Uni­fi­ca­tion need not imply uni­for­mi­ty. What are the prin­ci­ples that will enable all peo­ple every­where to be val­ued for their unique gifts?

“Always remem­ber that you are absolute­ly unique. Just like every­one else.”— Mar­garet Mead

“Uni­ty in diver­si­ty” is a mil­len­nia-old con­cept, although, it could be said that it has nev­er been more impor­tant to under­stand it than today. Glob­al­iza­tion, for bet­ter or worse, has shrunk the world, and the state of our future depends on our abil­i­ty to cre­ate a uni­fied human response to the prob­lems we face.

Sufi schol­ar Ibn Ara­bi, born in the 12th cen­tu­ry, wrote on the idea of a “uni­ty of being”. This meta­phys­i­cal world­view posi­tions God as the one truth, the sin­gle enti­ty that defines all real­i­ty. All oth­er beings or beliefs emerge from this God as a sin­gu­lar source of life. All diver­si­ty is con­sid­ered to be root­ed in this essence, count­less valid expres­sions spring from this one, sin­gle truth. At the risk of appro­pri­at­ing and dilut­ing a rich cor­pus of philo­soph­i­cal thought, adopt­ing this idea may prove help­ful to over­come the chal­lenges of widen­ing dis­par­i­ties in mod­ern glob­al­ized society.

The bold vision of team­work, we believe will empow­er all who par­tic­i­pate, relies on a rad­i­cal diver­si­ty of skills, per­spec­tives, and iden­ti­ties. Humans have the capac­i­ty to over­come lin­guis­tic rel­a­tiv­i­ty by learn­ing more lan­guages and by becom­ing more famil­iar with oth­er cul­tures. An old east­ern Euro­pean proverb imparts, “The more lan­guages you speak, the more human you become.” The more we can each embrace and incor­po­rate diver­si­ty into our own lives, the more we will con­tribute to a more diverse, and whole­some, net­work of interactions.

We are always in flux. Change is still our most reli­able con­stant. And with change will come con­flict. But con­flict is not to be feared. Con­flict cre­ates oppor­tu­ni­ty for the emer­gence of points of view that did not pre­vi­ous­ly have a plat­form. The clash between dif­fer­ing points of view can come to define cul­ture and help us under­stand his­tor­i­cal moments. We will like­ly nev­er elim­i­nate con­flict. It might even be occa­sion­al­ly nec­es­sary. But con­flict can be dealt with pro­duc­tive­ly if we accept that it is the means by which new modes of think­ing and liv­ing can come to be.

The basic build­ing blocks of human life are all the same, no mat­ter who you are or where you come from. We each need clean air and water, nutri­tious food, suit­able shel­ter, and authen­tic human con­tact. And cru­cial­ly, we all need the plan­et in a healthy state in order to con­tin­ue to help pro­vide us with these neces­si­ties. But beyond these base needs, we have more high­er-lev­el pri­or­i­ties like: the need to feel under­stood, to be loved, to be respect­ed for who we are, and to live in align­ment with our per­son­al val­ues. At our most fun­da­men­tal lev­els, we share these uni­fy­ing require­ments of our being. All diver­si­ty of view­points ulti­mate­ly emerges as inter­pre­ta­tions of these shared needs.

Some­what counter-intu­itive­ly, some uni­for­mi­ty is required to pro­tect diver­si­ty. Intu­itive­ly, we under­stand that all peo­ple must have equal rights, equal oppor­tu­ni­ties, and equal free­dom from oppres­sion to ade­quate­ly thrive. Even more para­dox­i­cal­ly, some forms of intol­er­ance must be main­tained in order to main­tain tol­er­ance. The need to be intol­er­ant of those who advance intol­er­ant ideas was explained by philoso­pher Karl Pop­per in his 1945 work, The Open Soci­ety and its Ene­mies. With­in its pages, Pop­per wrote:

“If we extend unlim­it­ed tol­er­ance even to those who are intol­er­ant, if we are not pre­pared to defend a tol­er­ant soci­ety against the onslaught of the intol­er­ant, then the tol­er­ant will be destroyed, and tol­er­ance with them. ” — Karl Popper

While sup­port­ing the use of ratio­nal argu­ment as the first line of defense against intol­er­ant ideas, Pop­per con­cedes that respond­ing with force can become nec­es­sary if the intol­er­ant group in ques­tion have them­selves denounced the prac­tice of ratio­nal argu­ment and begun to use violence.

Despite all the vari­ance in our expe­ri­ences and per­cep­tions, we can still gen­er­al­ly find a way to con­nect to each oth­er on a human lev­el. We all have to fig­ure out how to make our indi­vid­u­at­ed, and ever-chang­ing, thoughts and inten­tions work in har­mo­ny with one anoth­er, so we’re not in a con­stant bat­tle zone of con­flict­ing patterns.

Var­i­ous ways of con­struct­ing and inter­pret­ing real­i­ty show us the incred­i­ble vari­ance of the human con­di­tion. To be a human is to be a tiny dot on an immense­ly, vast spec­trum of expe­ri­ence. The entire human species itself rep­re­sents anoth­er dot on an even larg­er spec­trum of being that stretch­es through time and space. To hold that truth in your brain is one step toward a greater tol­er­ance for oth­ers. This acknowl­edge­ment of uni­fi­ca­tion through dif­fer­ence might help ease the ten­sions that arise when our unique dif­fer­ences come into con­flict with one another.