The paradox of inclusivity
To choose something, is to by definition, to exclude everything else.
To be excluded is to face the harshest punishment known to mankind.
We used to call it exile and it was so harsh that some people chose death instead.
Nowadays, we rarely use exile.
Solitary confinement is the punishment of choice, and it may be worse. Studies have shown that if someone is put in solitary confinement for a week they experience brain damage on par with someone who has a head injury.
Some of us face solitary confinement daily — in the form of social isolation.
In positive contexts, social isolation can benefit us (e.g. meditation, tranquility) but once it turns into loneliness it hurts us.
Loneliness alone is known to increase our mortality rate by 26%.
It’s not just humans that are affected by social isolation. This affects horses, fish, bees, and mice. There even was a dolphin who “committed suicide.”
Stories like this drive us to create a more inclusive world.
But, a question that never gets asked is — what are the costs?
You may be thinking, “What could go wrong with inclusivity?!?”
A wise economist once said, “There are no solutions. There are only tradeoffs.”
The tradeoffs of inclusivity are — despite our best efforts, we can’t have inclusivity without exclusivity.
If you are in a monogamous relationship you are the ultimate representation of this. You exclude everyone besides your partner.
But, even if you happen to be an enlightened being and in a polyamorous relationship, you face the same problem because it would be physically impossible to include everyone. (get your mind out of the gutter)
What show did you watch last night? What plumber fixed your bathroom? What dog did you choose at the shelter? Are you going to have two children or three?
This is the paradox of inclusivity — you can’t have inclusion without exclusion.
It can be paralyzing. We could avoid making any decisions at all.
But, then we realize that not making a decision is also a decision. By not choosing, we exclude everything as well.
How do we move forward?
Here are the roads most traveled:
- We accept our circumstances and make the best of them
- We become cynical, of everything
- We ignore these tradeoffs and propose an ideal vision (e.g. utopianism or idealism)
All three of these paths have flaws. Such is life. Let’s visualize how they play out in real life.
I once participated in a group discussion about how to improve the disparity between men and women in a men-filled profession (kept anonymous for privacy). The discussion was good until the Q&A when the mood dampened as an audience member claimed the group was exclusive,
- “As a non-binary person, I feel excluded. The word ‘woman’ is even exclusive…”
“This is problematic, what are you going to do about it?”
The feeling in the room was eerie, like being a defendant in a courtroom.
This exemplifies the #2 response above — cynicism. The audience member has a deep cynicism about the women’s group and fundamental systems like the English language (e.g. the word “woman”).
It also exemplifies #3. There’s an idealism in the statement, “This is problematic, what are you going to do about it?”
And, to take path #1, you may think, would have been an act of complacency. How will things get better without action?
These are the core flaws of cynicism and idealism — it’s that their logic is circular and dependent on the eyes of the beholder.
Therefore, they are just as easily used against us. For example, if this was a non-binary group, and a woman was in the audience, she could theoretically make the same claim.
(I say theoretically because society has made it politically incorrect for a woman to make this claim as she is lower on the privilege totem pole. We’ll return to this later.)
What’s more — cynicism and idealism are good first steps. This is because they are better than being naïve and nihilistic.
The next step, though, is to transcend cynicism and idealism, and for this, we need a new philosophy.
The point of philosophy is to:
- “Have a conversation between your current self and a future self that has reached their full potential.”
And, to embody a new philosophy we have to philosophize — we have to read, think, hear, speak, and act on it.
This takes time, as all good things do.
- “It is notorious that a philosophy is not made, it grows” -Friedrich Waismann
What philosophies shall we embody then?
- If we want to transcend cynicism, an altered version of Hanlon’s Razor will work, “Have a bias for assuming good intent.”
- To transcend idealism or utopianism, the aforementioned economic principle will work — “There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs.”
We are left with path #1, “accept our circumstances and make the best of them.”
Path #1 isn’t happily ever after either.
This is because it doesn’t fix the problem of exclusion, or unfairness, that still permeates society and the entire universe today.
Instead of accepting our circumstances and making the best of them, we are compelled to make things fair.
The problem with this approach is that each of us has our perspective on what’s fair, and each of us has a tendency to see our perspective as fairer than others.
This can sometimes be referred to as righteousness — our perspectives are morally right and justifiable; virtuous.
This is why Thomas Aquinas once said:
- “Every time someone sins, they’re sinning under the guise of good.”
They are not sinning because their behavior has been justified.
In the book Better Angels of Our Nature, Steven Pinker adds a psychological layer:
- “In an influential article called “Crime as Social Control,” the legal scholar Donald Black argued that most of what we call crime is, from the point of view of the perpetrator, the pursuit of justice. Most homicides are really instances of capital punishment, with a private citizen as the judge, jury, and executioner.”
