| "Unity and Diversity" and "Unity in Diversity" | 1 comment |
 17 Sep 2006 @ 20:44, by Roger EatonGoogling these two phrases, we find the former occurs 369 thousand times and the latter 598 thousand times. For non-hairsplitters, they can be taken as meaning the same thing: a living vibrant togetherness that thrives in that middle ground between uniformity and fragmentation. The stability of life on earth is supported by the diversity of the species. The awesome mandelbrot works as a metaphor for the infinite complexity that arises at the edge between what is possible and what is real. The One and the Many have often been the object of religious and philosophical contemplation. The ancient Greek philospher Parmenides was standard bearer for the One, and Heraclitus for the Many. Here is the great American philosopher William James on the question. And Hartshorne following Whitehead created today's Process Theology, in which even God is in process as we evolve together in the tension between unity and diversity. Politically, the unity and diversity crowd look to make diversity a strength in the political unit instead of a debility. The interfaith movement often invokes the principle of "unity and diversity". On a world scale, unity and diversity means more than just getting along, more than ending war. It means going from success to success together while protecting and honoring our differences. All of which is great, but how do we actually make it happen? This is the great difficulty, because the "us vs them" meme is extremely powerful. It is not too hard to see world politics today as a conflict between the hardliners who believe in "us vs them" and the globalists who believe in "unity and diversity". Each side is convinced that they see reality more clearly. And curiously, both sets of beliefs seem to be self-realizing. That is by acting on the basis of one or the other belief, we create a world that reflects that belief. Bush and Co., by attacking "Islamo-fascism" creates the division that it sees. Interfaith work heals that division. In the effort to overcome "us vs them" and win the world for "unity and diversity" we now have a new tool - the Unity-and-Diversity Global Assembly, which implements the Eaton Model of Collective Communication. It is worth a look! The basic idea is for groups to elect messages. The Eaton Model implements a simple alternation between "unity" rounds, where all participants together elect one message, and "diversity" rounds where the different groups that are participating in the dialog each elect their own separate message. When we get to the global level, humanity will express itself in the unity rounds, and the nations and religions will express themselves in the diversity rounds. Thus we guarantee the identity and existence of the nations and religions, which we love, but within a framework that is capped by the voice of humanity as a whole, and which therefore legitimates the primary position of our unity in the politics of the world. |