A toilet brush and a toothbrush are not the same thing. Judging between the two rightly shows good sense especially when it comes to dental health.
That we can discriminate between different things reveals something about the human mind: intelligence is oriented to knowing the nature and order of things.
We’ve completed the summer reading program, partly billed as a common reading in diversity. This was once called “the humanities.” We read the same books from various authors and time periods on the subject of human nature and experience. Is there a difference in our “common reading in diversity” today?
Yes. Where studying the humanities helped us understand human experience and formed in us a discriminating mind capable of judging the adequacy of one view from another, today we celebrate diversity for diversity’s sake. There is no goal other than to arrive at the conclusion that there is difference. Isn’t that nice?
But does affirming difference lead to appreciating difference?
Consider for a moment that the most tolerant among us assert that vaginas and anuses are both sexual organs, that is, the same thing. Since they are the same thing, there is no real difference between homosexual marriage and heterosexual marriage. Homosexuality, therefore, must be accepted as the same but different expression of human love. If you do not buy this, you are labeled a homophobe.
Animals are no different than humans. Therefore, animals ought to have human rights. If you don’t agree because you think that humans are exceptionally more than animals, you will be labeled a speciesist. There is no difference between the cultures of East and West, the multiculturalists say. If you disagree, you are a cultural imperialist.
These examples (and it takes little effort to arrive at others) demonstrate that the ideology of diversity is not so diverse at all. There is one acceptable view about diversity. This view insists that everything that is different is the same. Those who hold this view are hypersensitive to any offense against it.
Stray from the sanctioned view, and you will be shunned from the community of the diverse, which, ironically, prides itself on being the community of inclusion. You will be shamed and labeled. You will wear a scarlet letter advertising your deviancy, for example, “H” for homophobe, and you will be cast into the outer darkness where there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth.
The popular view about diversity violates common sense.
It is myopic, authoritarian and childish. In so far as it seeks to limit thought through name-calling, shame and ostracism — it is a bully.
Insofar as it makes different things the same, it abandons intelligence, vitiates intellectual development, discourages intellectual inquiry and spawns vulgarity and foolishness. So, when someone offers you the conceptual equivalent of a toilet brush as if it were a toothbrush, please have the courage to decline. It will be good for your mental health.
