Diversity is redundant

Last I checked, diver­si­ty was a for­mal prop­er­ty, not a sub­stan­tive one:

A good that is good in itself (for a sec­ond, let’s accept an intrin­sic good) must have sub­stan­tive con­tent: hap­pi­ness, jus­tice, health, knowl­edge, friend­ship, etc.

But diver­si­ty mere­ly describes a state of variation—the pres­ence of dif­fer­ence. It alone tells us noth­ing about:

*whether the dif­fer­ences are eth­i­cal­ly valu­able,
*whether they pro­mote human flour­ish­ing,
*or whether they cre­ate or solve prob­lems.

A group of peo­ple with high­ly diverse vices, dan­ger­ous skills, or incom­pat­i­ble aims is “diverse,” yet not nec­es­sar­i­ly good.

In oth­er words, diver­si­ty is more a con­fig­u­ra­tion, not a val­ue.

Think (for a moment) of the fol­low­ing:

con­tra­dic­to­ry belief sys­tems,

harm­ful prac­tices,

destruc­tive behav­iors,

incom­pat­i­ble cos­molo­gies,

What’s valu­able above any of the above?

If diver­si­ty were intrin­si­cal­ly good, then the pres­ence of any difference—even irra­tional­i­ty, injus­tice, or cruelty—would count pos­i­tive­ly. This is absurd.

Diver­si­ty mere­ly increas­es the num­ber of ele­ments or types in a sys­tem.

Knowl­edge aims at truth.

Jus­tice aims at fair­ness.

Courage aims at right action in the face of dan­ger.

Diver­si­ty aims at … more diver­si­ty.

Isn’t that redun­dant?