The Race to the Average ... and the eradication of diversity.

Why the New World Order must inevitably result in a homogenized society.

The emergent New World Order, we are told, aims to deliver a fairer, kinder, more compassionate regimen than any previous version.

Up until now, it is claimed, human societies have almost always been based upon dominance by one group over another: a “For Us to win we must dominate Them” mindset.

This, we are told, has put an emphasis on ‘winning’ (however interpreted in any situation) which, in turn, has favoured meritocracy (some potential or ability to perform at or near the right-hand extreme of the bell curve in a particular area) … BUT, separating out those with enhanced capabilities inevitably promoted differences in outcomes. And variations in outcomes have been decreed UNFAIR and BAD.

To deal with this perceived problem the New World Order aims to replace the goal of equality of opportunity with that of equality of outcome (a.k.a. equity).

By its own standards this has already achieved some success. For example, across many Western universities, in the past few decades, the average IQ of undergraduate students has reduced from around 120 to 102. Indeed, the actual title of the paper just referenced is …

Meta-analysis: On average, undergraduate students’ intelligence is merely average

This is presumably a victory for diversity?

Then there’s the decision of the Board of Education in the U.S. state of Oregon which, in 2023, decreed … well, here’s the headline of an article from oregonlive.com dated October 22, 2023:

Oregon again says students don’t need to prove mastery of reading, writing or math to graduate, citing harm to students of color

Yet another victory for diversity?

I have to say, although this example is dressed up as a piece of what these days gets called ‘antiracism’, it appears, to my mind, to be rather more of a flagrant expression of denigration of the students of color, and is astonishingly racist towards them.

Then there’s the instance of the Michaela Community School in London. This highlights a different aspect of diversity.

The Michaela Community School is a free school for children aged 11 to 18. It was established in 2014 and is led by Katherine Birbalsingh who has proved to be indefatigable in her pursuit of quality education for the children. I’m a fan. But, note …

In 2023, a Muslim student, challenged the Michaela Community School’s ban on religious rituals. The student asserted that the prayer ban was discriminatory. The matter came to court and the School won.

That’s fine but it does demonstrate that, in order to serve a diverse cross-section of students, it is necessary to reduce diversity in certain areas - in this particular instance by excluding all religious rituals.

And this, it seems to me, is a general rule. Diversity in one area necessitates reduction of diversity in another.

But the diversity issue is a skirmish at the edges of a greater conflict. What’s the bigger picture?

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It wasn’t a conspiracy. At least, I don’t think it was. I know, I know, it’s soooo tempting, when you look at the goings-on in Davos, to think in terms of Bond-villainy:

“One million dollars.”
It was a cavernous, echoing voice, with a trace of American accent.
Bond turned slowly, almost reluctantly, away from the window.
Doctor No had come through a door behind his desk. He stood looking at them benignly, with a thin smile on his lips.¹

No, I think this was more one of those ‘tide in the affairs of men’ things.

It was the early 1990s. The worst wars in human history had happened just a few decades previously. Yes, the simmering uncertainty of the Cold War had followed on but then, suddenly, that too was over.

So, in the early ‘90s the sun rose on what for a brief moment in time appeared to be an aligned (or, at least, align-able) world. A liberal, democratic world, at that. Or, more precisely, a world where the western liberal democracies, having appeared to have out-competed the fascists and the communists, now thought they held sway.

In 1992 it was even labelled ‘the end of history’² - the idea being that although, of course, changes would continue to occur, the western liberal democratic model would remain because it represented the absolute peak of political evolution.

This premise was questionable from the outset: after all, the post-war creation and development of the European Union that had been initiated to help put a stop to the rivalry and feuding between those pesky European nations had necessitated some limitations on national sovereignty and democracy. But, still, people did got to vote every handful of years so that was alright, wasn’t it?

Alongside these momentous political changes, a new technology was maturing. Digital. It had advanced rapidly after the Second World War and when, in the 1970s and ‘80s, computers moved beyond air-conditioned cathedrals overseen by a priestly caste of eggheads out onto the desktops of the world it initiated dramatic change.

So, by the 1990s, as far as the bright bunnies of Business were concerned, the political and technological conditions were in perfect alignment, and they had carte blanche to ‘go for it’.

In fact, the case for Business went even further as is luminously signaled by this quote from a speech that U.S. president Bill Clinton gave at Johns Hopkins University in March 2001, to help clear the way for China to join the World Trade Organization (WTO), which it did in December 2001:

By joining the WTO, China is not simply agreeing to import more of our products; it is agreeing to import one of democracy’s most cherished values: economic freedom. The more China liberalizes its economy, the more fully it will liberate the potential of its people – their initiative, their imagination, their remarkable spirit of enterprise. And when individuals have the power, not just to dream but to realize their dreams, they will demand a greater say.

