Ethics and Diversity

 As I begin this article, I think back to the summer of 2018 and my Master’s class called Equity and Diversity.  I was in my second summer of my Master’s program in Secondary Education.  My mind draws near to a memory, a memory of an analogy once told to me about what true equity was.  In this analogy, there are three children at a sporting event standing at the wall beyond the field of play.  One student was tall enough to see over the wall, the second whose eye sight was just at the cusp of the wall, and the third child who was too short to see over the wall.  Equity is allowing or giving the two students who can’t see a boost, a platform to stand on to be able to see the field of play and the action of the game.  Although we live in a diverse society, equity and ethics is something we need to allow a level playing field for all to participate in economics, education, and society as a whole.  With equity and ethics, we create a platform for success for all walks of life to stand before and stand on to be heard and seen.

Ethics is a broad branch of philosophy that examines what is right or wrong, good or bad, and what is acceptable and unacceptable.  Our conscience navigates our way through ethical conduct or behavior, acting as a guiding force that determines what we do or don’t do.  A productive society weighs the ethics of its macro and microscopic decisions and behaviors and determines the direction of their moral compass.  Whether someone thinks, behaves, or makes decisions that are different than one’s own doesn’t necessarily make them an acceptable or unacceptable person, what truly defines the individual is what they do with their such means when they have a competitive advantage.  In sports, the winning team who displays the competitive advantage typically wins, but does society work the same as that of sport?  When a competitive advantage is displayed by an individual, group, or entity, from a utilitarian perspective, one should behave or act in a way that promotes the greater good of the whole or the greatest number of the whole.  Unfortunately, in American society, we have shied away from such utilitarian ethics.  

In a capitalistic society where the individual needs and interests come first, there is a clash between what is best for the whole and what is best for the individual.  The analogy that comes to mind is an individual on a tight rope, balancing the forces that work against them.  The individual uses experience, timing, and weight distribution to move slowly, but surely across the rope to make it to the other side.  The same can be said about each of us in society, we should think slowly and be less quick to react, learn from our mistakes, act and conduct ourselves in accordance to when the time is right rather than off anger or instinct, and distribute our weight whether it be money, intellect, or physical talents in accordance to what is ethically acceptable to the whole.  

The individual on the tight rope can also be seen as the government.  As we examine the scenario again, the rules slightly change for the entity on the tight rope.  A government must balance the external forces working against them whether they be economic or social, seeing them from all angles or perspectives to maintain their balance on the rope.  When one acts in their own self-interest, blind to the external forces that work against them, one simply falls off the tight rope  because they couldn’t see the gravity of the situation at hand.  Timing, like the individual on the rope, is a key player as well.  When the entity speaks or acts too quickly, they fall due to harsh rhetoric displayed outward all the while experiencing harsh criticism inward as they spoke too soon without thinking about the utilitarian ethics of the whole.  

Society falls apart when the external forces unglue the bonds that bonds it together like that of the strong force inside the atom that holds protons and neutrons together.  Commonality is the glue that holds all great societies together.  No matter what we think of the matter, what glues us together far outweighs what breaks us apart.  That commonality is the greater good.  When the individual feels isolated, alienated from the pack, it slowly breaks the bonds of society as a whole because we as individuals are greater than the sum of our parts when we work as one.  To maintain that differential, we must revert back to ethics: honesty, integrity, and thinking of the whole when making our individual decisions for it is these principles that bond, that glue our society together.  No matter what external force tries to tear away at those bonds, their energy falls short for we are greater than the sum of our parts. 

Business and government ethics have trickled down to the masses, we have created a cut throat world that displays less ethics than that of the rabid animal.  We point fingers, spue lies hoping that if told enough it becomes truth, and act to destroy rather than to understand.  Our society is falling apart because of the dissonance of the powers that be.  Dissonance is the inability for the individual to render their thoughts untrue even with a mountain of evidence against it.  I speak for neither left nor right, i speak for the common good of all, when I say that we must be slow to act, less quick to judge, to reason with ourselves and others through clear and reasonable dialogue that makes ethical decisions based on the needs of all parties, not just those that align with the self-interest of the individual and those they wish to prop up and collude with.  This country, if not this world, needs now more than ever, someone to think outside of themselves and their close counterparts, to make decisions that look towards the greater good of the whole rather than just a fraction of its parts.

As I continue this story, I wish to change lanes along the path of the road and arrive at the concept of diversity.  What gave me the inspiration to write about diversity was a sign I saw at an adjacent business to a Mexican restaurant I was going to.  One of the signs said “Diversity,” and the light bulb went off in my head and I felt such a profound urge to write about such a concept.  Diversity is or refers to the presence and recognition of differences among people or things in a group, environment, or society.  After I saw that sign last week, I was slow to write, allowing my mind to sit with the topic allowing it’s ingredients to marinate inside my mind before turning key to word on my computer.  When examining such a concept outside of human existence, I think about the biodiversity of life in ecosystems.  A healthy ecosystem has a biodiversity of life forms that allow it to grow and prosper.  Each living organism plays a role in their environment, and if there becomes an imbalance, the whole ecosystem is affected significantly.  The same can be said about society and human life.  Our society is a melting pot, mixing cultures, backgrounds, ages, experiences, and even though the list goes on in terms of the categorization of diversity, the precedent is set.  Our society would slow to a screeching halt if that tight knit web of balance was affected yet what we see is a society that juxtaposes that very concept of diversity.  To create an environment that puts one group, one line of reasoning, one experience before that of the whole, creates a breach in the diversity of life in America and the world as a whole.  When the powers that be begin to isolate, to alienate group from group, culture from culture, the very building blocks of society as a whole, it brings me to speak up and speak out against such tactics for we are greater than the sum of our parts.  To eliminate those building blocks of human society, would surely bring about its eventual collapse.  

Ethics and diversity go hand-in-hand.  It takes a group of individual perspectives that are guided by ethics to create a diverse, functional, and productive society.  A diverse society brings together many different experiences that help guide the whole down the right path.  The shortest distance between two points in space is a straight line, and we, the individual on the tight rope, must balance the needs of that diversity to stand tall and traverse the tight rope no matter the external forces weighing against us.