by Brett Stevens on June 19, 2009

When you criticize society as a writer, you immediately find yourself oriented toward the commonly observable things that are universally socially denied.

We can list them here, briefly:

Biology: we are not the final stage in evolution.

Politics: we are not all equal in ability or reward.

Social: we get ahead by manipulating others

Business: sell image, make profit (see “social”)

Government: there’s no way to please everyone

Any of these taboos freak people out. A subset of the first political topic, “we are not equal in ability,” is ethnicity and the idea that we can make diverse societies. Diversity is not a new idea; in fact, it’s an old idea with a troubled history. Mainly that it always causes such internal strife that societies collapse into third world status.

However, since it’s our social taboo, it’s fodder for humor:

AMES, IAâ€“In the spirit of celebrating diversity at Iowa State University, a black guy was digitally added to the cover of the school’s 2001 spring-semester course catalog, school officials announced Monday. “Here at Iowa State, we have a remarkably diverse student body, with literally dozens of non-whites,” Iowa State director of student affairs Andrea Driessen said. “We thought a picture with at least one non-white happily interacting with whites would be a great way to show off this fact. Unfortunately, we didn’t have any pictures of whites and non-whites actually interacting, so we had to make one up.” The black guy, added using Adobe Photoshop, has been identified as Marcus Jamison. A Shreveport, LA, native, Jamison attended Iowa State for one semester in 1996 before transferring to Grambling University. His face was lifted from a photo of him attending a racial-sensitivity seminar during his freshman orientation and digitally added to the course-catalog cover by graphic designer Brian Tompkins. The Onion

The Onion does a great job of making fun of things that are stupid in our society and in ourselves. If anything, they have a liberal bias, and this article is bemoaning the lack of interaction between the races. But the gist of it is that white people are faking the appearance of “diversity” (multiculturalism) in order to look good to others.

And now, from a news publication:

The smiling, ethnically diverse family featured on the cover of Toronto’s latest edition of its summer Fun Guide was digitally altered to make the photo more “inclusive,” which city officials say is in keeping with a policy to reflect diversity. A spokesman for the department that publishes the guide listing recreation activities confirmed the publication was doctored to insert the face of a different father. “He superimposed the African-Canadian person onto the family cluster in the original photo. It was two photographs and one head was superimposed over the original family photo,” said John Gosgnach, communications director for the social development division. “The goal was to depict the diversity of Toronto and its residents.” National Post

We can either choose to accept reality, or we have to falsify it. When we falsify it, we mislead others, which works for a while but then creates long-term resentments.

This is not the only example. In addition to other incidents of people “adding diversity,” there are also cases of people subtracting diversity that also looks stoned, and lightening diversity so it appeals to a wider audience. It’s all the same response, pandering, to a reality people aren’t mature enough to face.

In American racial discourse, including Canada since it’s a virtual clone of Vermont, the well-intentioned nanny state led by those who lacking self-esteem raise their social status through competitive altruism, panders to blacks and whites alike and creates false expectations and through that, anger, internal conflict, resentment and other small but many enduring problems.

These paralyze the society so it cannot make decisions, therefore lives with its problems getting worse every generation, until it slowly slides into third-world status — corruption, hypocrisy, disorganization, stupidity and lies.

Tags: cognitive dissonance, crowdism, passive aggression, status

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