This is the last in a new series of posts on how to make our
democracy work better based on an article in The Intelligent Optimist
magazine (formerly Ode) by Mary Parker Follett, a management consultant and
author, taken from her book, The New
State, originally published in 1918 and still very relevant today.
“Heterogeneity, not homogeneity, I repeat, makes unity. Indeed as we go from groups of the lower
types to groups of the higher types, we go from those with many resemblances to
those with more and more striking differences.
“Give your
difference, welcome my difference,
unify all difference in the larger
whole—such is the law of growth. The
unifying of difference is the eternal process of life—the creative synthesis,
the highest act of creation. The implications of this conception when we come
to define democracy are profound.
“I may seem to overemphasize difference as difference.
Difference as difference is non existent.
There is only difference which carries within itself the power of
unifying. It is this latent power which we must forever and ever call forth.
Difference in itself is not a vital force, but what accompanies it is – the
unifying spirit.
“Really the object of every associating with others, of
every conversation with friends, in fact, should be to try to bring out a
bigger thought than any one alone could contribute.”
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