Opening paragraphs................

 

I taught religion once, many years ago, and I greatly enjoyed it.  But I never had much use for theology.  There are, I am told, some thirty-five thousand different species of flies.  But if the theologians had their way, there would only be one, the right Fly.  The Creator glories in diversity.  And no species is more diverse than those two-legged creatures, Men and Women.  Even as a small child I marvelled at their diversity.  And I have never met a single uninteresting person.  No matter how conformist, how conventional, or how dull, people become fascinating the moment they talk of the things they do, know, or are interested in.  Everyone then becomes an individual.  The most conventional person I can recall, a banker in a small New England town, who seemed to know nothing but the most hackneyed clichés, became fascinating when he suddenly started talking about buttons throughout the ages—their invention, their shapes, their materials, their functions and uses—with a fire and passion worthy of a great lyrical poet.  The subject did not interest me much; the man did.  He has become an individual.

-Peter F. Drucker, from the Preface to the New Edition, Adventures of a Bystander: Memoirs

a natural upshot.....................

     What sort of ecology can preserve a robust intellectual biodiversity?  We often assume that diversity is a natural upshot of free choice.  Yet the market ideal of choice and attendant preoccupation with freedom tends toward a monoculture of human types: the late modern consumer self.  At least the market seems to have this effect when we are constantly being addressed with hyperpalatable stimuli.  What sort of outlier would you have to be, what sort of freak of self-control, to resist those well-engineered cultural marshmallows? 

-Matthew B. Crawford, The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction

melting-pot ethos......

      America, which survived a gory civil war among political and geographical factions, has become so far one of history's few exceptions.  The ultimate rationale of America's unique Constitution led Americans eventually to define themselves by their shared values, not by their inconsequential appearances.  Eventually, most who were willing to give up their prior identities and assume a new American persona were accepted as Americans.  The United States has always cherished its universally applicable melting-pot ethos of e pluribus unum—of blending diverse peoples into one through assimilation, integration, and inter-marriage in the manner that diverse colonies united to become one nation.

-Victor Davis Hanson,  The Dying Citizen

On diversity and dissent...........................

 One of the frequent themes in On Liberty is the importance of diversity of opinion.  Diversity and dissent are not only checks on fallibility, but the only means of testing the ultimate truth of an opinion:  "The only way in which a human being can make some approach to knowing the whole of a subject, is by hearing what can be said about it by persons of every variety of opinion, and studying all modes in which it can be looked at by every character of mind.  No wise man ever acquired his wisdom in any mode but this; not is it in the nature of human intellect to become wise in any other matter."

-Annie Duke, as culled from Thinking in Bets:  Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts

Can I get an..................................

 .........................................................................Amen.

Shards.............................

The decisive endeavor of our moment – far surmounting, I believe, any specific policy call – is the re-establishment of trust in the institutions of representative democracy.  Only after the system has been reformed and the public has been reconciled to it can we again talk about truth as a self-evident proposition.  Until then, all we will have is perspectives – fragments of truth circling, randomly, the gravitational power of some opinion.  Appealing to tribal identity only compounds the fragmentation.  Fighting imaginary fascists and Nazis can be no more rewarding than hugging an imaginary friend.  What we need is a rhetoric aimed at the whole and persuasive to the whole – and for that to be possible, the public must be heard, and its perspectives, in their multiple and contradictory reality, must be taken seriously.

-Martin Gurri keeps banging his drum

A plea for diversity......................

..............................................................................of thought.

About diversification........................

“Students learn corporate finance at business schools. They are taught that the whole secret is diversification. But the exact rule is the opposite. The ‘know-nothing’ investor should practice diversification, but it is crazy if you are an expert. The goal of investment is to find situations where it is safe not to diversify. If you only put 20% into the opportunity of a life-time, you are not being rational. Very seldom do we get to buy as much of any good idea as we would like to.”

-Charlie Munger, as quoted here

Fifty years ago.........................

1910 Fruitgum Co......................................................1-2-3 Red Light



Bubblegum music at its finest.   Hard to believe that this is from the same year that gave us Jimi Hendrix and  the Beatles' White Album.  Ah, diversity.