From the abstract to a new, paywalled paper titled The Misery of Diversity:
Evolutionary accounts assert that while diversity may lower subjective well-being (SWB) by creating an evolutionary mismatch between evolved psychological tendencies and the current social environment, human societies can adapt to diversity via intergroup contact under appropriate conditions. Exploiting a novel natural experiment in history, we examine the impact of the social environment, captured by population diversity, on SWB. We find that diversity lowers cognitive and hedonic measures of SWB. Diversity-induced deteriorations in the quality of the macrosocial environment, captured by reduced social cohesion, retarded state capacity, and increased inequality in economic opportunities, emerge as mechanisms explaining our findings. The analysis of first- and second-generation immigrants in Europe and the USA reveals that the misery of home country diversity persists even after neutralizing the role of the social environment. However, these effects diminish among the second generation, suggesting that long-term improvements in the social environment can alleviate the burden of diversity.
Somewhere on this site I discuss a paper about a corporation that had 4-6 person offices all over the world; the researchers found that people were happier and more productive when the office was all male or all female. All the studies I have ever seen find that most people are happiest around others like themselves and want to live that way most of the time.
Not that this is the whole story; after all, if immigrants had been happy in their home countries they presumably would never have left. Village life has its own miseries, and people have been leaving their birth villages for the big city for about 5,000 years now. As I have said many times, I personally prefer mixed-sex gatherings to all male ones, although I am finding that men over 50 are less obnoxious in groups than they were when we were younger.
But, anyway, when you are pondering why our vast wealth and long lives have not made us happy, you have to consider the price we pay for having to live and work with people who feel to us like strangers.
(That can apply to distinctions other than ethnicity and sex; I mean, think about how miserable every presidential election makes tens of millions of Americans on the losing side.)
There are also very basic problems with extending the village mentality to a nation. While it might be possible for a country like Norway to maintain ethnic unity, the US has been multi-ethnic and multi-cultural from its beginnings. It was probably Indians in the southeast who first divided North Americans into Red, Black and White, in the early 1700s, and we have been diverse ever since. Attempts to achieve ethnic purity in the US therefore all amount to Apartheid. While I'm on the subject, ethnic unity in many European states was achieved by some combination of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and forced assimilation. Our desire to live among others like us, while understandable and extremely ancient, always has a dark side that we need to monitor.
When one group has most of the money and power, their desire to hang out with each other can also amount to a severe barrier for others; it was for this reason that the men's clubs that used to be so important in the US (Elks, Kiwanis, etc.) were forced to admit women. (Is that part of why they have declined?)
When I write about immigration to the US, I always acknowledge that there are costs. It is simply true that having to deal with people who feel alien "lowers cognitive and hedonic measures of SWB." Many European ethno-nationalists also write about the bad effects this has on immigrants, torn away from what these writers see as their native homes and cultures, and this paper seems to support the notion that immigrants suffer from their status.
But I think the benefits are worth it. I think the US is more vibrant, more productive, and more interesting with millions of immigrants than it would be without them. Immigration also makes the cost of our aging population more sustainable; take away the contributions of recent immigrants and Social Security would already be bankrupt. I also think that in the US it would have always been hard for blacks to achieve equality in a country that was 85% white than it will be in a more diverse situation.
And I think we are much better off with women in public life, doubling our reservoir of talent and energy.
Sometimes when I read liberals going on about the wonders of diversity I cringe and think about the huge literature showing that diversity makes many of us unhappy. But when I consider that we are stuck with diversity, I think that maybe celebrating what we have is the way to go.
I don't disagree with your argument as a whole, but I would suggest some caveats or additional points:
ReplyDelete1. As always, I would emphasize individual difference, so that in a statement like "diversity makes many of us unhappy," I think the key word is "many," as in "many, but not all."
2. Characterological differences and life experience can create groupings that are not defined by things like ethnicity, and mixing such groups can lead to as much cognitive and subjective SWB decline/tension as mixing different nationalities/ethnicities. American college-educated white liberals and American working-class whites seem to me to be, very broadly, mutually exclusive groups along these lines (and I think blaming either side or thinking it's one side or the other's duty to change itself in some deep way would be pointless, although I'm all for increasing the general civility, nor does the performativity (=falseness, hypocrisy) inherent in civility trouble me in the slightest). By the same token, I self-identify as Jewish, but I'm basically a secular, suburban white American nerd, much more comfortable with non-Jews of that sort than I am or would be with many Jews defined as such (e. g., the ultra-Orthodox, right-wing Israelis, etc.).
