8. INTEGRATION: Handle Differences and the Round Squares of Life

Four Pitfalls When Attempting to Create Harmony

How can people from different cultures live together in harmony? What should they do when they are strangers to each other and have very little in common with each other? Should they strive for unity or diversity? Do they want to live in equality, or does one group try to dominate? This leaves four possibilities.

1. Mosaic: Equality and Diversity. In a mosaic, people from different cultures live side by side. They stick to their own traditions and do not change their language or ways of living and thinking. No one culture is considered superior to another. However, the harmony is easily disturbed and there is a constant fear of domination. In this situation you have to be politically correct and walk on eggshells so as not to offend anyone. Everything is linked to identity, pride and inferiority complex. The danger is that people get on each other’s nerves.

2. Segregation: Dominance and Diversity. In a segregated society, some groups of people float on top. It’s like oil and water: they never mix, no matter how much you stir. An example of this is South Africa and Namibia under apartheid. Some people believe that it is a divine order that some people should have power and privilege. If others just submit, they can be accepted like children in a family. Social harmony, they say, should be based on submissive respect and patriarchal benevolence.

3. Melting pot: Equality and Unity. A melting pot is created when all communities cut the roots of their respective traditions and see only what they have in common. It can easily absorb ideas and impressions from all corners of the world. It develops a cosmopolitan culture characterised by easily consumed food, art and music. The melting pot becomes fluid and unhistorical, shunning anything complicated. Those who cling to their traditions are seen as abnormal.

4. Homogenisation: Dominance and Unity. People in a homogeneous group tend to think that what is common must be normal. And what is normal must be natural. And what is natural is probably a divinely ordained order. All deviant elements must be eliminated or transformed. Here it becomes admirable to be politically incorrect, and those who pick on minorities are seen as tough and strong. The most brutal forms of homogenisation are ethnic cleansing and genocide.

Which of these strategies should we choose? Notice that they all have one thing in common. They are different ways of avoiding what is foreign and different. The hope is to eventually reach a state of harmony, free from friction. But the result is often just the opposite.

Instead of seeking harmony at all costs, we could set a new ideal. We could aim for the ability to integrate.

Humble Pride and Respectful Honesty

It is important to learn how to deal with pride in our nation, tradition, faith, identity, and uniqueness. We should strive for a kind of ‘humble pride’. We should be proud enough to look after our own communities and preserve our cultural heritage. And we should be humble enough not to look down on other people and to acknowledge the darker parts of our history.

We need to learn the art of reconciling opposites. What often causes polarisation is the struggle between the politically correct and the politically incorrect. These are two extremes to be avoided. Politically correct means being respectful but not sincere, which easily leads to hypocrisy. Politically incorrect means saying what you think without showing respect, which easily leads to bullying. 

A well-integrated person can hold two thoughts in his mind at the same time. It is possible to be both truthful and considerate. The ability to solve this round square is essential for those who really want to communicate and be understood.

Brutal honesty without respect rarely leads to truth. More often, it leads to misunderstanding.

Avoid Stubborn Dogmatism and Lazy Relativism

Dogmatists cannot be wrong. But neither can relativists, because in their minds there is no right or wrong. Both are unwilling to listen to counter-arguments. Neither understands that they are trapped in their intellectual fixations.

Socrates was able to engage people and encourage better thoughts and ideas. Know thyself! he said. Be aware of your own ignorance! Only then can we free ourselves from delusions. To become wiser, we must help each other through dialogue.

This was not a dialogue between deaf people, where no one listens to the other’s arguments. If the person who disagrees with me is right, I am the first to give in, Socrates said. He said, ”Wherever the winds of discussion blow – there we must go”. It is this kind of give and take dialogue that can provide the Platonic insight: truth is something that can be approached and that in some sense exists.

”I have the absolute Truth,” says the dogmatist. ”Your truth is not my truth,” says the relativist. Neither seeks truth through dialogue with others. Trapped in their shells, they cannot change, grow and evolve.

But suppose there is an objective Truth that stands above our favourite private ideas. Then the possibility opens up that our opinions need to be corrected. Being guided by the Truth keeps us awake from both dogmatic and relativistic slumber. Those who do so can make an important contribution to our troubled world: spreading the art of dialogue and reasoning.

Phronesis – An Old Virtue in Need of Revival

An important key to integration is what Aristotle called phronesis, which can be translated as practical wisdom, common sense and good judgement. This is something that is developed through work and life experience and through education.

It is an intuitive form of knowledge that involves being able to discern what is essential and what is non-essential in any situation. It means being able to consider different courses of action in order to choose the best one.

In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle developed a theory of how we can cultivate the emotions to harmonise with judgement. He emphasised the need for good habits. When we were children, our emotions were a little 'raw' and not finely tuned to good judgement. We tended to enjoy doing bad and unwise things. We had an aversion to doing good and wise things. Emotional refinement requires consistent practice. When we create good habits, we feel pleasure when we do good things and pain when we do bad things.

This process is related to the cultivation of virtues, especially phronesis, which is related to moderation. In practical life we often need to find the golden mean and not go too far in either direction. It is important not to overreact or underreact.

‘Half-Educated Experts’

Experts are indispensable because they are knowledgeable in a particular field. At the same time, they are inherently more ignorant of what lies outside that area. Like all human beings, they are limited.

But what if they lack knowledge of something important, namely knowledge of their ignorance? What if they have a weak and diffuse understanding of their limitations? If they lack self-awareness, they tend to overestimate themselves and make confident statements about things they do not understand. Since the domain of competence is like a small island in a large ocean, it is likely that they are often in uncharted waters without realising it.

It was this kind of ”half-education” that Socrates thought he saw in the technicians and engineers of his time. He noticed that although they were very knowledgeable in their field ...

A technocracy is a government of ”half-educated” experts. Being an expert in one area can create a false sense of being an expert in everything.

The Practical Relevance of Bildung

Knowledge gaps are often filled with illusions of knowledge – prejudices, false assumptions, simplistic solutions. This is the logic of blind ignorance.

Humanities studies and Bildung cultivate an awareness of our own limitations. They foster a kind of enlightened ignorance – an understanding of what we do not know. That awareness strengthens our ability to navigate a world of change, ambiguity, and contradiction.

This is especially important for those in leadership. We need educated leaders who combine expertise with judgement. They may not always possess the right answers, but they know how to ask better questions – and how to approach problems through dialogue rather than knee-jerk reaction.

This ability develops as we learn to recognise the different dimensions of life – for example: safety and liberty, justice and mercy, the global and the local, faith and reason, individual and collective, tradition and progress.

These pairs of opposites often trigger tribal reflexes. We feel compelled to choose a side and defend it at all costs. Complexity is reduced to slogans. Nuance is sacrificed for belonging.

An integrated person resists that impulse. They can hold opposites together and live with ambiguity – without panic, and without declaring war. The path to that maturity has a name: Bildung.