ties, and bemoan their supposed erosion by individual freedom in a globalizing world—if they do not make the problem disappear altogether by turning a blind eye to the tension, or by defining it away. What they overlook, or blithely downplay, is the limiting and menacing aspect: for claims on behalf of the group are by their very nature claims against the freedom of the individual. (Community is as unobjectionable as sex, an old liberal might quip, between consenting adults.) It characterizes serious group identities that they cannot simply be chosen at will, and that they foster and forge cohesion among their insiders precisely by defining them against outsiders. The recent fad in treating cultural differences as necessarily enriching, benign and beneficial by definition, is dangerously naive: the colorful glues holding groups together can be turned against others and transformed into plastic explosives in no time. The folkloristic feel-good dimension shows its dark underbelly in wars, genocides, and closed societies of every sort.

     Meanwhile the diluting of cultural blood lines (“assimilation”) or the free adoption of the most congenial cultural practices from wherever one may find them (“cultural appropriation”) is getting denounced in some “progressive” circles as if it were an obvious evil, not a testimony to the genius of the species. The wealth of cultural options before us, irrespective of the narrow circumstances we are born into, should fill us with awe and wonder, not suspicion. What one man or woman has wrought may be protected with patents and copyrights for a little while, perhaps, though never very effectively; but in what human ingenuity has devised over the generations, there can be no restrictive property rights. What entire traditions have produced belongs to all who can make good use of it.

     Cultures are connected to tribes, as I am myself insisting; they are not just decorative window dressing. But loosening the ties that bind (and choke, and gag) can be a very good thing indeed, not only for individuals, but even for cultures that often get reinvigorated that way. It all depends on how we use our freedom on the treasures before us. Greek philosophy flourished more in Alexandria than it had even in Athens; there may be more vibrant Buddhist communities in the West than nearer its Eastern cradles, and perhaps more Christians that Jesus would readily acknowledge in rice paddies than in Rome. (The Mahabodhi Temple was dug out by Victorian enthusiasts, colonial Britishers, not by pious pilgrims more native to those parts.) You are likely to get a better Wiener Schnitzel and Melange in Hamburg than in Vienna, and by far the best Indian food I’ve ever had was in Saskatoon (also the best steak, admittedly). Amazonian shamanism would be nearing extinction if it weren’t for foreign interest, mixed blessing that it may be. (What blessing is not a mixed one in this world?) Rolls Royce is strengthened by German engineering as much as BMW is by British design, think “new” Mini. That a British designer’s ancestors may hail from Bangladesh and a German engineer’s from Portugal doesn’t diminish the magic but enhances it further.

     To the middle-way perspective that seeks balance in all things, and to the adherents of the old liberal school, it is distressing to witness the violent extremes, respectively, of an individualism that has nothing but contempt for any and all constraints of tradition and communal expectation, and, on the other hand, recurrent reversions to collectivist thinking in the name of this alleged correctness or that supposed ideal, on the left and the right alike. Nothing new under the sun, perhaps, especially in view of the past century; but disheartening nonetheless.

     The old liberal school (see Post #68), its champions would insist, already worked out over the centuries a much more sophisticated and sustainable way to mediate between the conflicting demands of the individual and the group. Where someone poses no demonstrable, tangible threat to others, he must be left free to do as he sees fit, no matter how stridently one may disagree and remonstrate with him. (The taking of offense and hurt feelings alone, unquestioned and unchallenged, must not be allowed to constitute harm, painful as they may be, or the thin skins we are thereby encouraging will soon prove fatal to robust mutual tolerance, as our age has been demonstrating so vividly.) A dissenting or eccentric or simply different individual must be protected from all attacks by his disapproving neighbors, safeguarded in his life and limb, his possessions, and perhaps his reputation with resort to defamation suits and the like. But he must not be shielded from the severity of their opinions about him, from their open disapproval and avoidance of his person; least of all must he be assured of their “respect,” which is either given freely or a shameful fraud.

