Our Lack of Psychological Diversity

Biomimicry is the practice of taking designs from nature to apply to human technologies and systems.  The natural processes of our world have created ingenious designs - everything from small bacteria, to human beings, to entire ecosystems have aspects worth copying.  As an example, humpback whales have a series of bumps on their flippers that allow them to spin very quickly underwater despite their large size.  This design is being copied and applied to windmills so that they spin faster and are able to harness more wind energy.  Also, the human lung has a complex filtering system designed to manage carbon dioxide intake.  Scientists are trying to figure out how to copy these properties and apply them to factory flue stacks to prevent CO2 from escaping into the atmosphere.

 

One basic principle of nature is that diversity supports survival, especially in disasters.  The more diverse an ecosystem the better that ecosystem will weather change.  I believe this principle is also true within the collective psyche of a large culture such as ours.  Following the ideas of biomimicry we can think of our collective cultural psyche as an ecosystem.  If there is large "psychological diversity" people will have a wide variety of ideas.  When presented with problems a culture with a large pool of approaches will be able to find and follow through with novel solutions.  But if there is little diversity with regard to how people view and live their lives the culture will more likely remain stagnant when faced with issues.

 

I would argue that currently our cultural and social systems are not emulating this principle.  Although we all share biological aspects of being human, the brain is flexible enough so that each human can develop a very unique perspective and way of being in life.  But instead our culture encourages us all to develop in essentially the same way.  People develop differing political opinions, beliefs about religion and spirituality, and different career paths.  Opinions and viewpoints differ, but ways of being in the world do not.  For the most part people all live their lives within a similar parameter.  Everyone is brought through the same school system taking the same classes - everyone is expected to try to find the highest paying job they can so they can consume at least what average people consume and hopefully more.

 

To an extent every cultural model will do this.  Humans are social creatures born with a biology that encourages them to copy the people they are surrounded by.  Those in the in-group, the accepted members of the "pack", have a better chance of survival when supported by their fellow humans.  No matter what the nature of culture will draw humans to think, act, and be similarly.

 

The issue is that our modern culture is so pervasive that humans all over the world are buying into it.  We eat different foods, listen to different music, have different hobbies, and even speak different languages.  But we all essentially live the same way.  We live to consume.  We live to go to work then watch TV before we go to bed and do the same things the next day.  Societies all organize themselves - organize the way human lives are lived within them - the same way.

 

As we live through this routine every day we reinforce the neural connections associated with it.  Our habitual ways of being become ingrained in our psyche.  Our culture becomes less and less psychologically diverse as our one way of being is repeatedly imprinted in the minds of the people.  But we live in an age where we need as much psychological diversity as possible.  We need as many perspectives as possible if we have any chance of finding new ways of being which will solve our current crises - environmental, social, political, financial, et cetera.

I can't say I have the solution to our losing psychological diversity.  I think a good start would be making our culture more accepting of the wide variety of individual perspectives and paths of growth that are possible.  If more people's natural way of being were respected and nurtured instead of being molded to fit the way of being of our culture then we would grow more psychologically diverse as more people developed their own unique approach to life.  At this point I believe any attempt to encourage different ways of living to emerge would be worth trying.  Hopefully we can find better solutions to our problems as different approaches to life are taken on.