3. I think modern western life heightens those non-ethnic, personality-type differences, partly because of familiar factors like technology allowing greater means of expression and formation of like-minded groups, the cultural legacy of individualism, etc., etc. But I think extremely, possibly most, important is the decline of both inter-group and interpersonal violence. The former sort of violence tended to make groups with obvious markers like ethnicity conform to each other for the sake of security, and the latter allowed parents and peers to bully non-conformists into conformity, or at least submissive, quiet misery (see again one of my favorite passages in all writing, the one in Fischer's Albion's Seed about the losers in Appalachian society).
I would add as a corollary of point #2 that, if one is going to accept the tendency for members of ethnic groups to be uncomfortable with members of other groups, and tolerate people's desire for ethnic separation, then, by the same token, surely one must accept and tolerate the tendency for new cultural groups--such as "red" and "blue" Americans--to separate out into like-minded communities. This is not to say that such separateness is viable for economic and other practical reasons, only that accepting morally the one tendency toward separateness as a moral matter necessarily means accepting the other (unless one wants to say that ethnicity itself is somehow more sacred, higher, and better that other sorts of identities, a position I obviously reject).
ReplyDeleteAll the studies I have ever seen find that most people are happiest around others like themselves and want to live that way most of the time.
ReplyDeleteAnd yet there's the historical existence of the Cagot - a minority group of the Pyrenees and surrounding regions with literally nothing to distinguish them from their majority fellows, yet who were hated and oppressed all the same, for literal millennia.
They weren't ethnically different that their fellows. They weren't religiously different. They weren't politically different. They didn't dress differently, eat differently, speak differently, act differently, or think differently. No one, anywhere, could ever explain what it was that made someone "Cagot" - except that it was a social status that was passed down the generations and inherited.
And yet despite being exactly like their fellows in every meaningful way you could imagine, they were othered and ostracized in most brutal fashion.
Because humans are violent, stupid apes. If there isn't a minority available to hate, we'll invent one. We'll fixate on some meaningless difference and MAKE it have meaning, no matter how false or absurd, in order to justify our hatred. And even when there AREN'T any differences to fixate on, we'll just invent some out of whole cloth. We'll IMAGINE differences to excuse our cruelty and evil.
...or at least, that's how we sometimes can be. If we choose not to put in the smallest amount of effort, the smallest degree of dissent, against the dark little corner of our primitive ape brains that is responsible for such heinous things.
You point to studies showing that "diversity" makes most people less happy? My response is that most people are bigots, even in the present day, so of course your studies will show that. Intolerance of one kind or another is the global norm, and people are petty assholes who create In Groups and Out Groups at the drop of a hat, over nothing, all the goddamn time.
The problem isn't diversity - the problem is us. The problem is we're wicked little imps with shitty morality as a biological baseline, and then for a variety of reasons we just don't invest the very modest amount of self control and reflection necessary to elevate ourselves above that crap. We absolutely could do so - and many millions of people DO in fact do so - but the majority of people are self interested, lazy, inconsiderate, and all the rest.
So yeah - it's no surprise that diversity is "challenging" to many of us, and makes many people slightly less happy. But how meaningful is that? You could run a study to show that virtual ANY aspect of the world is inconvenient to someone, somewhere, and makes them slightly less happy.
You can't change diversity, short of global genocide. Even then, we'll just invent some new form of Cagot to hate and murder. So why are we even talking about it?
It's like if studies were done about how people who aren't the height they would prefer to be are less happy. Yes, technically, in theory we could do something about that in the form of radical surgeries, but... that's not REALLY an option, so who even cares? You're the height you are, and if that makes you a little less happy, then the moral imperative is for you to invest the bare minimum level of effort and cope. Learn to accept your height. The only reason you're unhappy about it is because you have an inflexible mental outlook and expectation. Instead of railing against the universe giving you the "wrong" height", and trying to physically remake the world to fit your mind-state... just... adjust your mind-state?
Or don't, and just live life being slightly less happy because of your height. And maybe do the same thing if it rains when you don't want it to, or if the vending machine is out of your favorite candy bar, or whatever other minor things crops up in life to bring you down slightly. Cope!