Increased Diversity is an Essential Component to Making America Great Again.

Just as the separation occurred over many millions of years, the Last Judgment will extend over a similarly long period, and perhaps even longer. Its length depends, however, on the effectiveness of the present speed-up. We have frequently noted that the miracle is a device for shortening but not abolishing time. If a sufficient number of people become truly miracle-minded quickly, the shortening process can be almost immeasurable. But it is essential that these individuals free themselves from fear sooner than would ordinarily be the case, because they must emerge from the basic conflict if they are to bring peace to the minds of others. [CE T-2.XIII.3]

I’ve been tuning into the news since Donald Trump’s inauguration with a particular focus on what seem to be his confusions about just what will make America great again. Before the inauguration, the popular sentiment was to not read too much into his words; to wait and see what he does. Now it seems that tackling the “problem” of diversity in our culture has been his first major focus. It appears he’s trying to eliminate the diversity of the American population itself, by way of his immigration crackdown, but he’s also attempting to reduce the diversity of voices allowed to influence policy-making positions. Here, I’m referring to his executive order that anyone hired into the federal government under the auspices of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) be placed on paid leave for three months, and his firing of seventeen Inspectors General. On the 18th of February, he signed another executive order stating that only the President and his Attorney General have the authority to speak to what is lawful, at least amongst the organizations that fall within the purview of the executive branch of government.

Since he sees his election as a sweeping mandate, he hopes we will all conform to his opinion, and any other opinions should be tossed aside. The idea this is possible is entirely absurd. He might be able to control other people’s actions from a position of power like the one he enjoys today. He might be able to control what people say to some extent. He can limit their capabilities. He can exert some control over their bodies with his laws; he can put them on a plane and drop them off in another place or lock them up. Even with all the wiggle room he has, he simply can't control how they think.

If you haven’t heard of Viktor Frankl, he was a holocaust survivor who lost most of his family to the concentration camps. Here’s a famous quote for Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning.

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

He used this freedom to decide not to hate the Nazis, primarily because of his awareness that he would personally suffer from that hatred for the rest of his life if he chose to hold onto it.

In A Course in Miracles, Jesus says,

[T]he argument that underlies the defense of freedom is perfectly valid, Because it is true, it should not be fought for, but it should be sided with. Those who are against freedom believe that its outcome will hurt them, which cannot be true. But those who are for freedom, even if they are misguided in how they defend it, are siding with the one thing in this world which is true. Whenever anyone can listen fairly to both sides of any issue, he will make the right decision. This is because he has the answer. Conflict can indeed be projected, but it must be intrapersonal first. [CE T-7.1.5.3-9]

In the footnotes of the CE version of ACIM, they interpret Jesus here as saying that he always supports the defense of freedoms like this, but he doesn’t support defending it through warfare. I think he’s saying to do what Frankl chose to do, refuse to give in to hatred. Yes, speak up and say, “this is insane!” in response to the current situation, but do not give in to violence or attack of any kind because in doing so, you are essentially forsaking that very freedom for yourself if you do; you are sacrificing your own integrity.

I recently delivered a talk on YouTube about the Ecology of Communication which I based in part on an intriguing statement made by Rex Weyler, one of the founders of Greenpeace. He said that when he has problems in his own life, he looks to how nature solves its problems for guidance on solving his.1 So, as an addendum to that presentation, I am offering this critical analysis of the idea that limiting diversity could somehow make America “great again.”

I say emphatically, It will not.

From my spiritual perspective, I regard nature as a reflection of our human nature. With this perspective, I can look to nature to better understand its laws, and conduct myself in alignment with these laws. These aren’t like human laws. Those laws can in fact be broken. If you get caught, you get punished for them if they can prove you did it. But we still have the freedom to break them and we sometimes accomplish it. Nature’s laws will not compromise. We can try to break them but we can’t succeed. They are just the way things work.

