Diversity in Time of Need

 Some ideas from my third book, Seeing What Others Cannot See, that seem remarkably appropriate for today --

DIVERSITY IN TIME OF NEED

Throughout this book, we have been dealing with diversity and mixed talents in many different forms. However, there are some deep questions that seem to lie under all of our considerations. We want superiority. So why do we need diversity?

Perhaps the simplest answer is that we need many kinds of superiority—and that we cannot have it all at once. It seems that we should encourage diversity not only to be civil, not only to be respectful, not only to be humane, not only to be just—but also because we have a particular stake in diversity that is rarely, if ever, fully articulated.

We want there to be people who have abilities we do not yet know that we need, abilities that we have not ever tried to measure, because we do not know that we needed them—abilities that may be in no way associated with the conventional abilities and talents that we now measure by formal or informal means.

As we have seen, adapting to change has been a major feature in human survival, as with all of life. We have made the point that as technology and other factors in the environment change, they sometimes substantially redefine the kinds of talents and abilities (and passions) that are wanted.

The theory of multiple intelligences is very important in this discussion. If there is only one kind of intelligence (as many have been taught to believe), then you have only more of it or less of it. But if there are in fact many forms of intelligence, then the whole discussion is transformed.

Accordingly, in this context, the main idea is that changes in the environment often occur too quickly for either evolutionary or cultural adaptation to respond. We are capable of learning and adapting in many ways and at many levels, but it takes time.

What we want, therefore, is to find means to tolerate and cultivate the talents in a wide diversity of individuals—with supportive institutions and organizations, so that when we need a certain set of talents and abilities, it is already out there, ready to be brought into service—sometimes, perhaps often, at the last moment, when finally it is realized that the old leaders or the old ideas are no longer working.

Time is short, and radical, perhaps even frightening, changes must be made, regardless of the risks. . . .

THINKING “OUT OF THE BOX”

We need to assess the institutional changes required so that dyslexics and different thinkers with markedly mixed talents can still work within established larger institutional structures. We need studies of how this works and does not work.

For example, as we have seen before, we can look at the relationship that dyslexic paleontologist John R. (Jack) Horner has with the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, Montana. The museum staff modified their procedures to do things in unconventional ways in order to allow Jack and his students to do high-level work, making dramatic discoveries, while designing new and highly innovative museum displays to communicate with the public.

Because of his dyslexia, Horner had flunked out of the University of Montana seven times (as he once reminded me). But he came to be known as one of the two or three most important paleontologists in the world—known as an original and innovative interpreter of the fossil evidence.

Horner says he tries to teach his grad students “to think like a dyslexic” because that is where the “good stuff" comes from—learning to read the book of nature with fresh insight without being distracted by the theories of others. He says the rest is “just memorization.”

One of Horner’s dyslexic students, as we noted, made discoveries thought “impossible”—finding red blood cells and flexible blood vessels inside a 68-million-year-old fossil bone. Horner pointed out that this discovery was never made before, because “all the books in the world” would say that it could not be done. Recall, he noted that it is easy for dyslexics “to think outside the box” because “they have never been in the box.”

Finally, we need to be convinced that it is indeed time for substantial change. It is hard to see that, in a remarkable number of cases, true innovation in using the most advanced information visualization technologies comes, in fact, from those who have struggled most with the oldest technologies: reading and writing.

It is becoming increasingly clear that new tools and new ways of seeing and discovering will require new talents and, often, different kinds of brains.

We need to see the truth of Horner’s observation that dyslexia is “certainly not something that needs to be fixed, or cured, or suppressed!”

Indeed, we need to see that, as Jack says, “maybe it’s time for a revolution -- or at least -- it may be time to start something.”

Seeing What Others Cannot See, T.G. West, 2017, pp. 189 - 195.