Modern Romanticism

“Outright contrasting two distinct types of diversity, being that of what we know nothing of and what we can know everything about, means that they have nothing to do with each other. Even so, we must think of the former kind as a barrier, though a needed one. While a needed one, it should also be one for ease’s sake. We should not be stalled on the surface, wondering when we will know something, anything, about the individual.”

– Modern Romanticism

There has been a current time’s fixation on this surface-level diversity, as if its importance surpasses the diversities we all share within ourselves. It is through familiar examples, such as an abusive person who appears as a mere monster on the surface, though their story is one to tell like any other. We might ask, “What caused them to be this way?” and that answer lies within them. The truth is there. One simply has to drag it out.

Whatever’s diverse about what we notice, at first glance, can always be comparable to ignorance. It’s relatable to an example where a person has ongoing trauma due to once in their lifetime having been attacked by a dog. Afterwards, every other dog, at first glance, appears to be a threat. That person, with this trauma from a dog attack, would not show patience nor effort to understand the background and story of another dog. Even if another dog’s story is that of a kind upbringing, it doesn’t matter to the person who is only noticing surface-level details. Even if all other dogs appear diverse, whether small or large, with whatever color, this traumatized individual who had an intimate encounter with one dog knew that story of only one dog. They do not know every dog’s story.

It should be pointed out that even if a person thinks of what’s diverse on the surface is good, there is no difference from this perspective and an individual who considers only what’s the same on the surface. It must be because of both perspective’s willingness to be blind to something that represents knowledge. This diversity, representing itself through knowledge, must exist only in a place beyond what a person notices at first glance. Any diversity that exists before such a place represents what a person is ignorant of.

Even on this stance of social grounds, contrasting two things, being race or skillset, refers the former to ignorance and the latter to knowledge. Much in relation to a person’s story, the skills of an individual can be shared to someone else in the form of knowledge. As in, we now know what someone else is capable of. Though, upon race? There is nothing to know about someone’s race, other than what it is. This refers race to ignorance, for one would be ignorant of anything else besides what it is. Once again, one has no knowledge of anything to do with an individual if one has no knowledge of what there is to know that’s beyond what’s noticed at first glance.