For his plan to work, breaking the laws of nature would be essential; and that is inconceivable. It was designed this way by one with far more power and authority than Donald Trump will ever realize himself. My judgment of Donald Trump is that he truly has the best intentions. He really thinks his plan will make America great again. His plans to accomplish this are based on a lack of critical thinking skills. He’s just plain wrong in terms of how to achieve this. His pronouncement of diversity as a destructive or unhealthy idea is fundamentally incorrect.

Let’s look at some evidence that supports the idea that diversity is an essential element of a healthy system. Intuitively, I believe we all know this already, at least, there’s part of each of us that knows this. But in this time of increasing instability and uncertainty, we appear to have forgotten, so a reminder is in order.

Gut Microdiversity

I’ve known many people in my life who think that having sterile surfaces in their kitchen leads to greater health. I’ve always had a different intuition that exposing myself to some of the random microbes floating out there might actually improve my immune system. I have always enjoyed very good gut health as a result.

In a YouTube video, entitled Your Gut Microbiome: The Most Important Organ You’ve Never Heard of, the presenter mentions the word diversity in the first ten seconds, and another half a dozen times after that. The speaker here, a gut health expert named Erika Ebbel, also mentioned the aseptic environments we often try to create for ourselves being antithetical to good health.

In his YouTube video called The Secret to Increasing the Diversity of Gut Microbes, Dr. Eric Berg shares several tips to increasing your gut health through promoting greater diversity of microbes in your gut.

Viruses Thrive on Lack of Diversity

One example of a population being affected by a lack of genetic diversity due to a novel virus is the case of the European settlers and indigenous populations in the Americas during the Age of Exploration. When Europeans arrived in the Americas, they inadvertently introduced novel viruses, such as smallpox and measles, to which the indigenous populations had little to no immunity due to their isolated genetic pool. This lack of genetic diversity made them highly susceptible to these diseases, resulting in devastating population declines.

The Irish Potato Famine in the mid-19th century, caused by a novel strain of Phytophthora infestans, led to widespread crop failures and famine in Ireland. The Irish population's heavy reliance on a single variety of potato with limited genetic diversity left them vulnerable to this novel pathogen, contributing to significant population loss through starvation and disease.

In more recent history, the rapid spread of HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa has had a profound impact on populations with limited genetic diversity. The lack of genetic resistance to the virus has resulted in devastating consequences for many communities, leading to significant population declines and impacting social structures. -Chat GPT

Business Thrives on Diversity

In the realm of business, there is a study from 2009, published in The American Sociological Review.

• The study tests eight hypotheses derived from the value-in-diversity thesis, using data from the 1996-1997 National Organizations Survey.

• Results support seven of the eight hypotheses, showing that racial diversity is associated with increased sales revenue, more customers, greater market share, and greater relative profits.

• Gender diversity is also associated with increased sales revenue, more customers, and greater relative profits.

• The study finds that diversity can lead to creative conflict, which may result in better solutions to workplace problems.

• Critics argue that diversity can lead to conflict and reduced group cohesion, but the study's findings suggest that the benefits outweigh the costs.

• The study controls for various factors such as legal form of organization, company size, establishment size, organization age, industrial sector, and region.

• The results indicate that diversity is among the most important predictors of business outcomes, with racial diversity consistently showing a strong positive relationship.

The findings support the case for diversity in the business realm, suggesting that a diverse workforce can enhance creativity, problem-solving, and overall business performance.

Education is More Effective With Diversity Intact

In the realm of education, there have been quite a few studies which find that increased diversity is of value to one’s educational outcomes. Here’s an outline of one study’s findings:

• Social science research supports the positive impact of a diverse student body on learning and democratic outcomes.

• ​Diverse environments foster student growth, identity formation, and cognitive development.

• ​Interaction with diverse peers promotes intellectual and moral development.

• Most students come from segregated backgrounds and benefit from diverse college environments.

• ​Interaction with diverse peers challenges assumptions and broadens perspectives.

• ​Diverse environments promote mental and psychological growth.

• Heterogeneous environments are crucial for fostering active engagement in learning.

• Diversity produces more active thinking and intellectual engagement.

