Invisible Paths
19 November 2005
today is the day - diversity
every day, that is.
A couple of days spent in London: time with Albe, meeting up with my favourite LC in the world, and of course coffees/dinners/eating dates and walnuts from Dubai with Natalia. Meeting with Jude, Jasmin, Amber, Micco, CK, and Dominic, giving them a weekend-grand-tour of the LSE (with nostalgia and the strange feeling of an alumna):
Two days in London also dedicated to "Diversity Mindset":
many questions have grown in me since then, especially the thought that once we have achieved diversity of opinion (which, in my view is the crucial element of all this diversity talk), we really have to learn how to use conflict creatively, to build something new from the different angles presented when diversity of opinion prevails.
Culturally, we consider conflict as bad, and try to avoid it, try to be the "last one standing" when we have a heated discussion with someone, it is generally shameful for the one who gives in in an argument. And yet, arguments are bound to arise when there are different opinions present, and we need to build a way of distilling interesting and new approaches to problems we have from these conflicts.
Interestingly, natural and social scientists have formed the "Law of requisite variety", which states that in order for any body composed of several parts to survive changes in the environment, the separate parts have to be diverse, i.e. different from each other. Only like this the whole body can produce a solution and react to the change. Something new can only come out of diversity, a body of homogenous parts cannot create anything novel.
Hence the call for using variety of opinion, even though it might hurt.
A couple of days spent in London: time with Albe, meeting up with my favourite LC in the world, and of course coffees/dinners/eating dates and walnuts from Dubai with Natalia. Meeting with Jude, Jasmin, Amber, Micco, CK, and Dominic, giving them a weekend-grand-tour of the LSE (with nostalgia and the strange feeling of an alumna):
Two days in London also dedicated to "Diversity Mindset":
many questions have grown in me since then, especially the thought that once we have achieved diversity of opinion (which, in my view is the crucial element of all this diversity talk), we really have to learn how to use conflict creatively, to build something new from the different angles presented when diversity of opinion prevails.
Culturally, we consider conflict as bad, and try to avoid it, try to be the "last one standing" when we have a heated discussion with someone, it is generally shameful for the one who gives in in an argument. And yet, arguments are bound to arise when there are different opinions present, and we need to build a way of distilling interesting and new approaches to problems we have from these conflicts.
Interestingly, natural and social scientists have formed the "Law of requisite variety", which states that in order for any body composed of several parts to survive changes in the environment, the separate parts have to be diverse, i.e. different from each other. Only like this the whole body can produce a solution and react to the change. Something new can only come out of diversity, a body of homogenous parts cannot create anything novel.
Hence the call for using variety of opinion, even though it might hurt.
