Lemons don’t grow in Essex (or: are we witnessing the slow demise of inclusion?)

Influenced by Big Tech and Social/Mainstream Media, are we becoming increasingly sealed in the echo-chamber of our own ideals and ideas without even hearing or considering opinions that challenge our own? And even if that is the case, does it even matter? When was the last time you remember having a real debate (I mean ‘friendly and respectful debate,’ not ‘foghorn diplomacy’) with someone whose views genuinely differed from your own?

What relevance is this to diversity and inclusion? It’s because the expression of diverse opinions and the ability to listen and challenge them is just as important as promoting tolerance of race, faith, gender, orientation, or skin-colour. The echo chamber amplifies intolerance.

But how do we know whether we’re carrying the virus of aggressive or even passive intolerance?

If you are standing by to feel offended; if you read, hear or see a news report and feel immediate rage, or respond negatively before considering the other person’s views and going behind that to understand their reasons for holding those views, you’re probably already a carrier.

If you go on to belittle the person, have them and their views ‘cancelled,’ ‘no-platform’ them, or assume the worst about them (without due regard to the facts), you’re not only a carrier, your intolerance may be infectious.

Let’s face it, in the realm of inclusion, fuelled by social media that for profit reinforces our existing opinions, we are failing, despite our fashionable and laudable desire for ‘diversity and inclusion,’ and that’s why it matters so much.

But what do we mean by ‘inclusion?’ For so many, it appears they are only happy to ‘include’ others once they have confirmed that their views exactly mirror their own!

In wider society, that’s not helped by narcissistic so-called opinion formers or despotic leaders, who will gamble all to be the centre of attention or the permanent source of all power. So, in many places we face a barrage of ‘outside-in’ and ‘top down’ intolerance – the enemy of inclusion.

Karl Marx is attributed with ideas around religion being the opium of the masses. Debate about his ideas isn’t the purpose of this piece, but if he were to look at the world today, might he not ask whether in the twenty first century, has not the opium of the people become our insatiable hunger for our views to be affirmed without challenge?

This closed approach breeds new problems. The obvious distress caused (particularly to those with less life-experience) is noticeable on our university campuses, where trigger warnings are felt necessary when people may be exposed to opinions that differ minutely from their own. Apparently there is no herd immunity to intolerance.

And so, to the point of this article. The bulk of society, while claiming to care about diversity and inclusion, has become significantly less diverse and inclusive. We’re more polarised than the grid connections of a high voltage power station. Our intolerance is shrouded by a paper thin mask of tolerance.

We ignore the people behind the labels. We parade our intolerance as if it is a good thing. If there is a bandwagon, we jump on it without pause or regard to the detailed facts.

Within the limitations of over-generalisation and with notable exceptions, our young are becoming increasingly fearful of hearing views that don’t exactly mirror their own. Our mid-lifers and ‘OK boomers’ have become fearful of expressing opinions for fear of the reprisals those opinions might attract. Self-developed opinions remain unchallenged, untested, uncorroborated, and self-reinforced. The result is a toxic lack of inclusion – exactly the opposite of what is so often intended. That leaves our old, who thank goodness, don’t care a fig about what anyone thinks of them. Will they be our saviours? Who knows? Would we even let them? Or would we ignore them too because they don’t even exist in our dulled social-media pseudo-reality?

In so many places where societies claim to be ‘free,’ people feel no longer free to diverge from the current ‘line’ dictated to them by the latest ever-changing media-savvy and self-proclaimed opinion-formers, who we have allowed to become our mini-dictators. Orwellian ‘Newspeak’ has become something much worse: societal ‘Newthink.’ Where democracy exists, people’s only true freedom comes when they express their heartfelt views in private at the ballot box – but before they get there, that hasn’t stopped the opinion-formers attempting to twist their reality (and objective truth) along the way.

But isn’t the worst kind of delusion self-delusion? We must correct this.

And so, a call to action. 

If you care about not being manipulated, if you respect yourself enough to believe that you should base your views on something more accurate than a big-tech algorithm (or a media behemoth feeding the people what they want) designed to reinforce whatever you already think; if you think yourself (or want to think yourself) worthy of being a champion of real diversity and inclusion, trust yourself enough to seek out people, places and forums where your views will be challenged, where rational and respectful debate is encouraged, where you are open to being offended and may offend others but will know that your humanity will always be respected – and where you will respect theirs. Then hone your views on the anvil of fair debate – and make a difference.

An anonymous American voter apocryphally is meant to have been quoted as saying ‘this time I had to abandon all my principles – and do the right thing!’ 

So, allow yourself the freedom to admit that after due consideration, your views may change – let’s face it: there’s no shame in occasionally putting yourself in the right.

After all, until I looked and saw them in my English county that borders the North Sea, I wouldn’t have believed that lemons don’t just inhabit places like sunny Mediterranean coastal groves. Lemons really do grow in Essex.