• Students learn from personal experiences and interactions with diverse peers.

• Diversity fosters democratic values, perspective-taking, and civic engagement.

• Students educated in diverse environments are better prepared for leadership roles.

• Research shows that diversity experiences have positive effects on learning and democracy outcomes.

• Structural diversity enables actual experiences with diverse peers.

• Students with the most diversity experiences show the greatest engagement in active thinking and intellectual skills.

• Diversity experiences foster intellectual engagement and academic competence.

• Classroom diversity enhances understanding of complexity and multiple perspectives.

• ​Curricular initiatives that emphasize diversity have positive effects on critical thinking and ethnocentrism.

• Diversity experiences help students become active citizens and participants in a pluralistic democracy.

• ​Students with the most diversity experiences are most engaged in citizenship activities and cultural awareness.

• Diversity fosters perspective-taking and the belief that democracy and difference can be compatible.

• Intergroup dialogues promote perspective-taking, mutuality, and positive evaluations of conflict.

• ​Research shows that positive interracial experiences promote appreciation of both differences and commonalities.

Healthy Ecological Systems Rely on Diversity

In Why is biodiversity important – with David Attenborough – The Royal Society,6 Attenborough claims “we must provide pathways for global development that work with, rather than against nature, and we need to give the communities affected, a seat at the table…We need all the riches of our living planet to help us live healthy, happy lives long into the future.”

In a TED talk from ecologist Thomas Crowther called The global movement to restore nature’s biodiversity,Thomas uses an idea proposed by his own group to illustrate how we can mistakenly latch onto a single over-simplified solution: The idea that planting about a trillion trees could help to restore 30 percent of the excess carbon in the atmosphere in a relatively short time. He’s not suggesting it’s a bad idea, but when it was introduced to the public, he noted the widespread excitement it was met with. He noticed people latched onto it as a single solution to the problem. It’s only one of countless steps that must be taken. All of these examples come from the internet, the realm of public opinion. But public opinion is all over the place right now. When so splintered and segregated in our opinions, as we are at this moment, we become vulnerable to people who want to be The Authority.

Diversity of Political Opinions

In the realm of politics, there have been several attempts throughout our nations legislative history to introduce a greater diversity of opinion, or plurality, into the conversation. Most constitutional experts agree that plurality is essential for democracy for the obvious reason that if we all agreed on things, democracy itself would be unnecessary. So, diversity is the state of affairs wherein democracy becomes useful. It is through the push and pull between the competing factions of thought, that change occurs. The tension needs to be there before it can be resolved. As long as all voices are included in the conversation, and listened to thoughtfully, a just solution exists and will be found.

The emergent moment is so crucial in this. Laws will inevitably become arcane over time and need to be reconsidered. Take the electoral college, which was a reasonable adaptation to the circumstances on the ground at the time it was introduced, but it doesn’t maintain it’s integrity in the context of today’s demographic realities. That’s why more voices rather than less are an essential part of forward progress. If we don’t listen to the voices saying this doesn’t work for them, how else would we know? How else can we find a just solution that works for everyone? The failure to adjust the electoral college system to our times is an indication that the strength of our pluralism has been diminished over time, probably due to the pay to play ethos of our politics today.

Nowadays, even the idealist vision for America as a melting pot has become a controversial topic. There are some voices that will want to preserve the distinct traits of their distinct ethnic and cultural identities. There will be other voices that want to assimilate these various distinctions into the greater culture. There’s no need to judge either of these opinions, but there is a need to understand them. The tensions within this dance will get resolved in the macrocosm as people share their views with one another in microcosmic conversations. That happens naturally so long as democracy is running in a healthy pluralistic fashion. Views do shift when they’re not formed and maintained in isolation.

