Human Diversity Effects Social Management
Just what is human diversity and how does it impact social interaction and social management? This is a question that leaders should consider when creating and evaluating rules of society before they declare them into law. How well they do this, if they do this can mean the difference between order and chaos when laws and penalties must be enforced. The intent of this article is to contemplate the dilemmas we must overcome as well as the benefits we may enjoy from the diversity of humanity.
What is Human Diversity?
Before we get specifically into human diversity, let’s see what diversity is.
Diversity is: “the condition of having or being composed of different elements.”
If we look around us, just about everything both living and not living seems to offer diversity. It may not be clearly evident in things of the same category, but if you look more closely, you can see a lot of diversity. Snow might be a good example of something that does not seem to offer diversity until you take a closer look at different flakes. With living things, diversity is usually fairly obvious physically even when looking at the same species. Generally living things of the same species come in a variety of sizes, shapes and colors. Diversity is frequently seen as the spice of life. Without diversity, the world would be a pretty boring place.
The same is true with humans. Though we are all of the same species making us alike, we are all very different. We can be different both physically and mentally, but both of those offer a variety of sub categories.
Physical differences are presented in pretty much every body part. Unless we are identical twins, the differences are apparent. We can be tall, short, heavy or lean. We have different color hair, eyes and skin. We can even have different shapes to the obvious parts of our bodies like our heads, eyes, noses, ears, hands, fingers, feet, etc. However, this is not limited to external body parts, our insides are also the same but different.
Mentally, consists of two main categories: intellectual and emotional. Both categories cover very broad and complex ranges that make humans very multifarious creatures to interact with. When it comes to social management, this is the challenge that the human species has yet to master.
Intellectually, we can be highly intelligent or severely lacking in intelligence. Our intelligence can also be high in a focused area and lacking in other areas. Intelligence and logic presents a great deal of variety in humans.
Emotionally, seems to be where our diversity can challenge our comprehension. There is a wide assortment of emotions that humans carry around within us, and each emotional trait appears to have an extremely broad range across the species. Some individuals may show little to no evidence of some emotions and demonstrate exorbitance in others. The mix of degrees of different emotions is quite varied across each emotion for each individual. Emotions seem to be a significant factor in our need for social management systems.
The combination of physical and mental touches on our motor controls such as coordination, dexterity and agility. These can be overall or body part specific.
Evaluating Human Diversity
I am not an expert on human physiology or psychology so the following theory is only founded on my personal experiences, knowledge and observations. It is my contention that each specific physical and mental trait falls across a range or spectrum for all of humanity. If you could plot a point (or in some traits it would be a range) for one explicit trait for every human on the planet, the result would be a version of a bell curve of humanity for that trait. The majority of the population would fall within the four central standard deviations around the mean and you would have the extremes of that trait at the opposing ends of the bell curve. Some traits may not prove to be normal distributions, but I believe most would. The bell curve would represent the human spectrum of diversity for that particular trait.
If you were to repeat this process for each and every physical and mental human trait, you would end up with what I refer to as the spectrum of spectrums of human diversity. This is a basic way of describing how humans are all different, physically and mentally. The majority of the population may be similar, but there will always be the 3rd standard deviation minority of the population that will have an extreme mental or emotional position. These are the members of society that will tend to stand out positively or negatively. The extremes are those who will often be: on either side of vigorous debates, exceptional athletes and scholars as well as serious threats to society.
This can also explain why it is so difficult to get the masses to move on anything. The majority reside in or near the balanced center of the bell curve. So the majority are not out on the extremes of their emotions and reactions. However, emotions are not a stagnant thing. You may want to think about emotions as a range rather than a data point. Human emotions oscillate and can be stirred up to extreme positions by events or coercion. This is always happening in human social interaction.
The picture you should be getting is that humans are all different. Most humans reside around the median in our mental and physical traits which identify the majority average for these traits. Then we have small percentages of humans who reside in the extreme areas of the bell curve on one or some of their traits. This makes them out of the norm for that trait, and very often this results in out of the norm actions in social interaction.
For example, consider the bell curve for aggressiveness. On one extreme you have a small percentage of the population that is excessively passive. On the other end of the bell curve you have a small percentage that is extremely aggressive. The extreme passive individual may refuse to commit any act of violence even if it would cost them their life. On the other hand, the extremely aggressive individual would become violent with little or no provocation. If you take a minute and think about other emotions in relationship to this one example, the individuals on the extreme ends of the bell curve may be a small percentage of the population, but they are the ones who frequently stand out in society. We see them as heroes, villains, geniuses’, adventurers, super athletes, etc. What they are extreme at and how they apply their extreme trait will often paint a good or bad image of them in the public mind.
The reason for many of the laws we have in society is often to deal with the extremists. Those who choose to go outside the acceptable norms to accomplish their objectives. At the same time, it is frequently extremists who are the ones we idolize and claim as our heroes.
