Saturday, July 9, 2016

If you are not a Star Trek fan, and even if you are, you may not recognize this image. It is Vulcan symbol that expresses a philosophy of inclusion called an IDIC.

IDIC stands for “Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations”

IDIC is not a philosophy of tolerance but of celebration. Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations asks that we embrace our differences and in doing so become something greater than we can be alone.

When you think about it, this “Vulcan” philosophy would have been embraced by our Founding Fathers. It is, after all, one of the fundamental tenants of our culture that America be a haven for people of all races, religions, sexual orientations and political affiliations. IDIC could be another way of expressing the First Amendment.

Our strength as a nation lies in the diversity of the people, all the people,

WE the people.

Of late many of us have forgotten that “We the people” means ALL the people. We have allowed the rhetoric of hate to cloud our better natures and once again we face an enemy with the power to destroy us all. That enemy is not terrorism, or murder, or political divides. Those are just the weapons of our enemy.

Our real enemy is Hatred.

Hate is a real, quantifiable, living force and it needs constant feeding. The more you feed hate, the more powerful it grows. And it is growing very powerful right now. Feed hate enough and like a nuclear reaction, it reaches critical mass.

And people start to die in ever increasing numbers.

We have confused “plain speaking” with “hate speaking”. This occurs everywhere from the rhetoric of some of our political candidates, to the media and to the SOCIAL media where people can spew their poison under the cover of anonymity. That is not plain speaking, or free speech. It is incitement. Every time one of us voices race or gender hatred. Every time we single out a group as inherently evil because of their religion, Every time we suggest violence, we are enabling, even encouraging others to act on that hate.

And we are seeing that they do.

When we give camera time to hate, we feed it.

When we post hate, we feed it.

When we arm ourselves out of hate, we feed it.

If we don’t stop feeding it, sooner or later hate is going to eat us.

It is time to stop feeding hate and embrace diversity.

It is the only logical thing to do.