Introduction:

The question of whether diversity has been dealt with adequately has increased in significance with the internationalisation and globalisation that has taken place recently in all areas of society. There are numerous factors that cause diversity in interpersonal co-habitation. Age, gender, social and ethnic origin, education and biographical developmental phases – to name a few – are all factors that determine behaviour and our experience in a truly sustainable way. We are also aware of the fact that no two people are completely alike. Neither in the past, present or future have any two individuals ever be physically or mentally identical. Even single-celled (monozygotic) twins, that are extremely similar and even more so than two-celled (dizygotic) twins or siblings, are not identical. Since mankind is able to educate such a large variety of people and use them as a resource, this is why he is so incredibly adaptable and can survive within such a wide spectrum of habitation areas. However, there is always the danger of excessive demand through variety. We call this "information overload" caused by diversity, which may lead to the inability to perform. Thus, the scenario occurs where one "can no longer see the forest with all the trees"! Man protects himself from this by means of schematisation, classification, stereotyping, categorisation, similarity formation, expectation formation, fixation etc. The basic question is, how can one achieve a targeted, productive and reasonable balance between diversity on the one hand and uniformity/conformity on the other?