The latest thing in diversity studies is “intersectionality.” This term reflects the insight that you can’t understand, say, an Asian man by understanding Asians and by understanding men. You have to understand the way the two identities intersect. Being Asian is different for men and women.
I decline to ridicule multiculturalists for thinking this is new. Instead, I celebrate the fact that this mixing of multicultural classifications will destroy the effort to categorize people. Here’s how.
The diversity reifiers used to tell us that when considering sex, you were in a box labeled men, or a box labeled women, or a tiny box labeled intersex. When considering race, you were in a box labeled Asian, or a box labeled White, or some other box. Now they are saying that regardless of what you think you are considering, you have a box labeled Asian Man, a box labeled Asian Woman, a box labeled White Man, and so on.
But there are more ways to categorize people than race and sex. I’m not very good at categorizing people, so I just grabbed a multicultural handbook near my desk, and I see that one must consider age, disability, ethnicity, immigrant status, language, ancestry, sexual orientation, culture, class, religion, and gender identity, along with good old race and sex. I don’t know what the editors of this handbook have against birth order, parenting status, marital status, occupation, criminal history, musical genres, food preferences, color blindness, and sports-team identifications (don’t even try to tell me that Yankees fans are like Red Sox fans). I don’t know what they have against regional accents, hair color, weight, height, intelligence, relationship with alcohol, or history of abuse, not to mention theoretical orientation, illness, parental loss, adoption status, or how long the person spent pursuing a career in the arts before getting a real job. But it seems to me that if you need to know someone’s class and religion to understand them, you need to know about membership in all these other categories as well.
So the problem for the professional multiculturalists, in my view, is that once they acknowledge interactive effects, they start making more and more, smaller and smaller boxes. If you take all the categories one can put people into, and then make boxes that account for interactive effects, you will end up with 7 billion boxes, each holding only one person. And that will be the end of the diversity establishment as we know it.
Michael Karson, Ph.D. 
Amen. The irony for me in all of this is that the multicultural agenda in its current form is probably only suitable for intrapersonal endeavors. Interpersonal dynamics (smaller and larger systems) can’t thrive on the basis of terminal uniqueness. It is handling our actual differences and respecting the boundaries of our respective boxes (physical and abstract) that brings us closer together as a species. A world of no boxes (or diffuse boxes) as multiculturalism theory purports is essentially a disguised argument for totalitarianism. Careful what you wish for.
Great post Michael. Ioannis beat me to it but I’ll second his Amen!
The first amen meant I’m fully behind it. The second amen meant I think it’s overly broad.
@ Ioannis: How would a world of no boxes lead to totalitarianism? I think of totalitarianism as a world with exactly two boxes (us and them).
Actually I was applauding the post itself. Refreshing! Don’t make anything, and there you are.
I am afraid my answer to your question will probably be lengthy and complicated. I m still learning how to be laconic and that’s an art that I haven’t yet mastered. I could just respond to you by saying “Mao’s China,” or “Stalin’s Russia,” but it wouldn’t do your question justice. You asked for it and here it is!
I think that a physical world without any boundaries is absurd (or abstract, or metaphysical, but definitely not physical or real). The physical world and its boundaries are inextricably woven together. They are interdependent and you can’t have one without the other. Even the paradoxical requires the logical as a frame of reference. This idea of complementarity I consider an axiomatic truth.
Now, if you challenge me on axioms, given what I have shared earlier about my love of Nietzsche, I will also tell you that subjective interpretation and fact are complementary principles. They are not mutually exclusive as it seems on the surface. The meta-truth (axiom) is that both are valid depending on levels of observation. And there is always a level that sees all and is unlimited (and perhaps divine), but even at that level you would be missing the beauty of limitation.
This is like the Gestalt. The curse and blessing of humanity. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. So why not just enjoy your cake when you eat it, or just enjoy saving it for later! Coming up with categories of one is greedy. Likewise, our existential hunger to escape the tautology of complementarity (it torments the unsophisticated mind) is vanity. Greed and vanity, if just explored internally and expressed with some reserve will probably only lead to a bruised ego; however, if applied to interpersonal endeavors without restraint can be very very dangerous things. The tendency for answers through the process of reductionism is the main line of my reasoning on how monism (or categories of one), serves as a clever disguise for totalitarianism.
To recap. (1) Axioms are truths that can’t be argued. That’s why they are called axioms in the first place! Whether we like them or not they are true. (2) Human beings are not quanta (not yet at least). As far as (1) and (2) will still hold true, boxes (i.e., categorization or negentropy) are the best and probably only tool we have to navigate and manage our demanding physical reality (i.e., chaos or entropy).
