DIVERSITY
Living things are less linear maybe non-deterministic compared with inanimate objects. We talk about the struggle for existence.  I’m observing in my garden plants competing with each other for light.  Deciduous trees crowd out smaller bushes down below depriving them of light stunting their growth.  Vines grow like epiphytes loving to climb up over my 30 foot Norway spruce plants blocking off the light supply of the larger tree supporting it.  Rabbits vie with tree and ground squirrels and deer for succulent plants and leaves and stem their biological niches, a matter of different distances off the ground.  Neither predator nor prey animals ever act as if their future is a foregone conclusion.  The lion crouches in silence to surprise and then will run with all its might to catch the zebra or the wildebeest and the wildebeest will defy and run away. Predator and prey act as if convinced that their efforts will make a difference in their life and death.

Many animals struggle just to struggle. Salmon swim upstream and into the ready paws of bears that are waiting to consume them. Tiny butterflies and birds migrate for thousands of miles and for no good reason. I’m thinking that perhaps species of animals that struggle, and place obstacles in front of themselves, maybe unnecessary obstacles will be the ones to survive because they have made survivors of their species stronger and more able to withstand adversity. I read a story about South African runner Caster Semenya (See Ariel Levy Either/Or New Yorker Nov 30, 2009, pp46-59) who the experts had trouble deciding whether she was a woman or a man. Many African runners train barefoot running over rocks and brambles. They are all the stronger for their struggle not only against obstacles that break their skin and test their will in their sport but for not wearing the footgear that takes care of all ankle support and shock absorption.  When it comes to competition they will be stronger runners.  That same kind of struggle must often make humans and other organisms better competitors in the end if it doesn’t cut the weaker candidates along the way. Consider that the next time you criticize yourself or others for struggling unnecessarily. Why are we our own worst enemies? If life is deterministic then you have to ask why bother. But evidence shows life’s strivings even if for no clear reason end up promoting successful competition which among the living pays dividends in survival and reproduction. One difference between the living and the inanimate is struggle. Non-living things don’t struggle.  

We can take this a step further. Not only is life non-deterministic, but evolution repudiates determinism.  One of the pillars of evolution is adaptation. Adaptation implies that life comports with reality, that adaptation to one’s environment introduces efficiencies that promote survival.   If the truth were a foregone conclusion then the struggle for existence, to hunt and catch prey or on the other side of this the effort to get away a wasted effort, then there would be no struggle.  But we constantly witness a war for resources among individuals and between species, ranging from microscopic predators and prey such as amoebas and Paramecii all the way up through large organisms, enough to judge that this struggle promotes survival and disprove determinism in that survival is fostered by a greater effort.

The environment cannot be counted on to stay the same. The temperature of the planet cycles, ice ages come and go what was once a rainforest will one day be a desert and shifting contingencies require biological adaptation. This implies today’s highly evolved and adapted animal would soon fail to survive and reproduce under a different environmental regime.  A further correlate is that groups of organisms, species and genera, will survive over eons of time if they are diverse. A biological group must contain members adapted to very different circumstances. For any given animal group, identical clones may be perfectly adapted at a given time, but a group composed of identical members will not long survive. Hence all animal and plant groups struggle to stay diverse.  

Many think that organisms adapt to a changing environment. Actually, it is just the opposite. What happens is that animals and plants are adapted to a change in the environment and then things change.  Those that are pre-adapted may gain an advantage. A certain beetle lives in Asia, where he competes with relative success. Some of his fellows escape on a boat to the northeastern United States where they were to infect trees they have never been exposed to. In this niche, these beetles reach unprecedented success. It will be nearly impossible to eradicate them and save Maples and their fellows in North America.  
Orchids go to great lengths to lure insects and birds into mixing genes to keep diversity.  Genetic diversity ensures that a species is preadapted for changing environmental contingencies.  Almost every animal and plant strive to keep up diversity and most have found it efficacious to reproduce according to type, but just about always, their children are not replicas of themselves. Even given the same parents the offspring vary and animals and plants must vigorously compete with their brethren of the same type and other members of their sibship. It is why your children fight in the back of your car on family trips. 

 Biological plant and animal groups must be sufficiently diverse or else die out when circumstances change. That is why in nature animals and plants are rarely cloned unless they are sure the environment is stable and adaptation is perfect.  Organisms invest so much energy on sexual reproduction and avoid making identical copies of themselves. Sexual reproduction ensures diversity. Those species however exquisite their adaptation at any given time, who fail to diversify, don’t survive. Sexual reproduction is so universal even though it is costly to have meiosis and mitosis, to have haploid and diploid forms as it is the surest way to promote diversity. Species not insufficiently diverse will die out.

Among humans, there are conventional and unconventional types. We have the ideal student who does well in college, studies business, carries as a satchel, wears a tie and brings home a good income. But we also have the long-haired incorrigible youngster who hyperactively will not go to school or conform. Maybe he will drop out or use drugs, or maybe, under the right circumstances and with understanding, he will, given the chance, stumble into something worthwhile.  The conventionalist is much less likely to strike out into new dimensions. In our particular society, the confident conventional conformer generally lives a drab existence but gets the girl, the car, the house, but not always. Just occasionally the long hair discovers something worth discovering or helps all of us see things in a different way. In any event, we have a need for both types, all types. There is a method behind human diversity,  which when you examine it, is prodigious.

The Fat Years a novel by Koonchong Chan expresses the beautiful idea. We may choose a life of little challenge, little risk, and little reward. Generally those folks the guy with the briefcase will live an unchallenged fairly happy life with a minimum of highs and lows. There are few people who choose to ford the dangerous stream, cross treacherous forests for the chance of a charmed life on the other side, knowing full well the danger they are exposing themselves to. These are the escapees from concentration camps and as long as we are talking about German Hells, the East Germans who braved the Berlin wall to cross into the rest, and others the few North Koreans who escaped, those willing to take their chances. The non-conformist or subversives in every society. Principles by Ray Dalio an entrepreneur describes the very same personality characteristic in himself. He wasn’t the guy to hold the briefcase but the one who crossed the dark wood to make way for himself into another world.

We shouldn’t be speaking of human diversity in terms of tolerance.  It is not for us to tolerate diversely different humans, those of different religions, sexual orientations, colors. Rather this diversity is necessary for us to survive as a species as it is for all other species of animal or plant. We aren’t to tolerate diverse types, but we may wonder at them, study them, classify them, find a space for all diverse humans in a larger society.

Modern humans seek to clone valuable species. We seek to have corn and cattle conform to our needs. We want cows with a lot of meat, chickens with large breasts, corn that is resistant to insects and disease. In the future we may seek to breed humans with certain characteristics, beauty, intelligence, athletic prowess.  Men will have for themselves corn, apples, cattle, horses of identical pedigree, clones that are disease resistant, highly adapted, reproductive and with desirable properties, tastiness, large amounts of meat and so forth.  Identical replicants of a clone having no diversity at all turn out to be a highly vulnerable crop which is subject to fail with the slightest environmental shift. Thus we have the struggle to change in human terms Mein Kampf and Jihad.   He who struggles is noteworthy. He who is different will stand out. Either he will have his head cut off or he may be a marvel or a success. The passive is lost.  Evolutionary theory tells us that if life could look into and perceive the future it would and struggle would thus be inefficiency and maladaptation inimical to survival.  Thus evolutionary theory disproves determinism.