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While humans are an extremely diverse population, there will always be groups that we either identify with or don’t identify with in terms of our picture of ourselves. After last week’s discussion on diversity I kept thinking about how productivity may be different in either diverse or not diverse groups. I agree that diverse populations (in thinking, culture, etc.) will be more productive as a group and from my own experience I’ve found that I am more comfortable throwing out new ideas or thinking in a broader sense when I feel as though everyone is coming from a different background (of thought etc.). The sense of being judged seems to be diminished and there isn’t a feeling that one person’s ideas are superior to anyone else’s. I think in a homogenous group people will be more productive in terms of agreeing and working more quickly, but they will be unable to have certain viewpoints and some ideas that people do have may not be expressed because they feel as though they may be looked down upon for not having as ‘good’ of an idea. People want to identify with the majority, since this is often seen as superior, and then downplay ways that separate themselves from the dominant view. By doing this, we lose different viewpoints and ways of thinking since people (who as we determined are very different from one another) want to repress how they are different.

I had a problem with the article saying that people in homogenous cultures are more comfortable and less afraid of their neighbors (and maybe more productive). While these people may feel this in the particular sub-culture, the in-group out-group bias would most likely be much stronger and the feeling of being uncomfortable and more afraid of their neighbors if their neighborhood suddenly was combined with another would be much greater than in an already diverse group of people. This would lead to the entire society as being less productive since the two groups would not interact with one another and would lead to tension, as people have described (Rwanda, Serbia, etc.). As I said in class, I didn’t notice diversity when it was there but notice it now when I feel like I’m in a less diverse environment. I believe this was because where I went to school there wasn’t a feeling of any type of group being superior to one another, but simply different.

To be comfortable we need to see all diversity as equal and not superior to one another. This issue gets back to last week’s discussion of disability when we think of genetically engineering a child. Today many parents are terminating pregnancies when they find out that their child would have Down syndrome. While this is often viewed as a disease, it could in fact be seen as diversity in the human population. By eliminating this we are making the difference even greater. If designing a child goes beyond this, the group differences will become more obvious and in this cause more tension (as spoken about before).

Lastly, I wanted to comment on the issue or mental vs. physical diversity. While I agree that we shouldn’t just lump the two together, I think we need to acknowledge that physical diversity is going to lead to different experiences by different people. These various experiences and cultures in which they grew up can lend itself to mental diversity that may indeed correlate with physical diversity (whether it be race, gender, where we live, or something else). Experiences and culture certainly influence how people think and are an important aspect of the diversity of human society.