I think it’s pollyannaish (and subsequently dangerous because those less naive will always find a way to control the ignorant) to wish for a world of no boxes and boundaries. This kind of thinking (aka: bounded rationality) refutes Newtons laws. The attempt to have no boxes (which basically means only one box of no boxes) is not supported by the axiom of complementarity (i.e., action-reaction; matter-antimatter). Its almost like telling oneself that if you jump from the 5th floor into a concrete sidewalk things will be fine. You tell yourself this so many times that you end up believing this distortion. Perhaps you believe it to the point that you are so passionate you take the leap. For a split second it seems to work. Right. Reality promptly sets in, or that famous scene in Martin Scorsese’s “The Departed” is a better visual… Splat!
To stay with the metaphor, Matthieu Kasovitz’s “Hate” also starts with a story of a guy who jumps from the 50th floor of a skyscraper. Every floor he passes by as he falls, he tells himself, “Jusqu’ici tout va bien.” So far so good! Until of course that dreaded moment of impact. “L’ atterissage.” This little anecdote has helped me grasp how most folks trying to change things for the better (i.e., like proponents of multiculturalism theory) are still caught up in a phase of inertia or suspended animation (illusion). They are (in fact) falling, because gravity (that bitch) never went away. Sooner or later, every action has its consequence.
The illusion of no boxes (or reality of one box) is the wolf in sheep’s clothing I speak of. Totalitarianism disguised as pure democracy. This box of no boxes (and its relative size) will always will be inextricably bound to another box. The bigger and more visible the first box becomes the smaller and more clandestine the other becomes. This dynamic leads to an ultimate concentration of power in the hands of the few, the less naive.
Attempting to reduce differences or classify things as being equal or similar (when in fact they are not) for the sake of tolerance is what this new hegemony is . When the moment of impact arrives it will be too late. Our freedoms and whatever semblance of individuality we have will have already been sacrificed at the altar of acceptance. This has already started and will only get worse. Freedoms are inversely related to a global population growth of geometric proportions. The more we play this game of ignorance, the closer we ll get to totalitarianism. And perhaps totalitarianism is a severe way the system tries to regulate and purge when it surpasses the limits it was designed for. For proof on this see history on the experiment of communism. Like flying a plane outside its operational envelope. The end result didn’t differ all that much from fascism. And I can even argue the first was worst than the second, because it misrepresented itself as something good for everyone, instead of the second which argued something very good for some and very bad for some others.
Anyway, if I can’t separate and take pride in being a white heterosexual able-bodied married male of Hellenic ethnic origin (not Greek-American!) and seeing myself as radically different from a black gay disabled single trans lesbian of American ethnic origin, I might as well call myself and act like a brown cow chewing grass in a green pasture. MOOOOOH!!! Seriously, how can I advocate for her rights and freedoms, if I don’t advocate for my own? How can I respect her individuality if I don’t respect mine? It is what makes us different that gives us our freedoms and privacy to live our lives as we choose. I rest my case.
I love your reasoning and where it leads, but still … I think the defining category characteristic of totalitarianism is us versus them. Strict adherence or expulsion. So … maybe what happens next (after the hegemony imposes its will, whether it be equality or hierarchy) is the expulsion of dissent, and that’s where I get the two category idea from.
And by the way, Steve McQueen told that joke (so far so good) in The Magnificent Seven.
[Another thread in this discussion: Apologizes in advance for my long-winded blow]
The short response is this:
We can reduce, even eliminate, conceptual distinctions (boxes) without reducing differences, just drop the distinctions, someone still remains; and, we can continue to advocate for the one and many without setting ourselves apart. Embrace all; reify none. This is a view from Buddhism, which I don’t think is totalitarian; but then it could be totalitarian if people were forced into the Buddhist box. But then that wouldn’t be very Buddhist-like. We have a saying, “If you see Buddha in the road kill him!” That means don’t reify Buddha or confine Buddha in a box. Perhaps this is the box of no box, but then (there) one still remains boxed—that is to say, conceptually imprisoned.
The aggrandized version is this:
It seems like the discussion here has rendered the issue of compassionate caring as a dialectical conceptual distinction—either Us or Them (Two Category). The antidote to either-or logic is a move to both/and thinking—both Us and Them (One Category, though still conceptually bound). The antidote to both/and thinking is a move to neither/nor thinking—neither Us nor Them (neither totalitarian nor non-totalitarian). At this juncture, some other alternative becomes possible, which is close to, though ever not quite, awareness unbound.
