Why People Are Different

An Internet poster asked why people - including people raised in the same culture - were so different from one another. My response to that is that people have to be different. If people were the same, then everyone would be making the same errors; and it takes people thinking differently from one another to prevent that outcome.

When a large mass of people embrace something that's wrong – such as for example happened in Nazi Germany – it is only people who think differently that have a chance at the truth. The Nazi Germany was only one extreme example; but there are many other places where people are under coercion to think the same, and in many cases this coercion is completely wrong.

The more people are under coercion to think the same way, the more they are likely to embrace errors. Whereas the more people think differently, the more there is a way to correct for these errors. People are different for a very good reason. And the sooner people realize that, the more they will be able to avail themselves of the wisdom that lives in people different from themselves.