Our obsession with 'uniformity'

I have three stories to tell you today and about a thread that connects them all

Some days back I visited a flower farm and noticed something unusual there. Each of the rose buds had a plastic net covering it, and hundreds were in just one patch. On a little prodding, I found out that the farm labourers would go through the farm looking for ones that had reached a certain level of maturity and manually cap them. The ones that were too young were too small to be capped and those would be left to grow for a few more days. The whole effort of manually observing the rose buds, identifying the ones that were good enough to be capped and repeating this exercise day after day intrigued me and led to more questions. The net caps would keep the roses closed and give them a certain desirable shape. There were similar hacks they had to keep the length of the stalks to a uniform height. Ultimately, in the commodity trade, every product is graded, which determines the price one would get. With roses, the grading depended on the length of the stalk and how compact the flower looked. Only after the grading was done and the price was fixed the net would be removed. I could not help but think about the paradox - of how nature encompasses diversity and the acceptance of all kinds, while as humans there is a higher value on ‘sameness’. 

The second story is about being a witness to a discussion on cultural community celebrations. There were two strong factions of people coming from certain pockets of India who vehemently argued with each other - each wanted their festivals to be celebrated at a certain scale and were willing to go the whole nine yards while completely disregarding what the other set wanted. The discussion reached an impasse since neither was willing to give up their stance. The result - one of the teams retreated and gave up and the ones that remained were relieved to find they were finally in the company of like-minded. Diversity lost once again. What came as a revelation that day was such water-tight discussions left no room for objectivity - one that supported both sides was considered a hypocrite, an opportunist. Coming from Bombay, people always find it difficult to slot me - neither a North Indian, nor a South Indian. What adds to the confusion is the cosmopolitan secular values that are so ingrained. 

The third story is about a research discussion after the findings were tabled. The people we interviewed displayed so many conflicting tendencies. They gave strong opinions about something but in terms of behaviour did exactly the opposite. At times they practised something intuitively and with a lot of effort but when presented with the same idea written formally as a concept note, their enthusiasm for it nose-dived. How is all this possible - were the questions we received from the client team? It is because as humans we are a bundle of complex paradoxes that co-exist. We have individual preferences and socially postured responses and the need to conform and there are more than a handful of variables influencing any situation and decision at any point in time and the beauty of qualitative research is that it brings all of this complexity and chaos to the fore so that decisions can be made keeping in mind this chaos that is so real. As a junior researcher, during my first year of work at a research agency, my team leader looked at my research report and said - the story does not tie in - re-read the report and work on ironing out these contradictions. Over the years, I developed an independent point of view about this and would table research reports with the contradictions in their full glory. Since I felt it was the diversity that added richness to the understanding of the problem. 

So I wonder what is behind this human obsession with uniformity and sameness and why we are so uncomfortable around diversity even though it is such a strong part of our culture and society. Perhaps since sameness or a sense of constancy gives us a sense of ‘control’ and change and diversity - are rooted in the fear of the unknown. However this sense of control is fallacious, shortlived and superficial, and sometimes embracing diversity, randomness and change wholeheartedly can be very liberating. 

Have you come across, in your domain of work, the bias in favour of uniformity? It would be lovely to read about more such instances. 

Here is an interesting discussion on the subject of how ‘Outliers are treated in research’ if you wish to read more.