Inclusion

The human pathway. It is about accuracy in thought and action.

Photo by Jesse Collins on Unsplash

“Inclusivity is simply accuracy.”  (Martin Riker, “The Guest Lecture”)

An interesting quotation.  He later, on the same page, talks about the immensity of the conversation about inclusion and the difficulty we have in finding our footing and recognizing our place within the conversation. 

Accuracy is not a point of attack, although many see it as that.  It about all that we have not considered.  In that sense it is a collaborative effort.  Those who seem to disagree with me should be offered the opportunity to explore with me the vast domain of relevant knowledge, insight, and imagination that remains outside our visions.

All our isms, race, gender, class, sexual orientation are bedrock exclusion categories.  The safe turf for many is the familiar ground of our own experience and even less than that.  It is the ground of our interpretations and understanding of our experience.

It is “bounded” and hence not representative of all larger wholes, i.e. it is inaccurate. 

All well to say this and acknowledge the “wispiness” of our understanding.  I choose “wispiness” deliberately after some debate with myself.  It captures the fragile, partial, ever-changing nature of our knowledge.  A truth that easily survives our attempts to take a solid, bellwether certainty for a claim. 

Is truth then a “Midsummer Night’s Dream?”

If what we know is in fact all that fleeting, all that immaterial, then why try to extend our reach?  Won’t it result it more vagary, not more accuracy? 

When we think like this we go as far toward diminishing ourselves as the more certain go toward limiting themselves.  What if we are “such stuff as dreams are made on,” we are still vast in our hopes, solemn in our dreams and inquisitive as a squirrel looking for nuts.  (The difference being that we are looking in all directions for everything.  We are not “hardwired” just for “nuts.”)

We pick up where others have left off.  We are naturally inclusive, and not only because we believe in accuracy, but because we believe in living.