Over the past 100 years, the world has
changed dramatically. 100 years ago, there were still 4 empires in Europe, the
motor vehicle was only 30 years old, and the speed limit in most cities was 15
km/h. The word ‘teenager’ had not yet been invented, and women were not allowed
to vote. Heroin was still prescribed by doctors, and the Eiffel Tower was the
tallest structure in the world.
Today, none of those statements are true.
And as the world changed, its propensity to change accelerated as well. The
first computer, ENIAC, was completed in 1946, and filled a room. By 1965, the
integrated circuit was invented, and computers became the size of filing
cabinets. Gordon Moore coined his law that computing power would double every
18 months, and it has kept pace since then. DARPA created a redundant system to
network its computers together during the 1970, initially connecting 4
computers across the United States. By 1977, 100 computers were connected, and
that ballooned to over 100 000 by 1989. By 2000, this network was called
the internet, and had 100 million computers connected.
100 years ago, the telephone was barely 40
years old. Transcontinental telephone lines were just installed, and worldwide
communications were in its infancy. By 2003, the world had 1.263 billion
telephones connecting people, but it had already been eclipsed. In 1973, Martin
Cooper invented the mobile phone. By 1992, these devices could send text
messages, and by 1996, they could access the internet.
Today, over 2 billion computers are operating
across the globe, with 6.8 billion mobile devices connecting almost the entire
human race together. The internet has an estimated 3.4 billion users currently,
providing almost half of humanity access to the greatest repository of human
knowledge ever assembled. The pace of change is increasing, and futurists
conceive that in our lifetimes we may witness the technological singularity,
where our creations surpass our human capabilities, and accelerate change even
faster.
But humanity is nothing if not a product of
our evolution. And to our ancestors, change represented one thing only. Danger.
And danger breeds fear. We’re the descendants of those who noticed change and
immediately began looking for a predator. True, this was quite often the case
back then, but as we’ve progressed both socially and technologically, we’ve
eliminated most of these dangers. Mankind is now the apex predator of this
planet, with our life expectancy increasing by one year every three years. But
still, we’ve retained our fear of change.
As change has accelerated over the past
century, change has affected more and people, as these same people have become
more and more connected. They are exposed to more and different experiences
faster and faster, and we’ve not been able to keep our fear in check. We
instinctively want to keep these changes at a distance, and retreat into our
comfort zone. Into what we know, and that makes us feel safe. We retreat into
what we perceive to be most like us and shun that which is different.
And so the world descends into xenophobia.
Donald Trump rose to prominence in the United States on the back of promises to
keep Mexicans and Muslims out. The United Kingdom Independence Party got
widespread support while campaigning on anti-immigration issues, with similar
far-right parties rising in Europe in the wake of the Syrian Civil War, while
not recognizing that the same fear of change is fuelling the cause of that war,
ISIS. Even in South Africa, xenophobic attacks occur against Nigerians.
Everywhere, the refrain is the same. “We should stand together against the
uncivilized hordes!” But as Jimmy Carr so memorably said, “They say there’s
safety in numbers. Tell that to six million Jews!”
Retreating into homogeneity (as in, all the
same) seems part of our cultural fear response. But nature has already taught
us a powerful lesson in the dangers of homogeneity. No individual, or group,
has only strengths and no weaknesses. In nature, this has led to mass
extinctions whenever rapid environmental changes happen. More than 99 percent of all species,
amounting to over five billion species, that ever lived on Earth are estimated
to be extinct after their habitable environment changed so much that they were
unable to adapt to survive. For an ecosystem to be resilient against rapid
changes, it needs to be biodiverse, with lots of species that can fill the gap
left by a single one should it go extinct due to whatever cause.
UNESCO has stated that, "cultural
diversity is as necessary for humankind as biodiversity is for nature."
Even in finance, the importance of diversification is well known. Harry
Markowitz showed back in the 1950’s that a diversified portfolio provides the
same return as the component shares, but the diversified portfolio had less
risk than even the lowest risk component – the risk reduction was greater than
the sum of the individual components! For his work in showing this, he not only
created modern portfolio theory, but also won a Nobel Memorial Prize in
economics for his efforts.
It comes down to the old proverb that says,
“Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.” Just like different animals can
provide different strengths to counteract other’s weaknesses in an ecosystem
and make it resilient, and just as different shares volatility cancel each
other out in a portfolio to reduce risk, so too do different people provide
different strengths and viewpoints in their communities to counteract the
weaknesses they have.
The Bene Gesserit famously said, “Fear is
the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.” When
we embrace fear instead of change, we pull back from a diverse cultural
community, and not only weaken it, but also significantly weaken ourselves. People
are all different, and when we fear, we can latch onto any difference to divide
people into an ‘us’ and ‘them.’ And when we don’t have an external threat to
fear, we tear our societies apart to do so. Political processes become
factionalized. A united people splits apart at the seams. A rainbow nation that
can no longer claim that title, because each individual colour now charts its
own path.
We’ve seen it happen in South Africa, and
there are signs that it is rumbling here in Namibia as well. When we divide
ourselves into an ‘us’ and ‘them’ we are segregating our society. Keeping
ourselves apart. A new apartheid. Namibia was founded on the premise that the
rights denied to ‘others’ due to apartheid would never be repeated, and we’ve
prospered as a united nation, and a united people. So when fear of change wants
to drive you to talk about ‘them’, remember the other part of the Bene Gesserit
saying, “I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the
fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.” Let’s embrace change
and diversity, because we as a people will emerge stronger on the other side.
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