John R. Miles

Diversity is a biological strength in small groups, but it becomes a trigger for conflict in massive ones.

In a group of 150, your actual tribe, diversity is an asset.

You have the person who knows the plants.

the person who reads the weather, the storyteller, the healer.

You know their names.

You know their kids.

You see their flaws and their gifts up close.

In a small group, intimacy overrides the other.

You don't see a label.

You see Mark.

You see Sarah.

But once you scale to millions, intimacy disappears.

Our brains can no longer hold the individual stories of the faces on our screens.

So we fall back on those maladaptive shortcuts Ehrlich warned about.

We stop seeing humans and start seeing political opponents, foreigners,

demographics, to truly value diversity, to live it, not just post about it, we have to return to a scale where we can actually see the human behind the category.

You cannot truly love a demographic.

You can only truly love a neighbor.

The human predicament is that we've built a global society our biology doesn't know how to inhabit.

We're trying to navigate a sea of billions with a compass calibrated for a few hundred.