So, there we have it: the icing on the cake for Business was that this globalization lark did not just fit the political and technological circumstances … it also delivered on the moral case. Yup, apparently, spreading the gospel of global, liberal-democratic plenty would help sustain world peace.

Consequently, for Business, everything was justified in terms of the most satisfying possible formula. Globalization = Profit + Moral Virtue. Let the deindustrialization of the West rip!

Which brings me back to that ‘tide in the affairs of men’ thing. It comes from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. Brutus, the leader of ‘the good guys’ is standing in front of his tent on the battlefield near Sardis, preparatory to marching on to Philippi where the decisive battle will be fought that will result in the death of Brutus. The dictator, Caesar, is dead and they must press their advantage. As Brutus explains:

There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which taken at the flood leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.³

What could possibly go wrong?

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The goings-on outlined above represent a massive change in the way Business is organized. Business evolved from the ground up and in the mid-20th century was still very much based on vertical, integrated entities within nation-states. Yes, there were international enterprises but they operated on a regional basis.

The fact was, Business as we knew it had emerged in the West from the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution as one of the three fundamentals in a governing Venn diagram made up of Polity (specifically, increasingly liberal democracy within nation-states), Society and Business.

These three linked domains actually enabled the legitimizing basis of the Nation-State which was “The State will better the welfare of the nation”.⁴

So, Business was a powerful, integral and indispensable ally in any Nation-state:

• Its indispensable ally for the provision of jobs to bring prosperity to citizens;

• Its indispensable ally to produce tax revenues from those employed, directly and via sales taxes;

• Its indispensable ally for tax revenues on business profits;

• Its indispensable ally for the wherewithal to finance welfare payments and retirement benefits;

• Its indispensable ally in helping define the intelligence, industriousness and moral virtue of the citizenry of the Nation-State.

For a long time, this modus operandi was a rip-roaring, money-generating, nation-building, society-enhancing success.

BUT … it did not suit the requirements of the New World Order launched in 1990.

Indeed, plans had been worked out well before 1990 … thought through by, among others, the Davos-based World Economic Forum.

Which takes me back to James Bond. (Sorry, I can’t resist this diversion. 😊It’s just that there’s something about the Engadine, it seems, that may be conducive, in fiction and fact, to global scheming.)

In 1963, the tenth of Ian Fleming’s series of James Bond books was published. In On Her Majesty’s Secret Service Bond confronts his usual antagonist, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, who, this time, is trying to lay claim to the title and coat of arms of one Comte de Bleuville. Pretending to be an official heraldic researcher Bond visits Blofeld …

… at this beautiful place called Piz Gloria, 10,000 feet up somewhere in the Engadine.

Blofeld, it transpires, is trying to carry out a plan that will enable him to dominate the world using biological warfare.

Eight years after the publication of this story, Klaus Schwab, then a business professor at the University of Geneva, convened the first European Management Symposium in 1971 in Davos … in the Engadine, but, at just 5,000 feet, not as elevated as the fictional Piz Gloria.

Much more recently, in the introduction to his 2016 book, The Fourth Industrial Revolution, Prof. Schwab describes the global project which I think it fair to say has been his life’s work:

Of the many diverse and fascinating challenges we face today, the most intense and important is how to understand and shape the new technology revolution, which entails nothing less than a transformation of humankind. We are at the beginning of a revolution that is fundamentally changing the way we live, work, and relate to one another.

Well, that is straightforward and honest enough - “a transformation of humankind.” Wow! And, from the WEF’s inception, Herr Schwab has talked about his support for this via stakeholder capitalism. That’s where a business pays attention to the needs of all of its stakeholders: customers, suppliers, employees, lenders, the economy, the state and society, as well as the shareholders.

This, in my opinion, is somewhat disingenuous. Why? Well, the full stakeholder set was quite well catered for under the Nation-State arrangement. I refer you to my ‘indispensable ally’ bullet points, earlier.

And it was built in to the modern industrial system right from the start. Here’s Enlightenment philosopher David Hume (1711-1776) on the topic:

In times when industry and the arts flourish, men are kept in perpetual occupation, and enjoy, as their reward, the occupation itself, as well as those pleasures which are the fruit of their labour.⁵

The Nation-State Polity + Society + Business triumvirate really did cohere. An important feature was the recognition and definition of the rights and responsibilities of the different constituents in a manner that enabled the building of trust and solidarity.