I will devote the rest of this to the voice of one who is in a position of great authority. Like other devoted students of A Course in Miracles, I believe the voice that dictated the material to Helen Schuchman was the voice of Jesus. It undoubtedly identifies itself as Jesus in passages like this:

You will not find peace until you have removed the nails from the hands of God’s Son and taken the last thorn from his forehead. The love of God surrounds His Son whom the god of the crucifixion condemns. Teach not that I died in vain. Teach rather that I did not die by demonstrating that I live in you. For the undoing of the crucifixion of God’s Son is the work of the redemption, in which everyone has a part of equal value. God does not judge His blameless Son. Having given Himself to him, how could it be otherwise? [CE T-11.VII.8]

I’ve collected some quotes from ACIM to further support the principle of diversity as a healthy element in any system.

“This is the way reality is made by partial vision, purposefully set against the given truth. Its enemy is wholeness. It conceives of little things and looks upon them. And a lack of space, a sense of unity, and vision which sees differently become the threats which it must overcome, conflict with, and deny.[CE W-184.4]

Here, he is saying that when we get involved with problem solving from a limited or “partial” mindset, we begin to perceive the alternative vision of unity and wholeness itself as a threat we must overcome. Nothing could better encapsulate the moment we’re in. We are rushing to judgment about what will cure our ailments, and imagining a diversity of opinion itself as enemy number one.

The miracle is unstable, but perfectly consistent. That is, it does not occur predictably across time, and it rarely recurs in comparable forms, but within itself it is perfectly consistent. Since it contains nothing but an acknowledgment of equality and worth, all parts are equal.[CE T-1.47.3]

ACIM defines miracles as simply changes in perception brought forth from Love. Here he is making the claim miracles are part of the natural order of things because they are perfectly consistent. Miracles don’t try to get around nature’s laws or God’s laws, they abide by them. Eventually, after choosing the wrong authority for a time, nature will correct for this and we’ll begin to seek a better authority figure than the one we have selected in the short term.

Therefore give thanks, but in sincerity. And let your gratitude make room for all who will escape with you: the sick, the weak, the needy and afraid, and those who mourn a seeming loss or feel apparent pain, who suffer cold or hunger, or who walk the way of hatred and the path of death. All these go with you. Let us not compare ourselves with them, for thus we split them off in our awareness from the unity we share with them as they must share with us.”[CE W-195.5]

Here, he basically says let’s be grateful that we’re wrong about so much. Not an optimistic view so much as a realistic one. He recognized the Christ in all of us because he is the one assigned with the task of implementing the plan for Atonement. In ACIM, the Atonement means At – One – Ment. The recognition of the fact that we are one mind regardless of our opinions on the matter; regardless of our awareness of it or not. We are all equally worthy in the eyes of God.

From our standpoint, as seemingly individual entities, we are in no position to judge anything. We would have to be fully aware of much more than we can possibly be aware of when viewing the world through our sensory organs alone. But there are many of us. We can rely on other perspectives then, to expand our own and see a little more of the truth each day as a result. This would require us to pull away from the “I know mind” and listen to some perspectives different than our own. We will have to push against the stickiness of cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias to comprehend these other perspectives.

Because we all know that this project of limiting diversity is doomed to fail simply because it violates certain laws of nature (or God), trust that it will prove itself to be wrong, and the less physical resistance we put up against it, the faster it will fail. Trust that Love always wins out in the end and that violent resistance will only delay that inevitable outcome. Attack is not a correction for attack. It is a compounding mistake. If you want to judge Donald Trump, judge him as deeply confused about the nature of reality, and pray for your perception of him as a bad actor to be corrected.

I’ll end on this note. I take great comfort from A Course in Miracles because it insists on the inevitability of Love to always win out over hate and fear. It is only a matter of time.

Your little, senseless substitutions, touched with insanity and swirling lightly away on a mad course like a feather dancing insanely in the wind, have no substance. They fuse and merge and separate in shifting and totally meaningless patterns which need not be judged at all. To judge them individually is pointless. Their tiny differences in form are not real differences at all. None of them matters. That they have in common and nothing else. But what else is necessary to make them all the same? Let them go, dancing in the wind, dipping and turning till they disappear from sight far, far outside you. And turn you to the stately calm within, where in holy stillness dwells the living God you never left, and Who never left you. [CE T-18.I.18]