Pinker continues,
- “These observations overturn many dogmas about violence. One is that violence is caused by a deficit of morality and justice. On the contrary, violence is often caused by a surfeit of morality and justice, at least as they are conceived in the minds of the perpetrators.”
But, I still feel compelled to take action
We recall the great saints and sages of our time acting to fight for fairness and inclusivity (e.g. MLK Jr., Booker T Washington, Susan B. Anthony).
We suggest — if they hadn’t done anything we’d still have exclusivity.
The words “saints and sages” are italicized because they are once in a lifetime.
You and I aren’t saints and sages (just yet). We are still victims of our human fallibility.
For example, our most cherished virtues, like compassion, can lead us astray.
Our most loving mothers can lead us astray.
These great virtues of love and compassion, the fundamental building blocks of inclusivity, also have tradeoffs.
An age-old platitude is relevant,
- “Everything in moderation, including moderation.”― Oscar Wilde
Finally, it’s time to return to the privilege totem pole. It exemplifies the complexity of these tradeoffs.
Try to picture yourself next to a real totem pole but imagine it is incomprehensibly tall. At the top of this hypothetical totem pole is the most privileged person of them all. At the bottom, you will find the least privileged.
People are stacked along this totem pole by their group identities (e.g. race, ethnicity, gender, religion, etc). Those on the bottom of the totem pole are victims and those at the top are oppressing those at the bottom.
At least, this is the message our media communicates.
What’s more — we are told it’s not just the privileged who are oppressive, but the whole damn system is oppressive.
Naturally, what comes next when we have an enemy identified is to rally some allies and take action to fight the enemy.
This fight is even coming from our governmental institutions, where they ask us to dismantle the oppressive system.
The fight is embedded in our new language — we are either an “ally” or an enemy.
Silence is now a form of violence. Although this is usually said on a whim, the phrase falls victim to the same flaws mentioned before — its logic is circular and dependent on the eyes of the beholder.
For example, what if I explored your social media feeds and found no mention of supporting children’s cancer? Or, pedophilia?
These messages cause division and make the problem worse.
You may be thinking — I thought we were talking about inclusivity. How did we get to violence and war (allies and enemies)?
You may know by now — it’s because we didn’t consider the costs of inclusivity.
Almost 180 years ago, Karl Marx barreled forward with the same message of inclusivity except he called those at the bottom “proletariats” and those at the top “bourgeoisie.” Marx called for a violent revolution and many people listened.
Our motivations are not what they appear to be
- “There is a huge discrepancy, showing little overlap, between one’s explicitly expressed motivations and those revealed implicitly.” -Iain McGilchrist, The Matter With Things
Our intentions may start with compassion, love, and inclusivity, but these may quickly turn into beliefs.
We’ve been stacking the totem pole all wrong. We forgot about beliefs.
If our beliefs are unorthodox it doesn’t matter what group identity we are (race, ethnicity, gender, religion), we will find ourselves at the wrong end of the totem pole.
Retired Princeton professor, Carol Swain fits this description. She is a black woman who has a Masters in Law at Yale, a Ph.D. from UNC and is the author of many books. She does not adhere to the most popular opinion (the orthodoxy), so she finds herself repeatedly ridiculed and censored.
Then, there’s the greatest black philosopher you’ve never heard of — Thomas Sowell. He has a Ph.D. in Economics, is the author of 45+ books, and has been a columnist for more than 150 newspapers.
I first discovered Thomas Sowell in a documentary called Uncle Tom, a derogatory term aimed at a dissenting black person.
The more a person dissents against public opinion, the worse it gets. And, the more they align with public opinion, the better it gets.
Examples of aligning to public opinion include — Ibram X. Kendi, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Nicole Hannah Jones, and Patrisse Collours. These folks get massive donations, their work gets boosted, and the mainstream media amplifies their message.
And, this is despite big questions about their leadership, mismanaged funds, and moral character.
Then, there’s the opposite end of the spectrum. Black leaders who are politically conservative. The LA Times once called Larry Elder the “face of white supremacy” during his campaign for governor. Dr. Ben Carson has been called a “black white supremacist.”
How do we end up discriminating against the people we were purporting to help?
…paradox of inclusivity.
This, of course, isn’t a black-and-white problem.
Direct your attention to the students at Evergreen State College in Washington, driven by inclusivity, who ended up holding their teachers hostage.
This also isn’t an American problem.
The beginning of every totalitarian regime has begun with inclusivity, envisioned as an idealistic paradise. But, on the path to their paradise, everything was justified.
This isn’t even a human problem. It is a pre-human problem. Every species on the planet forms some type of ingroup, and an ingroup literally can’t be defined without an outgroup.
Thus, we arrive at our conclusion which is where we started.
With every action, even our most virtuous, we have to continually ask ourselves — “What are the costs?”