So, for example, Adam Smith (1723-1790) was able confidently to assert that suppliers should be able to give their own self-interest a high priority …

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity, but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages.⁶

… provided they did so within a societal setting of “mutual sympathy”. It all amounted to a “We’re all in this together” proposition. “As a supplier you can do your level best to feather your own nest, but you can only do so within the laws set down for everyone and the norms and expectations of society.”

But what would happen if the ground rules were radically changed (without so much as asking a ‘by your leave’ of the majority of citizens)?

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We come back to the post-war years and particularly the post-1990 world of unfettered opportunity where Western Business saw its chance to leverage the Globalization = Profit + Moral Virtue gold rush.

Business really did go for it. Of course it did. Egged on by management consultancies, who saw massive direct benefits in it all, there was a massive debouching of Business from the western Nation-States out across the globe.

But it wasn’t just an ‘outward’ splurge. By 1994 American historian, moralist and social critic Christopher Lasch (1932-1994) was able to write:

Now that private life has been largely absorbed by the market, a new school of economic thought offers what amounts to a new moral vision: a society wholly dominated by the market, in which economic relations are no longer softened by ties of trust and solidarity.⁷

So, this is something new. Now, not only do we have to look outward at reorganization of Business itself on a global scale, but also inward to see an increase in the intensity of ‘commercial logic’ applied internally within our societies. Which all amounts to Business grabbing a bigger role in Society.

What is going on?

Well, going directly to the end-point, American legal expert and political theorist, Philip Bobbitt, puts forward the argument - persuasively - that the era of Nation-States came to an end.

The ‘official’ end date that Bobbitt puts on it is 1989 (with the end of the Soviet Union), but the landscape started shifting under our feet two or three decades before that time.

The next question has to be, What comes next? And Bobbitt’s answer is the Market-State.

Earlier, I noted Bobbitt’s basis for legitimacy of the Nation-State: “The State will better the welfare of the nation.” What, then, does he suggest is the basis of legitimacy of the Market-State?

The State will maximize the opportunity of its citizens.⁸

Bobbitt also says …

In the market-state, the marketplace becomes the economic arena, replacing the factory. In the marketplace, men and women are consumers, not producers (who are probably offshore anyway).⁹

So, the implication, here, is that, at least in the ‘traditional’ industrial economies which have de-industrialized, the populace will measure their governments on the basis of whether or not their policies are improving and expanding the opportunities offered to the public.

Well, this is a very different world and no mistake!

Another commentator thinking about all of this is the French writer, Renaud Camus. Here, he makes a fascinating observation about the cultural component:

It was roughly at this time, 1975, that culture no doubt irreversibly transitioned … from culture as patrimony, heritage, the voice of the dead to culture as leisure activity, entertainment, hobby, a way of passing the time, a way of killing it.¹⁰

Is this devastating indictment true? Is it possible to distract or palm off a once-committed citizenry with entertainment and leisure? And, not least, is it really wise to give Business corporations a role beyond selling their goodies so that they start lecturing everyone on what is good and bad for them in the Social and, even, Political domains?

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Whatever the answers to the above questions, in Western countries, the three-part logic set, the Venn diagram, that enabled the phenomenal developments that started with the Enlightenment is no more. The elements are being torn apart.

POLITY is currently somewhere between Nation-State and Market-State, between local and global, between making and consuming. And democratic politics seem to have drifted to this in-between space, too. So, for example, the obligations to ‘home’ constituents are weakened - there is not necessarily any assurance, for example, that a manifesto promise will be honoured and, seemingly, no dishonour in not delivering.

SOCIETY seems to be becoming ever more shallow: what was once based upon a love of place, deep belonging and associated rights and responsibilities, is being undercut by a primary association with racial and gender issues, instant gratification from the online world, and increased crime.

BUSINESS is in the same transitional situation. Inevitably. What I find particularly fascinating about it (Business specifically, that is) is the assumption that the range of human variation across the globe could be, so to speak, over-ridden.

To investigate this a little, it’s useful to take a peek at the world according to Niklas Luhmann - the world of the ‘function system’. The theory, here, is that there are function systems - for example, economy, law, politics, mass media - that are subsystems of modern society. Crucially, each is a closed system.

All of which means, if Luhmann is correct, that the economy function system (or any other) can operate perfectly well on a global basis:

With functional differentiation as its main structural characteristic, society is no longer primarily divided by regional borders - society is now world-society. From a systemic point of view, the word ‘globalization’ designates the fact that function systems transcend geography. Function systems are no longer confined to specific localities. Society has become a world society, and therefore the social system is a world system.¹¹

Well, that seems to help explain some of what’s going on! It doesn’t matter who you are, or where you are, or what your heritage may be, or what you believe: the only requirement for participation in, say, the economy function system is that you have some money.