As a practicing Buddhist, my view is that genuine compassion is relationally grounded in immediate experience, not in a system of rules, mandates, or injunctions stipulating the correct viewing of things, nor from a system of social control implying duty, guilt, or correctness. For when moral idealism runs afoul of social politics it becomes self-defeating and stigmatizing because it invariably generates blame, hatred, and unforgiveness in those who continue to related on the basis of social distinctions—and ultimately entices divisiveness against the outsiders’ holding opposed views (witness today’s left / right cultural wars, which continue to perpetual in-group vs. out-group thinking and one-upmanship). Laozi observed, “Where we place a social distinction, thorns and briars grow.”
As dialecticism illustrates, metaphysical thought always privileges one side of an opposition, and ignores or marginalizes the alternative position of that opposition (take for example contemporary socio-political elitism: We must refrain from certain language because it is insensitive to certain others; yet, we have license to call those we oppose names like “bigot,” “racist,” “misogynist,” “homophobe,” and etc.).
There is a certain existential poverty that lives inside of binary oppositions; process-based dialectical deconstructive strategy attempts to expose a trace of incongruence that lives in that space, so as to bring it into the foreground. As example, the meaning of category-bound (withness) inheres with the meaning of category-unbound (otherness), and vice versa. The pragmatic function of dialectical work is intended to expose that which is wholly otherness, so as to illuminate the concealed partner, and thus open us up to alternative possibilities that would be otherwise be obscured by exclusive lodging in either member of the dyad.
An alternative strategy is to drop the binary logic inherited from Western logocentrism altogether. What I say here is not intended to do another down. It’s merely offered as a possible different way of living with and caring for others, freed up from social distinctions and moralistic mandates.
Buddhist no-self refers to a relational understanding, which discloses as the nonthinking mode of awareness (no-self is not another kind of Self, which is ontologically opposed to that other Self. That’s just more conceptual dualism. It becomes difficult to speak here because what I’m pointing to cannot be grasp conceptually, but speak I will anyway). Put otherwise, fully-presenced awareness leads to the eroding of self-horizon, thus exposing reality loosened of its static abstractions and reified interpretive schemes. Accordingly, fully presenced awareness reflects the nonconceptual coming-together of person and world as indistinguishable and inseparable features of each other (this is not a category of One, unless you continue to see conceptually, which then is a category of None. Though, this still is to miss the point). Within this process, everyday awareness bound undergoes an “epistemological shift” (Kitaro Nishida, cited in Nagatomo, 1992) that both neutralizes the dualist cognitive root of knowing and attunes the somatic mode of awareness to its surroundings. William James (1909/2008) writes of somatic attunement: The world experienced (otherwise called the ‘field of consciousness’) comes at all times with our body as its centre, centre of vision, centre of action, centre of interest. Where the body is ‘here’; when the body acts is ‘now’; what the body touches is ‘this;’ all other things are ‘there’ and ‘then’ and ‘that.’ These words of emphasized position imply a systematization of things with reference to a focus of action and interest which lies in the body; and the systematization is now so instinctive (was it ever not so?) that no developed or active experience exists for us at all except in that ordered form…. The body is the storm centre, the origin of co-ordinates, the constant place of stress in all that experience-train. Everything circles round it, and is felt from its point of view. (p. 152)
(Still though, James is limited by Indo-European language; thus, the ‘it’ and the ‘felt from its point of view’ continue to generate the logocentric illusion of two). Anyway, to move on:
As a pragmatic sensibility, the individual-presenced reflects a function (neither a thing nor an abstraction) relationally constituted moment-to-moment as the “lived-environment” (Krueger, 2006). This quality of awareness unbound is characterized by nondual engagement with the world. As the relational field is contacted more fully, and the Self “emptied” of its interpretive schemes, a heightened sense of attunement with the world is revealed. It is deep within this nonconceptual space, wherein all preoccupation with Self or Otherness subsides, that we become most experientially available, receptive, and attuned to the suffering of this World. Stephen Batchelor describes the process this way: “As the fixated grip of self-centeredness is eased, so also does an empathetic awareness of the suffering of others emerge” (Batchelor, 2000, p. 78). Likewise, when we are deeply attuned to our own personal anguish, we discover that the qualities of life that matter adhere or cohere within it, and that to realize one means to embrace the other (alterity). Functionally considered, life is made significant, or becomes significant ‘through’ experience realized in particular contexts of action, interpersonal or otherwise.
