Diversity

The Diversity Campaign is in full swing at the University of Waterloo. The posters are everywere, The student newspaper has articles about it, the banners are hanging all over campus, but what is it really all about? what is this "diveristy" that we hear so much about? To quote the One Waterloo website it is "help[ing] the UW community move from mere awareness and acceptance of differences to understanding of those differences" Sounds to me like a lot of rhetoric about pretty much nothing, but the question is, is this issue worth getting so worked up about. I mean the people in charge of the diveristy campaign have good intentions and want us to all be able to exist in harmony while having our differences. That's a good thing isn't it?

Well, one problem that I see with diversity, at least the interpretation that our postmodern society puts on it, is that it is relativistic. You see diversity, to these people, means that although we all have our differences, we must all accept the fact that we are different and not try to change the differences in other people because that is not living in harmony with them. It is not so much that understanding the differences is a problem, in fact that is a good thing, but it in what you do about that understanding. I can't tell you that I think the way I do something, or the things that I believe, or the sexual orientation that I have, is somehow better than the things that you do.

That is where the problem lies. It is plain and simple relativism. And what is the problem with that you might ask. The problem is that there are then no absolutes. Who are you to tell me that I might be doing something that is wrong. So what if I have 6 wives and committ incest with my children, you need to learn to accept my differences and have a more tolerant attitude toward me instead of trying to impose your ideas of what is right and wrong on me.

With a relativism you not only have and illogical and hopelessly distorted worldview, but you also have one that is without morals. This is scary. Truely scary. In fact that only reason such a worldview can even have any kind of hold on society without totally destroying it is that it is a worldview that thrives on illogicalness and so it doesn't really matter that people are inconsistant with it, becuase by being inconsistant they are be consistant with being inconsistant, and inconsistancy is what relativism demands. The inconsitancies come through in a diversity campaign that promotes the acceptance of all religions as being ok, which in turn denies the truth of those religions that hold to the absoluteness of truth and therefore hold that their beliefs are the one and only true belief.

That is the problem with their view of diversity. Diversity is not saying that if I hold that Homosexuality is sin and you hold that it is not we need to accept that we are both right and just get along since a sin for me might not be a sin for you, no, diversity is admitting that we differ and trying to figure out why we differ and who is correct, not just for himself, but in absolute terms. These two people may be able to get along just fine in other aspects of their lives where they agree with each other, and they may even agree not to argue about this issue, but they can never say that they are both right. Disagreements are not bad.