What Follows From Inclusivity’s Demand On Our Time
Or facing our huts whichever direction we choose
This is not a broad examination of inclusivity as a whole.
I focus here on one rarely discussed element of modern inclusivity, and I do so from both an ancestral and Stoic lens.
While I was getting my Masters from Columbia University, we were asked to provide anonymous feedback for one another in one of my classes. We listed several traits we thought others embodied well along with a few that they could improve upon. Respectful, polite, and honest, were numbered as some of my positive traits. The main trait offered against me, however, was that I was not “inclusive.”
I had transitioned out of the military only a few months prior, and this word, in this particular context, was new to me. I remember skipping an event after class and mulling this riddle over while walking south down Broadway. It seemed to be a contradiction: How could I be respectful, polite, and honest, and yet not be inclusive?
This depends on the definition of inclusive. Let us examine modern inclusivity by first examining ancient exclusivity.
Exclusion external to the band was to deny others due to their race. The Bushmen of Botswana, for example, would call everyone who was not a member of their small hunter-gatherer band, “Animals without hooves.”1 Pre-state bands across the earth excluded those who looked different, and this aided in their survival.
Exclusion internal to the band was to deny others for personal differences. We excluded those who cheated, lied, were cowardly in combat, or who we simply didn’t like. When the Mbuti Pygmies of the Congo didn’t share vibes with someone, they might build “spite fences” between their tiny huts in the jungle. They might even go through the hassle of building a new door into their hut that faces the opposite direction of those they wanted nothing to do with.2
Ancient exclusion, then, was based on both biological and personal characteristics.
What happens now?
Racism no longer increases our odds of survival and biological characteristics are outside of our control. It follows that any judgment of others based on mere incidentals is a violation of the sapiens half of our species nature – it is both deeply unwise and profoundly backwards. It’s not beyond reason to say that racism is why we survived the barbarism of the ancient world, and, if we allow racism to rise again, why we may return to the barbarism of the ancient world.
What seemed troubling to me, however, were the modifications to the personal aspects of inclusivity, especially in very recent history. I realized that the feedback from my classmates was not a contradiction at all. Inclusivity, as they knew it, was not just our judgment of different biological characteristics, and their feedback was not that I treated them like animals without hooves.
There was some vague, unspoken expectation that they believed I failed to adhere to when it came to social events, particularly social justice events. I attended none of the latter, and only a handful of the former. I didn’t even attend graduation. Columbia mailed me my diploma and to this day it sits in a plastic box in my basement. My interests simply led me elsewhere, and I had other matters to attend to.
There exists a shade of modern inclusivity that concerns itself with how we give, spend, and use our time. This is, I think, the heart of the matter. Said another way, I failed to be inclusive simply because I wasn’t there.
Enough has been said about the history of inclusivity and my first exposure to its modern twist. My classmates' feedback was innocent and well intentioned, but they opened my mind to the downstream possibilities of such a concept. It has become more clear to me over time that modern inclusivity has stretched further and further away from what were, arguably, noble intentions.
Everything beyond this point is a thought experiment. There are many aspects of inclusivity, but let us focus solely on its expectations of our time.
Often the only reason we’re given to sacrifice our time in the name of inclusivity is more of a command than an explanation: “You need to include everyone, whether you want to or not, in order to make them feel good.” This assumes our mere presence can make someone feel a certain way, but if an individual cannot make himself feel good, how can we make him feel good? “But they don’t feel safe.” Are they being shot at? Blown up? Assaulted? This philosophy seems to suggest that men and women are so weak, impotent, and dependent that they can neither find their own happiness nor endure the slightest tremor of discomfort. What a bundle of contradictions. What a condescending view of mankind.
What is of interest is the sort of mind that seeks ownership of someone else’s time. A slave is “someone or something that is completely subservient to a dominating person or influence.”3 What is slavery but the taking of another person’s time? What then is the enforcer of inclusivity if not an aspiring slave owner? Does a professor have this right? A college student? An event organizer? What about an elected representative? How can they claim to be objective arbiters of the truth or exemplars of moral perfection?