Acceptance, equanimity, respect, and compassion are egoless, nonpolitical virtues. We don’t need to make a social distinction, in my view, to care. As a Buddhist sensibility, we therefore acknowledge and celebrate the notion yiduo bufenguan – ‘the inseparability of one and many.’
Thank you. I guess I’d say my whole complaint about the diversity agenda is its tendency to capitalize on and reverse social distinctions rather than any tendency I’ve seen to transcend them.
You capture the situation precisely.
Why must we take any category to be our master? “This is like knowing oneself as a rice grain in a granary.” -Zhuangzi
John, thanks for your eloquent and graceful analysis. I have read your response like 3 times, in order to fully grasp what you are trying to communicate. I m making an effort to interpret what you say more with experience instead of logic. It’s difficult, and I m telling myself not to disagree with you just based on modern linguistics (which I agree binds our thinking to dualism or binary models). Sometimes I wonder why we ever got away from ancient Greek and use lesser forms of communication? That’s sad and quite a shame (I don’t speak it too).
Still, I think I dissent. Its not because I need my rice (voice) to be different than yours and stand out, but because I am arguing against some of the necessary evils of reductionism that comes from applying one universe systems in daily human routines. Perhaps I m misinterpreting you (probably so), but I think our difference of opinion comes from being more of a pessimist. Maybe its because I m not a Buddhist like you. I would actually consider myself closer to a Taoist if I were to claim a philosophy of choice for the purpose of discourse primarily (because I m far from religious!), although at the same time I am also a hardcore pragmatist. Michael can attest to this.
So, I guess I have two questions (rhetorical) or challenges, based on what you described as the “peaceful” solution. What happens to the rice when the granary is nearing capacity, or even worse, gets full? Can the principles of natural selection (and human nature) truly be transcended? I love Laozi and his teachings and my heart is with him. My money is still riding with Darwin on this one.
Greetings, Ioannis
I can’t say for certain that I understood your post at the depth you were hoping it would be understood. My reply was based on my understanding of what I thought you were saying. Anyway, the major take away for me from your post was that social categories are necessary for three reasons: The absence of social distinctions will (1) lead American Society down the road of collectivism, like Mao’s China, Stalin’s Russia, or Star Trek New Generation’s Borg, and concentrate power in the hands of the few (‘totalitarianism disguised as pure democracy’), (2) encourage greediness at the level of N=1, and (3) generate a certain blindness where privilege and marginalization, compassion, and advocacy are of concern.
I wished I hadn’t sent my reply when I did, and instead waited and prefaced it with the following comment (now a postscript).
Ioannis…I get your three points, and those ends would be concerns of mine too! My wife (Xiu Rong) is from the People’s Republic of China; she grew up under totalitarian rule. During Mao’s reign, the Chinese people were forced to carry the little “Red Book” with them at all times, and to recite it repeatedly throughout the day. When Mao died (and his wife ‘went missing’), most of the Chinese people burned their books the first chance they had. However, much of his legacy lingers on today in Chinese socio-political governance. She knows first-hand, life within the confines of an ideological system that says, “This is what to think!” The Cultural Revolution was designed, at least in part, to remove traditional culture from the mind of the Chinese, including Daoism and Buddhism. Still today in America, she is fearful of the long arm of Communist control, so much so that whenever she utters something critical about socialistic practices, she makes me promise not to repeat what she’s said to anyone else. But at least today, she has the freedom to practice Buddhism in America.
I do share your view about ‘blindness’ where privilege and marginalization, compassion, and advocacy are of concern. I disagree, however, that social distinctions will get us closer to our values, and like Michael, I agree that transcending the concepts would provide a different approach. In fact, I think the real blindness of concern centers on the certain blindness generated by dualistic concepts and preconceptions advanced by contemporary multicultural perspective, especially those that making something out of identity fixation and social distinctions in practice.
To move on to your questions:
You asked: “What happens to the rice when the granary is nearing capacity, or even worse, gets full?” Answer: This question carries with it an ontological assumption (awareness bound). Zhuangzi’s response is metaphorical (as I interpret it) and intended to convey the limits of conceptual self-understanding (a rice grain); the granary is boundless (not a silo) and thus extends beyond conception (awareness unbound).
