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Diverse Thinking and its Social Strategy

A brief summation

Difference and diversity are the most fundamental forces in the world.

From a singularity in a big bang, variety and complexity have been evolving for billions of years. Whether it be stars and galaxies or planets and living organisms or Human individuals and Human brains, differentiation is a steady long term force of the cosmos. From this we get biodiversity, Human diversity, and the diversity of stars and galaxies, diversity at the micro level of atoms and particles.

Differentiation, the creation of difference, comes in many forms such as individuality, particularity, diversity, complexity, change, evolution, chaos and more.

Creativity is an important form of differentiation, and is more the technique of it, the method of developing differentiation. Social creativity is the skill of creating and supporting differentiation in societies and cultures. Social Creativity is the creation of History.

Opposite to differentiation is the idea of “undifferentiation” -- this is a force that stresses not difference, individuality or diversity but similarity, organization, replication, hierarchy, models. Undifferentiation is necessary to create stable organizations or entities.

The combination of differentiation and undifferentiation helps us produce “diverse wholes”, wholes that are flexible and which offer freedom and variety, and which are capable of evolving. Techniques of building and managing these wholes are applied to multiculturalism, democracy, economic systems, psychology, education, media, a planet etc.

Differentiation is the primary power in the world, organization is secondary and it serves it. Organization allows the differentiation to cooperate, it protects differentiation, it sustains it, it helps it to “reproduce”.

For Human beings today, the first priority however is freedom of differentiation, that is, the liberation of those groups that are restricted and suffering. Individuals, classes, ethnic groups, races, religions, gender, sexual orientation , subcultures and many more groups are unhappy because of anti-diverse social systems. Even certain institutions such as education or healthcare are dominated by stress on business and profit.

Liberation of differentiation, of those marginalized takes a kind of “revolution”. Included in this process is an ongoing experiment in building new institutions and lifestyles.

Once this radical action has come to certain stage of completion then there can be free association and the project of building a “diverse whole” can be begun.

Also, note the philosophy of differentiation does not accept egotism, bigotry, close-mindedness etc. If one believes in diverse thinking then one respects the views of other individuals and groups. Difference and diversity is extended to all. Those who claim to believe in diverse thinking but do not extend it to others are not diverse thinkers, and therefore are not groups that deserve respect or an equal place in new world of social diversity.

For Human beings the issues of differentiation and diversity include many things. Below is a long list topics that reflect the core problems of our world:

· Healthy Individuality, and not egotism, alienation, group think or emotional dysfunction

· Multiculturalism and equality

· General social diversity including all social strata

· Personal Identity, the fundamental quest of every Human being

· Self awareness of the force of difference and creating thought methods to analyze and management it

· Personal creativity

· Social creativity, the skills and process of making a better world

· Golden rule, treat others as you would have them treat you

· Social individuality, the individual who has a balance of individuality and sociality

· Economic systems that have a variety of operating targets and measures, not simply money and profit

· Government that reflects social diversity by using methods of direct popular democracy like referendum and recall

· International cooperation and peace

· Balance with Nature, restoring the ecosystem

· Management of Time, so that we avoid the manipulation of time by media and marketing

· New view of History that understands the process of social differentiation and the forces that suppress it

· Communication and Media whose job is create and manage a diverse whole of information and opinion

· Rituals that rebind us, reconnect us either to the whole of ourselves or society and humanity

· Education that teaches psychology, ethics, philosophy and creativity as well as math and analysis to create a complete Human being

· Multiple institutions in society that represent multiple values, and ending the domination of corporations and money

· Mental diverse of sub-minds such as reason, imagination, emotions, subconscious, wisdom, memory and more

· Directness, the path of direct knowledge, direct participation, direct responsibility, direct communication and direct action

· Empiric, the individual who learns primarily by going into life, collecting the data of life and then gaining lessons and wisdom

· Love of the different, love of the same is common, but love of the different is what is missing in this world

· New entertainment and art that helps individuals develop personal mythology, teaches life lessons, respects social diversity and promotes creativity

· Family, a family reconnected with other families and the community, a new extended family

· New myth of a Human being

· New myth of our planet and the Human race

· New Forbiddens, that is, a leap to higher moral codex, what behaviors are we now willing to say are absolutely not acceptable in this epoch, new forbiddens tell if we have actually made any ethical advances