Double Edge Sword of Diversity
Diversity is naturally etched into the structure of the human species. It is in our biochemical electrical composition(genetics) and it is developed in our environmental experiences. If humanity was not diverse, we would not last very long as a species. Our diversity feeds our evolutional progress and it is the extremes that do much of the driving. For example, over time humans have bred the aggressiveness out of many animals in order to keep them as pets. The unfortunate side effect to breeding out aggression is that the domesticated animal is now highly unlikely to be able to survive in the world on their own. Survival in nature requires aggressive action. Domesticated animals have been bred to be 100 % dependent on humans for their survival. This too would be true if we tried to do the same for humans and breed extremes out of humanity. We would become dependent. This is actually happening through the development of technology. We are losing our means of fundamental survival skills and knowledge and replacing them with technology that does the work for us. There are not many of us who could truly survive in the wilderness on our own.
Pro and Con Example
One true double edged sword of diversity is our perception or perspective. Because we are all so diverse, we all see the world around us differently. When we practice cooperation, this gives us a tremendous boost when we explore, innovate, invent, and learn. When we share our different perspectives in cooperation, we cover far more territory in our efforts than any one person could by iterating through failures and successes to find accomplishment. A cooperative group of people will more often than not reach success in an objective through cooperation than one person will on their own. The only exception to this would be if the one person happened to be an extreme of intellect. Cooperation in our diversity of perspective has proven to be a significant driving force behind the advancement of humanity.
On the other edge of the sword of perspective is where it can often be the biggest obstacle to unification and cooperation. People with different perspectives often become excessively emotional about their standpoint and refuse to accept any other point of view. This strong emotion shuts down cooperation and unification. Sadly, this is the most potent asset of the masses when confronting powerful minorities that steer society. Unification and cooperation is critical for the masses to move against the powers that be in humanity. When the majority of the population are fragmented with different perspectives, biases and prejudice it gives united and organized minority power groups the ability to control tremendous numbers of people, allowing them to manipulate the social order as they please.
Managing Both Edges
It is evident that we cannot live without our diversity and we have yet to fully master living with it. This presents us with challenges when we attempt to devise rules of social order. If everyone was allowed to act as they like, then the people with extreme traits would always be out performing the average while the individuals on the minimal extreme would not be able to keep up. This may not be a problematic with some traits, but it can cause social chaos through other traits.
With proper parental guidance and education, most children can be taught to master their extreme traits in a positive manner. There will always be the exception and there are often parents who exasperate the problem rather than channel it in a positive direction. Because there will always be the extreme negative factor, or polar opposites in the human population, there will always be disturbances in social order. Humanity has been working at methods to manage the social disruptions that are often initiated by the extremes of human diversity. The two primary organizations that work on managing social disorder are governments and religions. Neither organization has managed to completely control the extremes and likely never will without doing some serious and detrimental modification to the fundamental make up of humans. Let’s hope this never happens.
At the same time, governments and religions also have to deal with the extremes of diversity within their own organizations since they too are made up of humans. People are constantly at these organizations trying to change the rules to their liking. This often causes these systems to resemble a pendulum. One extreme group will lobby for a change and gets it. The effects of the change cause social activity to swing out of control in one direction. Then a group from the opposing end of the spectrum protests and forces the organization to change again causing social activity to swing to an extreme in the opposite direction. This is just a rudimentary example demonstrating how systems of social management are prone to be inconsistent over time in ways that actually cause more social interruption.
This oscillation of the extremes has kept humanity unstable regardless of what form of government or social management model has been applied. Some models seem to have some success when the population is small. However, as the population grows, so do the problems. Humans are inclined toward expansion and migration. When different groups who are unknown to each other interact, we also tend to see trouble. Finally, we have conflicts arise over time through the transitions from one generation to another. Newer generations present new perspectives and new wants. Newer generations can lose knowledge and emotional attachment to the rules for social order and seek to change the management model. I refer to this as “generational degradation”. This too often leads to divergence from social norms resulting in issues with social order.
Human diversity and especially extreme human diversity plays a big part in the success or failure of any model of social management. A big part of this is because many of our leaders are extremes themselves. Being leaders gives them direct access to the levers of society. Most models of government deal with this very critical aspect of humanity re actively rather than proactively. Societies create rules “as they go” to deal with situations that are the result of extreme human diversity often resulting from insufficient or improper parenting and education. Perhaps we need to redesign our best model of social structure so the management of the fundamentals of human nature is designed into the model. This will allow us to better address extreme diversity, population, global interaction, generational degradation, poor parenting and education, among others, rather than constantly trying to react to the chaos they create. Managing, limiting or eliminating extremes from leadership positions should also be a prime objective!
Is humanity is capable of creating a social management system that is fair to all, consistent over time and impervious to manipulation and corruption, while at the same time keeps humans civil to one another, and in harmony with the planet, biodiversity and resources? Can we iterate to improve our model of governance to prevent extreme social classes and authoritarian power abuse while promoting individual liberty through interdependent cooperation and ensuring sustainable harmony with the planet? We certainly have the intelligence for it; however, it appears we first have to overcome the controlling oppressors on the planet before we will be able to begin the next social management experiment!
