23.3 Embrace authentic diversity

A key strength of any living system is authentic diversity. Human beings vary in our characters, New Magna Carta Mediumpersonalities, beliefs, attitudes, skills, preferences, values, looks, shapes, sizes, interests as well as our origins and identity. We must embrace authentic diversity not to give the appearance of fairness or to make ourselves feel better but because authentic diversity is more effective. An organisation that has an authentic diversity of people is more adaptive, learns, is creative and understands its market or those it serves. Promoting authentic diversity in our politics is a good thing for equality of opportunity, democratic accountability, social stability, fairness, creativity and adaptability. There is nothing authentically diverse about choosing members of the board or television journalists by making sure that you have one person who appears to come from each race and gender when they have all got similar characters, attitudes, world-views, experience and backgrounds. A truly diverse company board or group of television journalists would be a group that draws on people of many backgrounds, with different social values, different ways of thinking, fat people and thin people, unattractive people as well as attractive people, oddballs, mavericks and people who the metropolitan elite consider to be ordinary, boring and suburban. Let’s have true diversity.