Joe Gerstandt | keynote speaker, freedom fighter, freak-flag flier

I wrote a blog post recently about some of the underlying beliefs that inform my approach to my work. One of the things that I said in that post was this:

“I believe that difference is one of the most fundamental and powerful dynamics of the human experience.”

I knew there were a few things on my list that might draw some disagreement, but I was surprised that this one did.

Someone e-mailed me (and gave me permission to quote from their e-mail) in response to this post…

“I enjoy reading your stuff and I respect the passion that you have for your work, but it seems kind of silly to say that difference is fundamental to life. Difference is not a part of my life at all. I am a bit of a loner. I have chosen that and I appreciate it. I am an artist and the people that I spend time with are artists. I can understand a person choosing to make difference a fundamental part of their life, but it is not inherently so.”

This is a good example of what I am trying to get at when I talk about diversity being so poorly understood. You can certainly sort and choose for different kinds of diversity, but you cannot have a life without diversity. Even if you primarily surround yourself with people like you, which most of us do, intentionally or otherwise, diversity is still present. There is diversity between my wife and I. There is diversity between my sister and I, between my parents and I.

Depending on the day, Jason Lauritsen is my best and/or only friend. We have a great many things in common. We are both straight, white, middle class males, living in Omaha, Nebraska. We both grew up in Northwest Iowa. We read a lot of the same things, we agree on lots of stuff. We both had starter marriages earlier in our lives, we are both re-married, we both have three children at home, we even work together and have worked together before. Despite all of the things that we have in common, there is diversity between us. Depending on how we interact with it, that diversity fuels either small amounts of drama in our relationship or it fuels creativity and learning. As diversity does.

I say that diversity (or difference) is one of the most basic, most fundamental aspects of the human experience because it is. You can pick any two people from this planet at random and put them in a room together and diversity is present, it shows up in every single interaction between two or more people, what could be more fundamental than that? Breathing, eating, sleeping maybe…not much else.

Even if you remove yourself from society and become a hermit, you are surrounded by difference. There is no learning without difference…you have to be introduced to different information and evidence and experience to learn something new. There is no art, no creativity without difference. There could be no life without diversity, I do not know how much more fundamental and basic you can get.

“Difference is the analog of cause.”

Gregory Bateson

Diversity means difference. Not because I say so, but because that is what the word means.

I was told recently that I am trying “to make diversity white.” Diversity is not any color, it is about the differences between people and things. I am just trying to make these differences work for us rather than against us.

Recruiting? That is something that we invented. Management? Human resources? Finance? Marketing? All things that we have recently invented. Diversity has always been here, and it always will be.

Be good to each other.