Monday 16 September 2024

(Real) Diversity is a Good Thing: The variety of human consciousness around the world and through history

Because I believe that all Beings, each Being (including each human being) is unique in terms of its origin as an eternal spirit; the variety of people (and other beings) is not something that needs to be explained or justified. This variety is assumed to be a fact of reality; and, as such, something that God must "deal with". 


So, God doesn't "make" us different, we just-are different - and always have-been (from eternity). 

But that was originally a situation of separate and indifferent difference... What God is "working on" (through the span of creation) is how to create a reality in which all these different Beings work together by love

This is why "the family" is the best metaphor or model for reality - not just for human reality, but for divine creation as a whole.

In a good family (an ideal family, the best we can imagine) we neither expect nor seek for uniformity. The ideal family is one in which each member's differences from each other are harmonized and made good by their mutual love and shared "aims". 


I think this understanding is also applicable to the wide variety of types of Men, in the world now and through history. 

It is not so much that "diversity" is good, as that it is a fact. Indeed, the concept diversity - as used now - is an abstract summary of certain kind of group-difference, and either ignores love or else assumes love to be a thing that can be induced, ordered and legislated as required (as when religious leaders instruct their adherents to "love" such-and-such - insofar as they mean anything at all, it is not real love as understood by Christians, by Jesus). 

From God's point of view, there are a wide range of spirits that may benefit from incarnation; and the wide range of types of society that exist around the world, and across what is known of human history, can be seen as ways of grouping types of human beings to provided what (on average, because that is all any society can provide) conditions conductive to salvation of that-kind-of-soul


I think this is probably the reason for both the variety of individuals at any one time; and the variety of races, places and nations in God's creation; and the directional changes in human consciousness through history. For instance, the development of consciousness from that of hunter gatherers, through agrarians in larger and larger societies, to the modern consciousness which has emerged preceding and since the industrial revolution. 

God was (I think) trying to provide a wide range of environments for the wide range of human spirits that may benefit from incarnation. 

Different types of men were therefore (on the whole) born into different historical eras, and different places and races of the world...

The process was, of course, primarily individually tailored to the needs of specific individual persons - yet in practice this entailed a variety of societies both "vertically" (through history) and "horizontally" (in any given point in history).  


Of course, working against this ideal are the powers of purposive evil, the demons; and the aspects of evil in every Man. 

These are aimed at wrecking God's best efforts at providing certain broad types of individuals with broadly helpful environments. 

Nowadays, the main efforts are homogenizing - and are directed at destroying these diverse environments; and trying to impose a world where everybody (and eventually every "thing") is regarded as the same, and treated as the same. 

The strategy of evil is that men and women, children and adults, those of different race and nation, the actual environment in which people live, the rules and media under which they live... All of these are to be pressed into the direction of actual global homogeneity, by vast programmes of indoctrination, population movement and coercion.


(This homogenizing - totalitarian - programme is breaking-down rather rapidly; but still in operation; and still used to "justify" the emerging actuality of deliberately chaotic destructive evil, which is superseding it.)


Evil is effective only insofar as it contains some partial good ("good intentions" are so dangerous!) - which is why evil is always untruthful, and disguises its destructive (anti-divine-creation) aims by apparent good. 

So that the global program of reducing the world to a single and uniform environment for all people and peoples, is dishonestly - albeit superficially - disguised as its opposite! As supporting "individuality! As supporting "freedom"!

This kind of inversion of values, supported by subversion then inversion of terms and concepts; is nowadays a pervasive reality of everyday life - especially in The West from which the strategy of evil is administered. 


But I think we need to beware of reacting against that which is truly good, and in accordance with God's intentions; simply because the terminology and concepts have been captured and reversed. 

For instance, the reality of love (the core truth of Christianity) does not itself become evil, when the word has been captured and almost-reversed to mean in practice lust, self-gratification, or suicidal altruism. 

Likewise, diversity in the sense of the uniqueness of every human being, is a reality and part of God's creative endeavour.

Thus is is a serious error to respond to the evil-motivated modern "diversity" by advocating its opposite, by insisting upon the suppression of individual uniqueness by coercion: that is falling into a trap set by The Enemy - it is aiding The Enemy*. 


My understanding is that in Heaven there is great diversity (more than on earth) because every soul is unique (and always has-been) and this is positively valued. I think Heaven works as an ideal family - or rather, many ideal families; lovingly related into something like clans, tribes and a nation; each bound to each by eternal commitment to mutual love - but with that love stronger because more individual and personalized in the smaller dyads and groupings. 

In such a situation, the more differences between individuals, and the more these are developed (in the spirit of love, and so long as the differences derive from real nature) - the better; because the greater will be the potential scope of the whole. 

Every single new soul who enters Heaven then adds to the scope and possibilities. 


The "many mansions" of Heaven mentioned in the Bible, may be taken to refer to the probable situation of Heaven being a perfection of what we can glimpse on earth: large differences in consciousness, and environment; analogous to the differences through history, of races and nations, and between families. 


*Note: An example is the apparently very strong desire to arrange people by categories of personality and type - then for these categories to bleed across into the spiritual realm. I was (professionally) an intelligence and personality psychologist; and so I am aware of the pragmatic value of categories. It is, indeed trivially easy to invent categories that have statistical predictive value. For instance, young children can be divided into two categories by their response to a wide range of one-off and brief psychological tests - and these categories will (even decades later) have measurably different behavioural outcomes. Yet, I am also aware of the pitfalls and limitations of these tests at the level of individuals. And the exceptions may be important - as seen by the biologically-maladaptive (and/or socially negative) personalities of most geniuses. Yet such categorization is/was mainly a feature of an historical era of human consciousness: the medieval mind - with its "humours" linked to elements, its astrology, its castes and guilds - all of which had some level of validity, yet which have become less and less relevant as human consciousness has developed towards individual agency and self-awareness. More importantly, I am sure that what God wants from us - starting from here, and from now - is very different. We need to grasp firmly and with clarity that in an ultimate way (aside from the pragmatic social management (mostly related to efficiency, surveillance and control; which knowledge is now primarily used for evil ends, anyway) we are dealing with very diverse individual Beings; and these ought to be known essentially in terms of Christian values. It is not our Christian duty to assist with the effective administration of a society dedicated (top-dwn and pervasively throughout) towards evil ends.