I had an interesting discussion with colleagues about human nature today. We were talking about the way the brain works, and for instance, how learning languages, or people from different language backgrounds, can think differently from each other.
I mentioned how I think that "diversity in the workplace" doesn't make sense, as what they generally consider is diverse, is the inclusion of people based on sex and skin color, under the assumption that this brings "benefits" based on differing perspectives. However, the thinking is flawed, because two people can look very different, yet think very much the same. The value of diversity isn't in how people look or their genitalia, but rather their experience through life. Then, we discussed some other factors, and someone mentioned something that I wrote about a long time ago, but I can't find the article now.
We are products of our environment and as such, we are going to be influenced by our surroundings. There are the cultural aspects, like family and community, but there is also the physical side of things, like the climate and nature. And, from my own experience, the climates that tend to be warmer, and the nature that tends to be more wild like jungle, tends to have people who resemble their surroundings. For example, even in Australia, there are differences on average depending on which city, but definitely on which region people have lived most of their lives. The people from the city, outback, or the tropics, are quite different from each other - even if they are all Australian.
Is it culture?
Well, partly of course, because the environment impacts on the way we act. For instance, one of the colleagues in the discussion was American, and had recently been discussing with his son who was asking why is there such a difference between people from the US, and those in Canada, considering that they are otherwise quite similar in culture. I don't know all the reasons for it, but I believe that nature has something to do with it also.
For instance, living in a region that gets very cold, means that one has to be organized. To illustrate this for example, there are no stray dogs in Finland for obvious reasons - they would freeze. To survive in very cold temperatures, people have to be prepared, and this also means that a community has to be prepared also. There has to be a high level of organization to ensure that services work, electricity networks are stable, and food is available. People have to work together to do this today. But, there is also more isolation in the past, and people had to do more themselves to survive. In Finland, many people still build their own summerhouses, do their own basic renovation work, cut their own firewood etcetera.
But, in many countries, we have a culture of paid service, where rather than doing something ourselves, we hire people to do things for us, often at a higher quality than we could. But, this in itself can have an impact on our culture, as we come to expect something, that we couldn't deliver for ourselves. It is a type of entitlement, isn't it?
And as you can see, there are a lot of "generalizations" in all of this, because that is what culture is. It is a generalization that averages behavior, or perceptions of behaviors, of a group - not on each individual. Which sets the stage for a massive conflict, where decisions on "diversity" are made, based on assumptions that might not be that diverse at all. It also raises the question about things like identity politics in a world of individualism, because it doesn't work at all if people want to both be seen as unique individuals, as well as generalized group members.
The value of diversity in business comes down to two basic things - thought diversity, and skill diversity. It has nothing to do with color representation or sexual orientation representation. This is not to say that these things have no affect on a persons thoughts and skills, it is just that those are not good markers of whether there is value in the differences between two or more people. Experience matters of course, because that directly impacts on someone's personality, but making assumptions about an individual personality, their perspectives, their skills, and the value they bring to a team, just because they belong to a particular group, is well, prejudiced.
There is so much personality diversity within any single large label group like race, ethnicity, nationality and the like, that they are pretty useless indicators of an individual. So why use them as measures of diversity?
Humans generalize, because we are lazy. But more than that, it is because we don't have the capacity to hold all factors that matter, and the dynamics in play between them, in mind at once. We have to create heuristics, and they are always imperfect, because ware incapable of getting full resolution on all details, let alone make sense of them in a very broad range of contexts. Getting upset because someone makes generalizations, is like getting upset because someone is breathing - it is just part of our nature. Everyone's nature.
Everyone.
And all of us together.
There are jungles and deserts. Forests, seas, and frozen tundra. They shape us, and we shape them, and we are constantly changing, evolving, shifting our thoughts, discussing new concepts, and creating new tools. So, what culture are we holding onto - that of what we have done, or the human one that is never the same as the moment before it?
Taraz
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