WHAT IS Unity and diversity of culture in sociology?

Answer 1

Unity and diversity

Unityand Diversity, I have to say, are old themes of Ethical Cultureand one is seldom mentioned without the other. In one of his first key speeches about Ethical Culture, our founding Leader, Dr. Felix Adler, explained that it would be a religion of people with free minds who would be deeply engaged in good works. He said: "Difference is inevitable and welcomein thought, but be one with us where there is nothing to hide , in action. " And that's when he coined the phrase, "Diversityin the creed, unanimity in the deed." The "diversity" he's talking about in this phrase, refers, in the main, to the diversityin individual thoughts about and beliefs in god, gods or no gods. However, if you look into the beliefs of Ethical Culturists on that subject today, I doubt you're going to find a lot of true diversity. It's unlikely you'll find that any of us worship a divinity - though we make it clear that in Ethical Culture, anything you care to believe on that score is totally up to you. And as for unanimity in the deed - that doesn't mean we all do the same deed, of course, it just means we all believe in the importance of good deeds, of service, of citizenship. We all know that the good life includes thinking of others and helping out when we can. But that's not the only way he spoke of unityand diversity. Adler also spoke of unityand diversityin a more sweeping way, a more universal way. In his book, "An Ethical Philosophy of Life," he explained a theory of community in the chapter with the strange title of, "The Ideal of the Whole and the Ethical Manifold." Sounds dreadful, doesn't it ... Allow me to digress a moment here about the word "manifold" - it's over 1,000 years old and originally meant a document that was folded many times - the word has come to have dozens of meanings, all having to do with "numerous and/or varied," and in machinery, it is a chamber having several outlets through which a liquid or gas is disbursed or gathered. I have to say it is not a word that has received a great deal of use in my personal lexicon. For me it was just a word my father and uncles bandied about during car talk - it seemed to be something connected to the muffler (muffler's a much easier word - it does what it says: muffles sound). Anyway, both manifolds and mufflers were mysterious things attached somewhere on the bottom of cars. But back to Adler's manifold. It was a concept he thought should be kept in mind. It did not and does not exist in time and space. To use today's terms, it is a "model" - his manifold represents an "infinite, ideal whole," an "ethical universe, " that is made up of people - and each of us, every person, is a unique "ethical unit" in that universe of humanity - and each of us, every one, is absolutely necessary, with " reciprocal interdependence " to that universe and the other units within it.