The myth of universal inclusion

23.05.2025

This material was originally delivered as a speech at the XIX GvH Conference in May 2025.

In contemporary discourse, diversity and inclusion are often treated as objectives to be imposed by decree or institutional mandates. The language used to promote these
objectives often undermines the organic role of diversity and may confuse our natural inclination to be in need of “the other.” This talk explores the origins of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion mindset and claims that the marginal case of DEI is the idea to introduce Universal Basic Income (UBI) – a perfect and universal inclusion of everyone into basic provision. The talk elaborates on a philosophical discourse: diversity is not a policy to be engineered but a reflection of the human condition as it is — incomplete, limited – and therefore made for cooperation.

Saint Thomas Aquinas offers a striking theological foundation to grasp the roots of diversity. In Summa Theologica (I, Q.47, A.1), he asks why God, who is perfect and whole, would create a world filled with distinctions and inequalities. His answer is simple and profound: the divine goodness could not be fully represented by any single creature, and so “what was wanting to one… might be supplied by another.” Diversity, then, is not accidental — it is intentional. Each being reflects a part of the whole, and only in their manifold differences does the universe express the fullness of the good. In Aquinas’ view, every creature possesses specific features and also lacks other qualities; and it is in this lack — or incompleteness — that the space for reciprocity unfolds.

Drawing on Thomas Aquinas, we may explore the idea that diversity is not merely tolerable, but ontologically necessary. If each creature possesses certain qualities and lacks others — purposefully, by design— this lack is not a flaw but a space where complementarity and collaboration become not only possible but necessary. Aquinas goes further, offering a comparative reflection on humans and animals: while lions possess claws, bulls horns, and birds wings, the human being is given hands — what he calls “the organ of organs” — precisely because man is made not for brute survival, but for reasoned activity. The absence of natural weapons is thus not a deficiency, but a sign that human flourishing is meant to occur through cooperation, not combat.

Here, the Austrian School of Economics opens a profound perspective on how diversity gives rise to economic phenomena. Exchange occurs because people are different and they value the same things differently. The principles of subjective value and comparative advantage rely on natural differences between individuals and groups. The division of labor emerges because we do not all possess the same talents, resources, and interests. Prices communicate these differences, enabling complex systems of coordination and mutual benefit — not by eliminating difference, but by depending on it. Value in the economic domain is created because of the diversity of the parties involved in an exchange.

In a world that longs for order, people may discover diversity in light of “dispersed knowledge,” as articulated by Friedrich von Hayek, to grasp how unintended order arises in complex systems where individuals possess differing information and interests. Human flourishing arises not from the elimination of scarcity, but from creative tension with it. And when difference is embraced and directed toward shared goals, it gives rise to true synergy.

Yet, many people still believe that value is produced only by hard work, overlooking that it also arises from mutual difference — in the very act of exchange. The deeper role of diversity, which organically leads to cooperation, exchange, and the creation of value, goes largely unnoticed. This is the diversity that humanity may still rediscover, cherish, and honour. Isn’t it striking that in a world obsessed with enforced unity, so many still believe that in a genuine exchange one party always wins while the other loses?

Isn’t it heartbreaking that a spontaneous equity which people experience in every exchange, thanks to our inequalities and distinctions, remains a hidden miracle for many?

The roots of this ignorance and the spur to pursue artificial unity are explained in the contemporary studies of lack, pioneered by the author. Diversity is one among many
expressions of lack: we each possess and lack different qualities, aspirations, material and spiritual goals. These studies explore why lack – known as incompleteness, insufficiency, imperfection – is a fundamental and universal principle of being and human nature. Lack is a core driver of human aspiration, creativity, learning, and cooperation. Human beings strive for their aims and build relationships precisely because we are incomplete: we lack by design, and we are drawn to one another because of that lack. We are united not only by what we have, but also by what we are missing — and what we find in others.

