What comes after diversity? I am asking this question here for various reasons, not least of which that I happen to be suddenly wide awake at the very beginning of the wee hours of the morning, somehow snapped out of a deep sleep after a couple of hours in bed. But this happens from time to time, and I think rather than writing everything while sitting here at half past one in the morning, I will simply introduce some salient ideas, then later add to and revise everything once I have had a proper and full night's sleep.
First I will mention here how I came about thinking of diversity when I really should be lying in bed and waiting for the sleep divinity to come do their thing by me. I was having a visit this afternoon with a friend who lives overseas. We have known each other for a long time, well over a decade, having first met when he was here in Vancouver on an extended sabbatical. He is back in Vancouver for a few days, attending a conference.
Over a cup of coffee my friend, who is a professor of anthropology, was telling me about his recent experiences in visiting various very diverse churches and synagogues that happen to be LGTBetc centred or based, and particularly began to regale me about a couple of places here in Vancouver and in New York where the human diversity was nothing short of amazing, especially the racial diversity that included outlandishly tall transwomen of colour, and so forth.
We had been already talking at length about diversity and the queer community when I mentioned something about a transwoman in an Anglican parish church I was attending a few years ago. She seemed to had become particularly incensed at me because I didn't go all the way in accepting her purported self-identity. As seems to be true for a lot of trans people, it wasn't quite enough for her that I should simply accept that she perceives herself as a woman and then move on to talk about other and perhaps more interesting matters, but that I actually must believe as strongly and fervently as she does that she is a woman, every bit as much a woman as any cis female who was born a biological female and will die a biological female. While I tried to give her the benefit of the doubt, what I didn't tell her was this is a leap that I am simply unwilling and unable to take, given that my belief is that our DNA never lies, and neither do our chromosomes. By the same token, I also accept that gender identity is decidedly different from biological sex, and I have absolutely no trouble with a person who has gender dysphoria opting to transition to the gender that they identify as. And other semantics.
Where I see a bit of a red flag in this and other conversations I have had seems to be around a kind of narcissism that appears to harbour itself in our Canadian values of diversity, and I am concerned that this is what is preventing us from moving forward. Referencing again the church where I met this trans woman, there was a particular pride that the good parishioners there often appeared to be taking in their diversity. Sometimes on the Sunday bulletin would appear a rather sweet drawing of persons of all races, classes and sexualities and genders (all appearing rather as twee stereotypes or caricatures) all holding hands and dancing in a circle. I did rather like the image, even if there was something just a little bit off-putting about it, and now I think I have finally identified the little fly in this jar of ointment. As well as appearing as twee caricatures, even though everyone in the illustration was holding hands and smiling, no one appeared to be looking at anyone else. They each appeared as the star of their own little Broadway show, the centre of their own little universe, which also squares with my impression and experience and eventual lack of success in ever socially integrating with that particular smug little congregation.
Following my visit with my friend, which included being introduced to a colleague of his, who also (with some friendly gesturing from my friend) took interest in the contents of my sketchbook), I was walking home in the early dark of late November, and came across a young street man, likely with addictions and maybe a mental illness as well, trying to break into a parking meter, allegedly to steal coins to buy something for his drug habit. The first thing I noticed was how alone he must be, and how isolated he must feel from the rest of the community. This doesn't say a lot for the rest of us, by the way, given how excluding and isolating most middle class Canadians tend to be anyway, despite all our lovely language about diversity and inclusivity.
When I got home, after dinner, I could hear the manic and frenzied screams coming from a woman who lives in the building next door to my apartment. I know nothing about this person, have never seen or met her, and her manic screeching and squealing could easily wake the dead. But I have compassion for this person, as annoying as I find her behaviour. She is screaming out of the depths of her intense pain, grief and trauma. She is screaming out of her intense loneliness and experience of absolute isolation. Or that's how I imagine her, anyway.
This also reminds me of a conversation I had recently with one of my clients, We were musing together on how one of the key factors in the deterioration of one's mental health and wellness is often in how increasingly isolated they become, as they become consumed 'by the experience of life as having for them no meaningful sense of belonging, purpose or participation.
This brings me back again to the idea of how do we get beyond simple diversity? How do we move beyond celebrating diversity as a consummate value, to channelling our diversity as a way of making us more cohesive and more part of one another's lives? Does anyone here know what a circle jerk is? It is when a group of men are standing in a circle masturbating. This rather inappropriate metaphor could actually be very appropriate to the way that a lot of Canadians do diversity. It is as though we are all standing together, all proud and glowing in our turbans, our kippahs, our hijabs, our surgically reassigned bodies, or whatever identifying traits make us unique and special, and well, we're not really interacting. We are simply each strutting our stuff. Each singing our own tune in our own language "I am special, I am special, look at me, look at me. I am very special, yes so very special. You will see. You will see."
I could even be justly accused of doing the same thing with my art, when I am showing my work, or especially when I am drawing in my sketchbook inside a coffee shop or other public space. Except for one salient little detail. I have become so used to making art wherever I might happen to be, that I don't usually even know, or notice that other people might be noticing, and really, I often feel genuine surprise and sometimes a little discomfort when I notice strangers looking my way as I am filling in the details of a particularly good representation of a tropical bird or a flower. Then I have to remind myself, oh, I'm making art in public, some people, anyway are going to notice. Duh. And when someone actually stops by to comment, I really don't care if they want to compliment my work, because really I'm more interested in hearing and learning about them and their lives, and if doing art in public can be used to facilitate healthy social connection, then I'm all for it. I don't want to be singled out for attention, but I do like the idea of connecting with people.
We have to get beyond mere diversity as virtue signalling and start working harder at connecting and at inviting into the circle and widening the circle all who live outside of the circle, or people who just have to live outside. Which is to say the homeless and the very poor. But we have been so blinded and brainwashed by hardcore economic capitalism and competition and the various myths and lies about individualism that it is still perennially difficult and almost impossible for many Canadians to reach beyond our own enculturated reserve in order to touch other people's lives, and by letting ourselves be touched by the lives of others.
This is why I say hi to strangers. It isn't much. ut it's a start. Not everyone responds, but most do, and it's almost always positive. It gets my head out of my rear end long enough to, hopefully and cheerfully encourage the rest of us to do the same, Gentle Reader. We have to start integrating more and including one another more in our lives, no matter how busy we think we are. Our future survival as a culture and as a species is going to depend on this. Good night, ducks, I'm going back to bed now.
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