The GAFAM cluster (the initialism stands for Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft) and other global Business players are ready to help you participate, and Renaud Camus has a wonderfully pithy description of the goings-on:

What I called davocracy, the management of the human park by the great financiers, the banks, the pension funds, the multinationals, and the GAFAM empire, has two demands, each as contrary to any concern for ecology as the other: on the one hand, demographic growth, which, from the point of view of Davos, is nothing other than an indefinitely growing mass of consumers, this perpetual dodge or Ponzi scheme on which the maintenance of the economic bubble depends; on the other hand, the general interchangeability of the consumer-product man, that is, the fanatical reduction of human biodiversity.¹² (My emphasis.)

There we have it! Isn’t it the case that the ultimate outcome of the pursuit of diversity must be … sameness? Apart, of course, from the small number of global mega-players?

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As previously referenced, for Business, the epochal switch from the electro-mechanical age to the digital age, from local to global, was initiated through outsourcing.

From 1980 to 2010 a suite of outsourcing options was developed - Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), Application Outsourcing (AO), Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO) and more - reinforcing the business case for more and more outsourcing. Major business consultancies were enthusiastically involved in the development and actioning of these resources. And I was engaged as a writer by one of the consultancies.

Here’s something I wrote in 2007:

At the core of outsourcing is an apparent contradiction: the more a client company outsources to an outsourcing provider, the more necessary it becomes for the outsourcing provider to behave as an integral part of the client company.

So, where an enterprise outsources multiple functions across multiple geographies, there is the necessity for the outsourcing provider to align with the strategy, values and culture of the client company. Only then is the outsourcing provider able to assess and respond to technological, economic and market factors that may impact the client company’s strategic goals, as if it were an internal part of the client organization.

Can you spot the mistake?

I got it precisely the wrong way round. It was not the case that outsourcers were impelled to align with their clients but, rather, that the clients were impelled to align with the outsourcers.

Then, of course, with the SaaS revolution, most of the new functional systems were represented as software solutions available to whosoever would pay for them.

The point was that new digital technologies made more things possible and enabled them to be brought far more quickly to market. “Me-toos” became far easier than they once were. Enterprises were able to jump geographies and categories. All of which led to increased competition.

The old sales model was built on a “better mousetrap” assumption where the value was in the product or service, and the job of the salesperson was to communicate that value.

This worked fine in the electro-mechanical era when most products and services were neither totally undifferentiated nor totally differentiated, but somewhere in between (left-hand chart below).

Electro-mechanical era: Digital era:

But, with the rapidly advancing technologies and connectivity of increasingly mature digitalization the entire situation was flipped so that the vast majority of products and services became either highly undifferentiated or highly differentiated (right-hand chart above).

“Well”, you may say, “that’s a good thing, isn’t it?” In response to which I would answer, “Yes and No.”

It served consistency extremely well … but it actually discouraged experimentation and improvement and, thereby, blocked a great deal of subsequent innovation and … yes … diversity. Do you think this might have anything to do with all that stuff we hear about boredom and burnout?

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As a final thought, it occurs to me that there might be a truly strange outcome …

Earlier in this post I made the point that the push for globalization was kick-started by the assumed victory of liberal democracy over fascism and communism.

Consequently. it has been fascinating, this week, to glimpse some of what has been going on at the BRICS Summit 2024 in Kazan, Russia.

BRICS member countries are home to around half of the world’s population, and account for around one quarter of global wealth … and they promote a multipolar world rather than the single, globalized version.

I am no supporter of many BRICS member country policies and thinking. But I do think it healthy that there is this counterpoint to the global obsessives.

Indeed, might it even hold out the greatest hope for diversity?

Tell you what, why don’t we all go along and, even if it is just to watch how things develop, meet at Philippi?

Thanks for reading.

Chart image at top: Shutterstock

1. Ian Fleming. Dr No (1958)

2. Francis Fukuyama. The End of History and the Last Man (1992)

3. William Shakespeare. Julius Caesar (1590)

4. Philip Bobbitt. The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace and the Course of History (2002)

5. David Hume. Of Refinement in the Arts, Essays Moral, Political and Literary

6. Adam Smith. An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of The Wealth of Nations. Book 1, Chapter 2. (1776).

7. Christopher Lasch. The Revolt of the Elites. (1994).

8. Philip Bobbitt. Ibid.

9. Philip Bobbitt. Ibid.

10. Renaud Camus. The Deep Murmur (2024) Translator: Ethan Rundell.

11. Hans-Georg Moeller. Luhmann Explained: From Souls to Systems (2006)

12. Renaud Camus. Ibid.