     Or to put it the other way around, the dissident’s neighbors must in their turn be left free to “discriminate” against him, even if the very word has by now become so distorted and debased that it might be better to drop it from one’s vocabulary altogether. Putting up with such “discrimination” is the price of liberty, since the freedom to associate, and the freedom to avoid and make one’s disapproval known, are and will ever be but the two sides of the same coin. To the old liberal they should therefore be equally sacrosanct, even if the former is by far the more presentable face of the two (which brings us back to the problem of ethical thinking reduced to photo-op format).

     But no, to permit such “discrimination” is to encourage it, the other side will howl! The ensuing fracas has all but silenced what remains, despite all clamorous efforts to shout it down, a perfectly consistent and honorable liberal position. Not at all, the old liberals will answer with Milton Friedman, because to act on unwarranted prejudices is inherently costly.** When you refuse, out of irrational antipathy to a person or group, to engage in interactions and transactions that would otherwise be mutually beneficial, you pay the price in opportunities forgone! If you will not hire members of a certain group, despite their equal or superior qualifications, then you will reduce your talent pool and you will have to pay more, leaving the valuable recruits for your competitors to snap up to your detriment.

     As a consumer, too, the resulting cost will often be exorbitant. Imagine how much of a constraint it would put on your options, in film or fashion say, if you really followed through on an animus against homosexuality and you were unwilling to buy anything to which someone gay had contributed, or what would happen to your choice of music to listen to, or sports to watch, if you were the kind of inveterate racist that our age imagines lurking behind every corner. Or think what it would do to your budget and range of consumer choices if you refused to do business with the People’s Republic of China, that is to say, you consistently chose the more expensive rival product not made there!

     Such pain via the pocketbook is more effective than all sermonizing, and thus are even declared enemies enabled to cooperate and improve each other’s lives without deliberate design having any part in it—even if mutual dislikes are not thereby abated much over time, as liberal optimists might hope. It was not out of fondness for their continental cousins, but at a time of tension and rivalry, that the British first forced German manufacturers to stamp their products with the country of origin, in hopes of a deterrent effect; the measure backfired not because British consumers developed any tenderness for the Hun, but because the goods in question were often cheaper and better.

     The compulsive demand to make nice with anyone and everyone purchases the illusion of harmony at a very steep price indeed, not only because deep friendship depends to some extent on a feeling of special closeness with a select few in a generally indifferent or even hostile world, but also because all the vaunted niceness (and the suppressed, pent-up aggression hiding underneath) is sure to turn with even greater venom and redoubled vehemence against those who will not play along with the pleasing fiction of universal agreement. Und willst Du nicht mein Bruder sein, so schlag’ ich dir den Schädel ein! (If you refuse to be my brother, I’ll gladly crack your skull, you other!)***

     Our ethic of inclusiveness cannot abolish conflict, it can only paper it over, substituting pretense for open admission, and thereby getting in the way of what one might call the cultivation of civilian counterparts to the conventions of warfare. Some of our differences can be made fruitful, no doubt, but they cannot all be so conveniently tamed or reliably defanged. Learning to live with them does not mean dreaming of the wolf and the lamb lying down together; it means managing the perennial conflict, perhaps even the violence, that has ever been as much part of our condition as the harmony. Wherever war has raged in one field, peace has prevailed in others around it; if it were otherwise, we could never have come this far as a species. But the converse is also true: much as we may hope to expand the scope for peace and harmony, in our individual lives as in and between our societies, conflicts will keep breaking out, and not always harmless ones either. The challenge is as much to make the clashes manageable and survivable when they occur as it is to reduce their frequency.

*Yes, Popper’s Open Society and Its Enemies is eminently relevant here, a little dated though it may be…

**See chapter VII, “Capitalism and Discrimination,” in Friedman’s 1962 classics, Capitalism and Freedom.

***From a German ditty first sung in 1848 (when yet another French revolution was rocking Europe) to mock the Jacobin motto of “la fraternité ou la mort” (brotherhood or death). It became aphoristic when Bernhard von Bülow used it in a heated exchange with August Bebel in the German Reichstag in December 1903.