Diversity and peace

Today’s episode of Hidden Brain on NPR discusses the effect of diversity on creativity. Professor Adam Galinsky at the Columbia Business School has seen that people score more highly on tests of creativity when they have deep relationships from people from another country. This includes dating partners, spouses, or business colleagues. The first part of the episode discusses the Silk Road Project, created by cellist Yo Yo Ma who gathered together musicians from a wide variety of cultures. This diversity link to creativity is also noted in scientific research teams and in major fashion houses.

However, it was the last third of the program that was the most interesting. It is also the part not mentioned on the episode’s webpage, so I don’t have details and I didn’t want to listen again. There is first an Israeli soldier who became annoyed with the way he and his fellow soldiers could occupy a Palestinian home for security reasons no matter the consequences to the families living there.

Then we hear about a Palestinian professor trying to create peace. His students don’t admit to the humanity of Israelis. He begins to teach them about the Holocaust. He thinks it is weird that his Palestinian students know nothing about the biggest influence on the creation of the state of Israel. But that still doesn’t get through to his students. So he takes his students on a field trip … to Auschwitz. As they tour the grounds the professor sees the students get it.

But while they’re gone the professor gets emails from the university that there are death threats against him and he shouldn’t come back. He did go back. And lost his job.

I’ve long been annoyed with the modern state of Israel. The state was founded as a refuge for the oppressed. One might think that since they know oppression the would want to avoid perpetuating it. But they have become the oppressors. They say it is because of security, but there are better ways to achieve security than through oppression.

A common way to battle oppression is to try to flip the oppression. To do that one must continue to portray the oppressor as evil and less than human as the Palestinians have been portraying the Israelis. But that trip to Auschwitz told the students the Israelis suffered too. They’re just like us.

This discussion of experiencing another culture reminds me of my two years of living in Cologne, Germany. It was an historic time – I moved there just before the Berlin Wall opened (and was in the city five days later) and saw protests against the first Gulf War. It was during these two years I changed from feeling like a citizen of the United States to a citizen of the world. That was an important step in my life journey.

Though I see my time in Cologne as an important step in my understanding of the world, I hadn’t thought about how it might have affected my creativity in problem solving or in my music composition.