The principle of social inclusion (inclusiveness) dictates beliefs, practices and attitudes that cause individuals with diverse characteristics of any kind to feel valued, respected and able to interact with other individuals or groups without bias or discrimination. In practice, inclusiveness entails not just nominal inclusion of radically different individuals in a group but presupposes automatic and unqualified belonging just on account of nominal inclusion. I argue that social pressure in favour of ‘being inclusive’ conditions individuals, children in particular, not to avoid or exclude individuals whom they dislike. The pro-inclusion conditioning may also trigger feelings of guilt when the conditioned individual cannot articulate valid reasons for disliking someone. This is bound to impede the capacity of children and adults to recognise and escape abusive relationships. Since pro-inclusiveness is an ideological rather than strictly rational position, it may be the case that no socially acceptable reasons for defensive exclusion exist within some contexts.

The focus of inclusiveness training is on neutralising the instinctive fear of difference and the individual sense for what is culturally right and wrong. According to one Government funded Inclusion Agency: “Inclusion happens when children are viewed as capable and valued contributors as opposed to having deficits that need to be fixed… Inclusion is everybody’s responsibility, though sometimes our fears, lack of confidence, attitudes and beliefs can be the most significant barriers to achieving this.” The underlying conviction that the ethical imperative to be inclusive overrides our personal values, emotions and fears and flatly negates the possibility of ‘deficits in others that need to be fixed’ implicitly stigmatises our instinctive sense of personal wellbeing and safety that requires readiness for precautionary avoidance and a degree of distrust for the unknown. If the individual sense of right and wrong is rejected then moral agency is also rejected, leaving individuals simultaneously dehumanised and fully subordinated to some external moral authority. The premise that we are obliged to include others, or that inclusion is something that the group ‘owes’ to any individual, is posited as a self-evident truth, without any empirical evidence that this is beneficial to the individuals who are comitted to inclusiveness. In other words, the ethic of inclusion facilitates secondary exclusion capable of creating extreme asymmetry of power, especially in relation to epistemic first-person authority; a paradox.

The paradox of inclusion is distinct from the paradox of tolerance in that tolerance does not preclude avoidance, whereas the ethic of inclusion makes asymmetry of power inevitable, arbitrarily negating the crucial moral consideration of whether we are ethically obliged to be inclusive of irrationality, pathology and, ultimately, of evil.

The professed aim of inclusion is equity. This entails that “other ways of knowing” and diverse values all ought to have have equal social standing and equal “voice” (entitlement to expression). This in turn presupposes equal status of non-objective “truths”, therefore no singular truth, therefore no Truth. It is a mode of neurohacking that facilitates mental compartmentalisation and disassociation; I must respect the truths of others while simultaneously believing my truth, even if contradicted by other truths, and thus integrate contradiction as a valid and healthy state of mind. The ideological commitment to normalisation of contradiction is evident in the words of one of the leading proponents of inclusion and diversity: “We should acknowledge differences, we should greet differences, until differences make no difference.” Individuals indoctrinated with this dogma are thereby stripped of their primary cognitive filter that guards us against manipulation and deception, akin to hypnosis, and creates absolute dependency on an authority figure. A contradictory state of mind cannot consistently and therefore effectively act towards a goal on its own, but must be comprehensively guided; procedural guidance can ultimately come only from someone who stands above the principle of inclusion.

In summary, the ethic of inclusion may undermine personal safety and individual autonomy, while promoting authoritarian dependency and epistemic confusion. Individuals in this state may be susceptible to radicalisation and totalitarian subjugation. Inclusiveness about “other ways of knowing” subverts rational thought and implicitly negates personal access to objectivity, rational verification of facts, and the hierarchy of merit.

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