What do Malcolm Gladwell and Will Ferrell have in common? They are both promoters of diversity. In his new book Revenge of the Tipping Point, Gladwell argues that diversity keeps us safe from fascism while conformity promotes it. He appreciates how a monoculture facilitates the unbelievably rapid spread of disease in the plant and animal communities and of harmful ideologies in human society. Diversity keeps us safe from harmful ideas by filtering and metabolizing them in different ways, rather than blindly adopting them in order to conform to the dictates of the majority. In Ferrell’s movie Will and Harper, Ferrell presents the development of a deep, warm emotional bond between himself and Harper, a male SNL comedy writer who transitioned to female. The movie bounces back and forth between hilarious, poignant, sad, and sublime moments as the friends encounter others who express either acceptance/support or disgust/hatred. The movie made me appreciate just how important it is to allow a person to be just who he/she/they feels inside. Clearly people who are “different” can scare and arouse violent reactions in a monoculture that refuses to acknowledge their humanity. And yet, without diversity, are we really human? If we all though, felt, and acted alike, we would not be robots devoid of flexibility, spontaneity, and creativity?
