The unique and price­less qual­i­ties of human­i­ty require space to exist at the full poten­tial of expres­sion. Mono­cul­tures are vul­ner­a­ble. Diver­si­ty cre­ates strength.

We live in a time of unprece­dent­ed cul­tur­al sim­i­lar­i­ty. The creep of glob­al­iza­tion has dis­sem­i­nat­ed an increas­ing­ly uni­form set of cul­tur­al mark­ers and val­ues across our plan­et to such a degree that a vis­it to almost any cor­ner of the world will yield some air of the familiar.

The ubiq­ui­tous­ness of McDonald’s gold­en arch­es is almost a clichéd rep­re­sen­ta­tion of this very phe­nom­e­non. Both the years of sus­tained con­tact between coun­tries, and the easy move­ment of dig­i­tal infor­ma­tion, has led to the adop­tion of many shared pat­terns of behav­ior and con­sumerism across all con­ti­nents. That said, it is still large­ly West­ern hege­mo­ny that has dic­tat­ed the glob­al shifts of recent decades.

It could be sug­gest­ed that homog­e­niza­tion of the human brings us clos­er togeth­er as points of com­mon­al­i­ty become more numer­ous. Ide­al­ly, this would reduce the poten­tial for con­flict across bor­ders and help us to uni­fy along shared goals. But it doesn’t work that way. Face­book is a prime exam­ple of how peo­ple group togeth­er with those of sim­i­lar inter­ests and end­less­ly repeat what­ev­er sound­bites are most pop­u­lar with­in their par­tic­u­lar echo-chamber.

The nature of the cul­tur­al sys­tem that is being spread via glob­al­iza­tion is, at its core, adver­sar­i­al. The accom­pa­ny­ing insti­tu­tions of cap­i­tal­ism do not serve the pur­pose of col­lec­tive uplift or equal­i­ty, they demand win­ners and losers. Adver­sar­i­al­ism bleeds into the col­lec­tive con­scious­ness and, sub­se­quent­ly, social ties atro­phy, and mass coop­er­a­tion becomes more difficult.

The impo­si­tion of uni­for­mi­ty robs us of a qual­i­ty we instinc­tive­ly rec­og­nize as cen­tral to our being: the expres­sion of our dif­fer­ences. Author­i­tar­i­an regimes com­mon­ly enforce prac­tices designed to restrict any poten­tial devi­a­tion from an estab­lished mean. Far too many peo­ple con­tin­ue to suf­fer under these oppres­sive con­di­tions. Near­ly a third of the glob­al pop­u­la­tion lives under author­i­tar­i­an regimes.⁵

In a dra­ma­tized inter­pre­ta­tion of this issue, in the 2002 film Equi­lib­ri­um, a theo­crat­ic gov­ern­ment has sought to stamp out con­flict through the chem­i­cal elim­i­na­tion of emo­tions them­selves. In addi­tion to the erad­i­ca­tion of emo­tions, they’ve also banned all works of art out of fear of it kin­dling any form of pas­sion in the human soul. The inter­nal life of humans is deter­mined to pose a threat to soci­etal sta­bil­i­ty and is thus snuffed out. Now con­sid­er how our pris­on­ers are treat­ed in today’s soci­ety. They are each assigned a num­ber instead of a name and giv­en uni­form jump­suits to wear, all in an attempt to dehu­man­ize them and destroy their indi­vid­ual will. This is a form of col­lec­tiv­i­ty, as enforced from above. And this pol­i­cy is a very dif­fer­ent, and much more harm­ful, par­a­digm than that of col­lec­tiv­i­ty formed through bonds of shared pur­pose and respect.

If our free­dom to express our dif­fer­ences is sup­pressed, then our capac­i­ty for hereti­cal thought is reduced and, in this process, a valu­able foun­da­tion for insight is lost to us. The rejec­tion of dom­i­nant ideas and the free­dom to pur­sue alter­na­tives, has the poten­tial to trans­form our entire con­cep­tion of our place in the uni­verse. If we want to con­tribute to empow­er­ing soci­etal change, then every­one should have the jus­ti­fi­able right to self-expres­sion. It’s imper­a­tive we all be able to raise our var­i­ous con­cerns and work toward our dreams for our shared state of existence.