This universal paradigm demonstrates that true inclusion arises from necessity and reciprocal openness, and thus is spontaneous and organic. It is inscribed in our nature and enforced by it. It is grounded in liberty, reciprocity, and curiosity — not in policy-driven aims and proportions.

But differences can also be a source of animosity and tension. That is natural as well, since we have values and virtues, personal and collective histories. The presence of
“the other” may raise fear, just as cooperation may expose wounds. Our relations lack perfection, and like everything else, they unfold in time. Time is needed for acquaintance and conscious unity.

These explorations into lack — still developing across disciplines — may offer a modest and timely extension of classical liberal insights into human agency and manyfold incompleteness that is a driver of creativity, advancement and cooperation. The studies of lack continue a long-standing tradition of inquiry: How do free individuals respond to their own limitations and to the scarcity of resources — including time? What forms of cooperation emerge when no one is complete, and each is in need of the other?

The obsession with artificial unity reaches its most radical expression in the discourse of Universal Basic Income (UBI). An effort to include everyone in access to goods that are normally earned through serving others and creating value is an extreme version of aiming at complete equality and inclusion. UBI detaches the link between contribution and compensation, and thus departs from the ontological structure of reciprocity. Remarkably, most experiments called UBI give sustenance which is neither universal nor basic, nor even ‘income’ in the traditional sense. They serve to prepare the public imagination for a world where sustenance is no longer relational.

This is an inclusion not as mutual recognition, but as a constructivist distribution. As if we could engineer generosity by bypassing productivity and relationships. We all long to give freely, as from perfect love — but we do not live in Paradise. We are limited, our love is fragmented, our resources – scarce. That is why we need to produce and exchange. That is why we need to cooperate. UBI dreams of a postscarcity world and universalizes a fantasy of limitless money — money without lack. In this way, it becomes not only uneconomic but anti-economic — erasing the very lack that animates cooperation, productiveness and gives rise to meaningful action.

UBI idealizes inclusion without cost, overlooking that human dignity is born not in shelter from lack, but as our response to it. However, our cooperation is never perfect, and our inclusion of “the other” always has limits — not because of ideology, but because of our own human limitations, scarcity of resources, and above all, the most scarce resource on earth: love. When this particular form of lack is neglected, humanity turns to policies that seek to enforce complete and perfect unity: UBI promises inclusion without reciprocity, and provision without effort and merit.

When inclusion is disconnected from contribution, diversity becomes a new idol, if not a new deus. And UBI becomes its eucharist — a ritual of material provision that nourishes the body but leaves the spirit parched.

In service of this new deity, excellence is sacrificed for appearance. In academic and professional life, this tension increasingly has personal implications — especially for those who are “included” as representatives of a category rather than as bearers of value. The distinction between being welcomed on the basis of merit and being positioned for ideological optics is not merely theoretical; it is existential. It compromises our dignity — in ways that are too subtle even to name. Thank you for the opportunity to name it here.

Yet, the peril also arises when people rightly discard the DE&I agenda: they risk losing the sense of true and beautiful diversity — and may end up retreating into marginal ideals, economic autarky – personal or national, or romanticising beautiful tariffs. As long as diversity continues to appeal to many, we may rebrand the language and let people find the rightful place of diversity in genuine cooperation, plus-sum exchange, and other authentic unity too often dismissed by today’s ideological consensus.

As Orwell warned, language can either illuminate or corrupt thought. To defend diversity as a condition of being, we may reclaim the language we use — as the grammar of being. Inclusion does not grow from enforcement, but from love, humility, and mutual need. It is through our diverse incompleteness and complementary lacks that cooperation becomes possible. Ignoring the role of lack and imperfection opens the way to utopias, while embracing this hidden element helps to unmask utopias and
socialism alike – whatever its new disguise.

More about the studies of Lack (Mangel):

https://bit.ly/desmangels (in German)
https://en.llri.lt/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Sinteze_7_SPAUDAI.pdf (in English)
https://bit.ly/sublimethirst (Watch Documentary Sublime Thirst)