By D.S. Cook for Apostoic Venn.
A very strange theory indeed has achieved the status of a secular catechism in modernity. “What is our strength?” The teacher’s shadow looms over the school desk. “Diversity!” quips the young disciple. “Diversity is our strength!” But as we repeat this dogma with religious fervor, little hearts full of the dreams of an A+ on the social chalkboard, we rarely bother to subject it to a little philosophical scrutiny. Rescuing you (temporarily) from the many thoughts I have on this subject, and exhibiting great decency to your patience, I will spare you the full magazine and fire just one round today.
The bullet is Natural Law, held so dearly by the Stoics and the Greek philosophers, whose ideas represent roughly half of the value hybrid that built the greatest nation yet known. And my claim? That when examined through the lens of Stoic reason and the plain evidence of nature, the secular call-and-response first falls off a cliff, and then explodes three seconds after face-planting, not at all unlike a character in Spongebob. Strength in fact comes from unity, not from the multiplication of irreconcilable differences. The further a system drifts from the center of unity, the more diversity it envelops. This is true. But, keep sliding down the diversity slope indefinitely, and you will at some point arrive at something I’ll call “incompatible diversity,” in which the players no longer co-exist, but co-mbat.
I’m in a goofy mood tonight. Accept what you can’t control.
Stoicism, rooted in the logos that orders the universe (though failing to personify Him correctly) teaches that Natural Law is an unequivocal good, and that all is governed by its rational necessity. Marcus Aurelius writes “That which is not good for the beehive cannot be good for the bee,” demonstrating that the health of the whole is the criterion of the part. The part and whole must benefit one another by a type of symbiotic unity, a general adherence to a direction, else one actor will not survive the other. Alignment to some higher purpose (virtue per the Stoics) is necessary for a natural diversity to exist under its umbrella. Put shortly, two vehicles of different weights, strengths, and speeds, traveling in the same direction, will probably be ok, and both get where they are going. But, diversify to such an extent that the direction of travel is opposite, and collision and consequent destruction is imminent. The Stoics did not celebrate random mixture; they celebrated sympathetic cohesion; things that naturally belong together because they serve the same rational end.
As promised, let’s search out examples in nature. A sheet of ice on a grassy plain may survive quite handily when snow is added to the mix. In the right temperatures, water can be added as well, and become part of the whole as it assimilates to the ice and snow. But, extend the diversity to include first sand, then salt, then a river of hot lava? Now the ice is mud, the grass is ash, and the whole plain is a lava field. You see, ice and fire do not coexist in peaceful tension, one annihilates the other. Predator and prey are not strengthened by being penned together. The lamb does not grow stronger in the wolf’s stomach, and the wolf does not survive when no more sheep are ever to be born. Great job. Mutual enrichment achieved. Oil and water do not enrich one another when shaken together, they separate at the first opportunity, each obeying its own nature and having nothing to do with the other. These are not failures of tolerance. They are demonstrations of natural law. Things that are fundamentally opposed in essence cannot form a stable, stronger compound. They form either a hierarchy (one submits or dies) or perpetual conflict.
Human associations follow the same logic. A chorus is strong not because every singer chooses a different key. It is only by serving the same key in a variety of tunes that they flourish. A Roman legion was formidable not because every soldier brought the tribal war cry of his homeland, but because all marched under one standard, spoke one language of command, and shared one purpose. Differences of skin pigmentation, height, and hairiness might be introduced, and we might rightly call that “diversity.” But, the moment incompatible diversity appears, tribal, religious, ideological… the formation frays. As the Greek historian Polybius observed, the early Roman Republic endured because it achieved an almost miraculous unity of customs. When that unity eroded under the pressure of empire and imported cults, the Republic itself perished.
Yet today we are told that bringing together groups with radically opposed first-principles will somehow produce a stronger whole. It has not. The Protestant native of this land may do very well when a Catholic is added to the mix. When the Pentecostal moves in down the street, they all might have a beer on Friday, arguing over theology and clapping each other on the back in parting. But the jihadist must kill or convert the Christian, and the Christian must not allow him to do it. The atheist must banish God from education, and the Muslim must not allow him to do it. The Stoic insight holds true: things that do not naturally sympathize cannot long cohere without violence or domination. One side must yield its nature, or perpetual civil war ensues. We are in ideological civil war already, kept from open conflict only by the dwindling threat of state force. This is not strength. It is a brittle equilibrium waiting to combust.
True diversity occurs within unity. The human body is the classic Stoic example: eyes, hands, feet, and heart are gloriously diverse in their functions, yet all serve the common life of the organism. If the hand were trying to grasp the throat whenever the body slept, this would not make for good sleep, or a strong body.
The modern experiment in incompatible diversity proceeds from a post-Stoic, Post-Judeo/Christian, post-natural-law premise: that human will can override natural sympathy through policy and sentiment. Nature is not so easily bullied. As Heraclitus, the weeping philosopher admired by the Stoics, said: “War is the father of all things” only because strife eventually resolves into higher harmony or destruction. There is no third option. A society that imports irreconcilable opposites and calls it “strength” is simply hastening the day when war, not policy, will decide which nature prevails.
Unity is strength. Compatible diversity within a shared rational order enriches. Incompatible diversity is the prelude to fracture. The Stoics knew this; the bees know this; even oil and water know this. Only modern ideology pretends otherwise… and nature, patient as ever, waits to collect her due.
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