From Gilbert K. Chesterton we could learn that reality is not flat but paradoxical. In plain terms, that things are not black or white, not even gray, but black, white... and gray, all at once, in a complex creative dynamic. And he showed us that, to understand the world we live in, we must see the dialectical logic that advances thanks to the combat between contraries. More dangerous than single-mindedness is linear, static, or metaphysical thinking, which flattens everything.
One of the paradoxes I like about the British writer and polemicist is his observation that, contrary to what is usually supposed, a peasant rooted in natural adversities has more capacity for skepticism than –Chesterton wrote in 1904– an office worker who took the metro in early 20th century London. Now Chesterton would contrast the critical gaze of our peasants with the obedient and arrogant credulity of the cosmopolitan hipsters who work for a big tech company.
The sociologist Peter L. Berger was not shy about this capacity to see contraries in realities usually observed unidimensionally. For example, when he ironically stated that “there is a certain basis for claiming that the propensity to believe in nonsense increases, rather than decreases, with higher education” (A far glory, 1992). It is a way of observing reality that transgresses easy and dogmatic classifications, and which we should now be able to apply to categories like “populism”, “xenophobia”, “far-right”... if it weren't because transgressing official flat truths sends you directly to the inferno of those suspected of being accomplices.
Where this paradoxical gaze is also necessary is in the debate about diversity, which ranges from those who praise its benefits uncritically to the fearful who see all evils in it. And the first thing we can say about it, to start softening the concept, is that there has always been diversity and, in certain historical periods, as much or more than now. It so happens that, in analyses about ourselves, there is usually this kind of arrogance that makes us think we are the first to have reached the summit of anything. And the truth is that social diversities are not comparable unless in their particular historical contexts.
We should not be fooled either by what in economics are called “marginal differences”, which, despite their irrelevance, can create the illusion of a great capacity for choice. This is what usually happens in the field of fashion, where a diversity of objectively insignificant variations of the same product can lead to an expression of group belonging of highly significant subjective value. We could also say this about the dispersion of social ties caused by the use of social networks as a source of information – infoxication – and as a mental framework. But while fragmentation is real, in a certain dimension, it cannot make us lose sight of the fact that networks simultaneously hide an extraordinary process of standardization. First, through the universalization of the same hardware, that is, the use of mobile phonesin which the differences between brands and terminals are again marginal: they all serve the same purpose. And then, through dependence on just a couple of large technology companies that, by controlling the software, exploit and direct our desires for commercial gain. In summary, they fragment us to standardize us in a disciplined way.
Certainly, we can discuss whether current social and cultural diversity is bearable or excessive for a cohesive social life. We can treat diversity as a blessing or as the plague of Egypt. But let us not lose sight of the fact that, in the meantime, we are subjected to unprecedented standardization processes – this time for real – not because of their scope, but because of the speed with which they impose themselves and, at the same time, evolve. It was not so long ago that James Altucher, in his article New York City is dead forever: here’s why, from 2020, considered that the advent of broadband marked a new before and after in History. And lo and behold, six years later, we can already say that there is a new, no less historic, before and after, now established by popular access to generative artificial intelligence.
I don't know if it makes much sense, beyond provocation, to ask how diverse medieval society was, when each small isolated social nucleus was capable of generating social and cultural content with real proximity to its particular environment. Or if ours, being diverse, is more so, but subjected to the standardizing pressure of large companies and global markets. In any case, what is certain is that current diversification processes are as accentuated as the hidden standardization processes.
