What exactly is diversity? According to the BG5 Human Design System it is described as the Trait of Extremes. It is also one of the five Love Traits located in the Identity & Direction Function, more specifically the Trait of Love of Humanity: “It [Trait 15 – Love of Humanity] has the capacity to accept and to find a place in society for the full spectrum of human behavior. Its lack of a fixed pattern ensures that each of us is able to make a contribution to the diverse ways love exists in the world. Love in [Trait] 15 is not about how we connect with others, but rather how we project a transpersonal love for humanity’s diversity out into the world.”
For many years this Trait of Extremes was enigmatic to me. In my design I am receptive to it. I couldn’t see how extremes would relate to Love of Humanity - I couldn’t understand what extremes they were referring to in the first place. Let alone within the context of career and business.
Extremes and Uniqueness
Over time, and while applying and experimenting with my Decision-Making Strategy, I understood that extremes are about uniqueness. Each being operating from their own place of correctness as they live moment-by-moment using their Decision-Making Strategy, allows for all those specific aspects and subtleties of their design to reach the surface and be holistically expressed as their uniqueness; as what is uniquely them.
Now, is uniqueness or being unique, extreme? In a way it is, and I would like to lay out why.
Same Extremes
According to the founder of the BG5 Human Design System, Ra Uru Hu, what rules the world for the most part is mechanisms that lead to and ensure lasting homogenization. Regarding to the logic of the Trait of Extremes, this would be expressed as the same homogenized behavior of everyone: same patterns, same rhythms, same taste, same solutions to problems, focusing on the same details, asking the same questions, same leadership styles, developing the same skills, same way of challenging authorities, expressing the same opinions, and propagandizing the appropriateness of same ways of love. Ra Uru Hu would at this point encourage you to decide for yourself if there’s any truth about what I’ve just listed. To me it sounds beyond true; like the tyranny of political correctness, too.
Diversity and Differentiation
Assuming that the full spectrum of life – public, business and private – is for the most part homogenized, to be unique can raise suspicion of being extreme, with all the consequences this might have. Who wants to be burned at the stake metaphorically or even worse literally because they stand out and are different from what is widely perceived as normal? Uniqueness is the result of a process of differentiation over time, until what has differentiated is being displayed holistically in someone’s expression within the context of career and business or private life. Obviously, uniqueness and differentiated expressions have little to do with being “normal” and homogenization.
Aspects of Uniqueness
What can be the aspects of someone’s uniqueness? And how can those aspects be integrated with someone’s career and business? Beneath the surface, which is the Decision-Making Strategy, that arises out of a being’s specifically configured Career Design and moves them along their career path, there is the display of holistically orchestrated aspects of the substructure that is truly the cherry on the cake. Here’s where the refined display of Career Design diversity can be noticed.
Unique Determination
There are four aspects of refinement. It all begins with the body - with the correctness of the body. Within this context of substructure, the first aspect is called Determination, and is about how the body is specifically designed to take in nutrition. In order to exemplify this, let's have a look at my specific design in which it’s the circumstances of food-intake that determine what is correct for me. These circumstances happen to be Indirect Light, which means nocturnal. Eating during the night hours. However, the circumstances of Indirect Light do not refer to nutrition only. They refer to how life is being received in all. Applied to career and business, this would mean that it’s correct for me to work nocturnally for myself, but also related to others as in nocturnal appointments, meetings, consultations, etc. That is simply the time that is the most beneficial and productive for me. It’s the time when I am operating physically at my best.
Unique Environment
The second aspect is the environment that the body is designed to operate in. In my case, the correct environment for the body is urban and indoor. The technically accurate term for this is Selective Caves. Translated into the context of career and business, this means that I need to be able to work in an urban environment, have my own office under indirect light circumstances, be able to see who is entering through that one door, and receive only those who I spontaneously respond to. The cave is selective after all! For me to work in an open plan office is physically detrimental because it puts my body under enormous, unnecessary, and unhealthy stress to stay alert to and protect myself from potentially nearing dangers all over the place. For my collaborative working style to be enhanced and productively, creatively expressed I need to be able to work in a cave-like office in partnership with one person at a time.
Physical Preconditions and Mind
The first and second aspects are the preconditions. The physical and uniquely body-related foundation upon which the mind has the ability to see through its unique perspective and express its unique Outer Authority based on its uniquely motivated way to conceptualize what it sees. Again, with unique meaning diverse, or more accurately, diversified or differentiated. And with Outer Authority meaning an individual contribution that is of value and benefit for the other and for the whole. Correctly shared Outer Authority - in response, after invitation, initiation, or in manifestation - can be empowering, supportive, inspiring, entertaining, etc.
Unique Perspective and Motivation
As a result, the third and fourth aspects that logically follow are Perspective and Motivation. My mind’s perspective is peripherally looking at themes of survival in times of crisis in an utterly receptive and accepting way. The peripheral perspective of survival in the context of career and business means that my mind is looking at all kinds of ways individuals and small and large groups survive in times of crisis with material survival and success, with how to access, ensure, build and rebuild resources, and thrive. To have a peripheral perspective means that my mind does not focus on anything in particular. Being absolutely receptive, my mind perceives specific characteristics of the material plane, if you will. It sees things without intentionally focusing on them. My mind sees just because of the fact that it’s present to what is going on. Reading almost every job ad where “focus on details” is demanded, is one example of how little diversity and uniqueness is being included in the labor market.
A New Era
What I am describing has nothing to do with the good ole ways of being strategic, focused, planning, and proactive in career and business. Those attributes have served humanity, our communities, and societies well for many hundreds of years. But their time is coming to an end. What I am describing is what is yet to fully emerge in this coming era of a huge evolutionary shift towards empowerment, individuality, receptivity, and evolved and settled emotional intelligence.
Perspective and Motivation in Career and Business
Now what does my peripheral perspective of survival practically mean in the context of business? It means, assuming that I am working in a large organization, which would be optimal for my career design, that I am rotating between departments, reflecting on what I’ve seen, and being asked to give my take in spontaneous response regarding specific matters. At this point, I need to integrate the fourth aspect in my analysis - my mind’s motivation. In my case the motivation is Innocence. Innocence is what my mind is motivated by when it is conceptualizing and expressing outer authority, when it makes a contribution based on what it sees regarding survival. More specifically, this kind of motivation means that my mind is highly receptive and not particularly motivated by fear, hope, desire, need, etc. My mind is strategic only with regards to its sense of security and insecurity when it is conceptualizing.
Uniqueness of New Beginnings
Summarizing the third and fourth aspect and including certain characteristics of my analysis that I haven’t explicitly mentioned so far… Since my peripheral perspective of survival is looking at themes of material survival and success in times of crisis, and my mind is focused on and receptive to what is materially secure or not in a broad, neutral, and unattached way… I can make a contribution about what is working or not when it comes to the security of new material beginnings. New material beginnings could be further described as the concrete and practical implementation of a vision or an innovative material direction.
Summary
How does that sound in terms of being an expression of diverse human behavior? Just to connect it all to the quote in my introduction, according to the capacity of Trait 15, the Trait of Extremes, it can accept, include, and find a place for each contribution within the context of career and business. And in doing so it expresses a transpersonal love of humanity as a love of diversity, uniqueness, and human extremes.
1 Lynda Bunnel / Ra Uru Hu: The Definitive Book of Human Design. The Science of Differentiation. Carlsbad, HDC Publishing, 2011, p. 205.
