Governments Take Note: Innovation & Diversity Go Hand in Hand
If you haven’t seen the film The Imitation Game with Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley, go watch it this week.
The film is about Alan Turing, the mastermind behind the “Turing Machine,” the device which was able to decode secret German messages during World War II.
The German communication system, “Enigma,” was seen as impenetrable before Turing and his team tackled it. For months, nobody understood what Turing was doing — let alone his colleagues. He simply asked them to trust him.
But he wasn’t what you’d call “normal.” Turing was a highly eccentric man who didn’t understand basic social cues. That made trusting him with such an enormous task difficult… but his genius prevailed.
It’s estimated that Turing’s invention ended the war two to four years earlier than it otherwise would have, saving about 14 million lives. And how did they thank him for it? (Spoiler alert ahead)
They drove him to suicide.
Turing was a homosexual. Back in 1952 when he was found “guilty” of committing homosexual acts, homosexuality was still criminalized. So they gave him a choice: Prison or two years on hormone therapy. Not much of a choice at all, really. Ultimately the “treatment” completely unraveled his personality and his mind.
How messed up is that?
The man who quite literally saved the world didn’t receive any thanks (although the Queen posthumously pardoned him in 2013). Instead, he was ostracized! That’s not only short-sighted, but devastating to the innovative process.
Innovation can only come from diverse and eccentric views and diverse and eccentric people — those who reject the status quo and press mankind forward!
This has almost always been the case. Just look at Steve Jobs and Einstein and Galileo and Jesus. Each of these men challenged the mainstream views of their times. And what happened to them?
Steve Jobs was fired.
Galileo was damn near burned at the stake for daring to suggest the world revolved around the Sun and not vice versa.
Jesus was crucified at age 33 for his radical views.
But just look at how much each of these men shaped the world just by being in it!
We all want to be liked and associated with people around us. It’s natural and it’s human. But it’s diversity — those random mutations from the norm — that spawns innovations in evolution and history, just like Darwin proved… and by the way, he wasn’t normal, either!