Rarely is it the bricklayer who demands of us our time in order to make himself feel included. Rarely is it the carpenter or the infantryman. The men and women of words are the ones who have come up with this new definition. This new inclusivity was not invented by students. They simply swallowed the hook. This is the work of the intellectual class. Those who have not done are now those who tell us what to do. Silence is violence. Absence is now subversion. Our time is no longer our own. Much like how antebellum slave owners measured their dominance in bodies picking cotton, modern intellectuals measure theirs in heads nodding assent.
Yet the proper amount of time we are expected to sacrifice is never defined. Is it thirty minutes? An hour? The rest of our lives? Nor is it made clear who we have to give our time to. On a personal level, does the wheat-threshing Ukrainian need to make Putin feel included? On a national level, does a freedom loving Taiwan need to prostrate itself before a communist China? From another angle, does the rape victim need to make the rapist feel included? “But these examples are extreme.” Let us bring it closer to home then. What about opening our homes to any random person who happens to feel excluded? Do the enforcers abide by this same standard themselves? They too must cap inclusivity at some point and say, “Beyond this point, I myself am no longer inclusive.” But this line too is never defined.
When inclusivity demands our time, then, it may also require us to betray our values. What the enforcers do not realize is that their version of personal inclusivity will eventually be viewed as backwards as we view the racial exclusivity of the nineteenth century.
It is significant that the enforcers of inclusivity give carrots to the submissive and beat the rebellious with sticks. “We’re inclusive, right?” This is asked as a warm sort of threat, and is delivered with a squinty eyed look that says without saying, “Swear your fealty without a single word to the contrary, and all will be well. Refuse, and certain things might happen that might turn a certain life into a nightmare.”
But we are not submissive animals by nature. Evolution made for us a rip cord. In pre-state times, when a puffed up tyrant judged the moment ripe to control our time, we could usually pick up our spears, skins, and families, and simply walk away. We were free to build a new camp somewhere else beneath the moon. The world was large enough to escape into back then. Today, unexplored river valleys and white sand beaches no longer exist. The preservation of the self must therefore take a different form.
The enforcer drops the gavel and threatens us: “I will call you mean names.” So be it. “I will make you wear a cone and endure a struggle session.” So be it. “I will have you fired and exclude you.” That would be ironic. “I will shackle your ankles to the wall and force you to stay.” Then you will have a body in chains, but you will not have a mind giving its consent. We will still be free.
In sum, neither the ancestral nor the modern definitions of inclusivity are sufficient; the ancestral was barbaric in its racial freedom and enlightened in its personal freedom, and the modern is enlightened in its racial freedom and barbaric in its personal freedom.
What reason did Epictetus give to those who wanted his time but who he wasn’t willing to invest in? “You have not stimulated me.”4 What then might be more stimulating than submission to aspiring tyrants or their causes? What about paying closer attention to the flavor of a honeydew melon? Or sitting around a fire with family and friends who would walk across the coals of hell with us? Or watching the white flashes of the firefly against the night sky, young stars overseen by ancient stars millions of miles away?
Like the Mbuti, I believe we have the right to face the door of our hut in whichever direction we choose. When we value each second of our time as if it may be the last, some things just don’t matter anymore, and others mean that much more. The choice is ours. No one else’s.
Thank you for reading What then?
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See you for the next essay on Tuesday.
Thomas, Elizabeth Marshall. The Harmless People. Rev. ed., 2nd Vintage Books ed. New York, Vintage Books, 1989.
Turnbull, Colin M. The Forest People. New York, Simon and Schuster, 1961.
Merriam-Webster
Epictetus: 2.24.28
The modern “inclusivity” litmus test was Cov19 (non)”vaccine”. Comply or be banished. No “government” will own my free will. When imprisonment and the public racks arrive I will not feign surprise. Expect to be severely punished for simply being a man. Epictetus The Cripple knew it and so do I.
You should have just gone to the first social justice event and brought up these profound points and then you would have never been invited back.
Haha really enjoyed this one brother. Semantics matter. What many view as inclusive these days is really just agreeable/supportive of their particular causes. Interesting evolution of entitlement and attempt to use language to back it.