Individuals discover their identity not in any cultural pattern or empirical social class, but in the flow of unstructured quality sweeping like a kaleidoscope across their feeling systems, enlarging their one-sided faction of experience with the inexhaustible energy of the world. – N. P. Jacobson
Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible be found in each of us. –Pema Chödrön
Don’t be a carcass of names or treasure-house of schemes…live empty, perfectly empty. – Zhuangzi
What did Buddha discover through practice?: The nondual source of reality, which serves as the nascent, autochthonous organization and relational complexity already ready before our dual conceptual process supersedes. That is to say, Buddha experienced the nondual source of the dualistic world—emptiness.
You asked: “Can the principles of natural selection truly be transcended? Answer: There are no principles of natural selection (nor cosmosology) to be transcended, other than those bestowed by a human mind on nature.
There is no cause or effect in nature; nature has but an individual existence; nature simply is. -Ernst Mach, 1893/1989, The Science of Mechanics (p. 580)
Cause and effect, therefore, are things of thought, having economical office. It cannot be said why they arise. For it is precisely by the abstraction of uniformities that we know the question “why.” -Ernst Mach, 1893/1989, The Science of Mechanics (p. 581)
I’m putting my money on Buddha! : )
John, thank you so much for this response and your personal disclosure. Your optimism is a breath of fresh air!
To give you some more personal context as well, like your wife I come from (and grew up) in a very strange place. Much much less constricted than Mao’s China, although strewn with turmoil, political and social discord, ethnic cleansing and genocide (i.e., Minor Asia destruction and Constantinople that my grandparents lived through), and a fertile ground where socialism and capitalism have clashed (and continue to) violently over the past 200 years. Add Orthodox Christianity and a sense of ethnic homogeneity that withstood 400 years of Turkish occupation before that, and you get an ever more volatile mix. You can go as far back as you wish to the days of Byzantium, Alexander the Great, the city-States, Mycenae, the Minoans. The people are different but the process always remains the same. Its the context of course, but people still apply their own convenient rules to it! The context doesn’t care one way or another as you say, but people do 🙂
My parents were born at the outset of a devastating civil war that promptly ensued WW2, ushering Greece (prematurely if I may say so) into the Western world, when it was always more of an Eastern culture “of sorts.” The true meaning behind the known phrase cradle of Western civilization was something cleverly adapted to fit some of the Anglo-saxon needs of the Renaissance, and later the Enlightenment. Our contextual predecessors (see Heraclitus and Zeno of Elea) were arguing relativism, compassionate monism and egoless equanimity long before Aristotelian and Platonic principles and ideals. But that’s a story for another time…
To stay more current, my parents also lived through a fascist military dictatorship (i.e., totalitarianism almost like Mao’s China) for a significant part of their young adulthood. To that experience today they have also added five years of a sociopolitical, ethical and State financial bankruptcy to the illusionary prosperity of the “socialist revolution” of the 80’s and 90’s, and of course the Myconian ‘lobster-pasta’ excesses of the early 2000’s on Germany’s dime. So much has happened in so little time and we have only seen the beginning. This proverbial ‘tab’ is finally catching up to us, not just for Greece but for the whole world. The unrelenting leveraging that has occurred, practically and not metaphorical speaking now, has spilled the rice outside the granary.
To summarize all this, my grandparents and parents experiences (and my own of course) shaped my frames, and subsequently my (philosophical) pessimism. Then I came to the Unites States. It was a weird turn of events, because my great great-grandfather also came to Colorado 120 years ago selling Greek confections to the railroad workers and pioneers! But unlike him, I have now lived almost 1/3 of my life here and set even firmer roots down, aspiring for true liberalism (and perhaps a version of my own private American dream?). This has brought more disillusionment and disappointment, but I don’t fret and its not all grim. My wife is the joy, love, and light of my life. As for the economy, politics, social justice, the multicultural agenda, and future things to come (i.e., the Buddha v. Darwin debate), I guess we shall see 🙂
I know we never had much interaction at school over the 6 years I was there, but this interaction makes me quite sad (and happy for it did occur!) that I didn’t work with you closer. Your responses here communicated a sense of maturity and peace that I have much longed for. Perhaps we can interact more in the future. Namaste!
Greetings Ioannis,
It’s a powerful family history you share and it provides a personal context for me to understand your earlier post. I was thinking myself, we really never had much of any contact during your time in the program. Now has been our opportunity, perhaps for a new beginning.
All the best, -john
Thanks for this conversation, Ioannis and John. It really classes up the joint. My own small contribution is a quote from Skinner. “We divide behavior into hard and fast units and are then surprised to find that the organism disregards the boundaries we have set.” And yes, I also intend that as a comment on the comments outblogging the blog.