While much of the corporate world is starting to get the idea that DEI in its various appellations is not a great idea, Apple is pushing back. They’ve encouraged investors to vote against a measure that would pressure Apple to join the movement where other companies, like Meta and Target, are ditching DEI.

As I’ve pointed out before, to survive in this world, it’s expedient to have a flexibility of mind to adapt to changes. And within the last couple years, one of the changes that has occurred is that companies are dropping DEI and other variants of it, which are not great for companies that adopt it.

In light of this, it’s really disappointing that Apple is among the few companies that are resisting this change. But it’s not altogether surprising.

It seems as though Apple favors virtue signaling over innovation. As expensive as Apple products are, they’re not terribly innovative. Their main selling point is their stability, which one might expect considering that the hardware and the OS are both developed in-house.

So, what’s the signal that Apple is boosting? Did you know that Tim Cook is gay?

No kidding? Was the rainbow that is shown off with product reveals not sufficient to give it away?

Normally, that wouldn’t be known. But for some reason, that information is widely publicated. Ideally, this would have no bearing on the quality of a product being engineered and manufactured. But when a company is putting a visibly high amount of effort in communicating how dedicated they are to signaling, consumers start to get suspicious.

While Tim Cook might not identify with what it’s like to be straight, most people are, and they know what their tendencies are.

It might not be politically correct to say, but let’s acknowledge the reality of the matter: Most straight people would not want to be mistakenly seen as a homosexual.

It’s like a form of self-preservation. And five years of social engineering aren’t going to make a dent in a trait that’s been conductive to humanity’s continuity for as long as humans have existed.

Considering this tendency, it’s understandable that most people might be hesitant to adopt a brand where there’s higher potential to be mistaken for being a homosexual.

They might instead consider a phone from Samsung, which is headquartered in Korea, where the western world’s cultural problems are distant.

It might even be a significant factor in Android having roughly three times the share of the mobile OS market compared to iOS.

Other businesses are on the pivot to profit, whether Apple is enthusiastic about it or not. People speak of dying on their chosen hill, but it’s important to know that not every hill is worth dying on.

It seems the house of mouse is among the growing list of companies that are rolling back DEI initiatives. According to a note sent to employees and obtained by Axios, Disney is going to be focusing more on “business outcomes”.

And we know what that means. It means that Disney is joining the pivot to profit.

The note states that performance factors will focus on “Talent Strategy” rather than “Diversity & Inclusion”, and they’re dropping their “Reimagine Tomorrow” initiative, and have already replaced its website with an updated corporate hub.

Additionally, Disney has removed an auto-playing content advisory for certain programs on Disney Plus, and replaced it with a brief disclaimer in the details section of these programs. Which, as I see it, does suffice.

This development is yet another in a culture which is shifting back towards normalcy. While this may have been attributed to Trump’s resounding victory back in November, the pushback against the likes of DEI has been well underway at that point, with Trump’s victory being yet another indicator of where the US’s culture has been trending towards.

The fact is, DEI and similar notions have been huge liabilities, and it didn’t help the activists’ cause that the venture capital has been drying up.

Now that Disney is coming back around, I suspect that conservatives and those with families will be warming up to them, again. This is great, because this would amount to positive feedback for making better decisions. As I’ve pointed out about Mark Zuckerberg’s redemption arc, forgiveness can be strategically valuable. After all, if a person were presented with no avenue for redemption, they would have no reason to seek it. It’s better to have a Disney that aligns with our values than a Disney that opposes us, and it’s not bad for them to have an avenue to come back around.

And an incentive can help motivate them. The pivot to profit.

Of course, it’s also possible that we might get to watch Star Wars again, without worrying whether it would be undermined by some activist message.

Sometimes, when a guy goes through enough slop, he’ll just stop being nice. Such is the case with the CEO of the struggling company GameStop, who dragged DEI on X.

To him I say, welcome to the club of those who are sick of it.

Here’s an embed of what he said:

And here’s a screengrab, in case the embed fails:

A CEO’s job is basically to keep investors happy. Naturally, this would involve avoiding saying things that carry the risk of devaluing the company, even as the company goes on sale. I bring this up to help make the point that Ryan has evidently run out of cares to give.

The point he’s making is obvious: GameStop is not in great shape, and poor decisions such as allowing DEI to permeate its corporate culture has played a significant role in that.

I’m not pretending to know how to run a company. But I do know that consultants who push DEI can do some real damage. They know just enough about corporate structure to effect some change, but lack the wisdom to understand the second order consequences of their pet policies.

And when it comes down to it, the DEI pushers are like a cult. In a cult, when there’s failure, the ideology not blamed. When a cult encounters failure, the usual solution is to try the ideology even harder. You’ll see this not just in religious cults, but also in the likes of Marxism and corporate cults such as call centers.

What Ryan Cohen has indicated is that GameStop is so heavily compromised by DEI that there’s little chance of getting rid of it without the corporate equivalent of an exterminator.

When a company adopts DEI, it starts spiraling the drain, usually right away. As it’s corrupting influence becomes more apparent, you’ll see more sound-minded people starting to nope out, while a few who stick around who know what’s going on largely just try to extract as much value as they can, often through the DEI grift, itself.

And then you see people like Ryan Cohen, who throw their hands up and show just how they feel about it.

As more companies dump DEI, we’re probably going to be seeing more of this.

Lately, Mark Zuckerberg of Meta and Facebook fame has expressed a desire to change course. He says that he’s sorry about all the censorship, and he’s dropping things like DEI from Facebook, and has even expressed more masculine interests, such as in combat sports, and has even been on the Joe Rogan podcast to explain his perspective.

As you might expect, some people were skeptical of the change. It’s the internet, and there are people on it who are running the race to be as vindictive as possible, for whatever e-clout that there is to extract from so doing. Thus, Mark is being accused of just going where the trends are going, just because Donald Trump has won, and not because he’s expressing a sincere change of heart.

In the current zeitgeist of frumpy bitterness, I have a take that could be controversial. I think that Mark Zuckerberg might be being sincere.

Yeah, I get it, it’s trendy and cool to assume the worst if someone’s position can be interpreted in a manner that favors indignation, even on someone else’s behalf. So, my take probably won’t be algorithmically-boosted in the same way as some rage-inducing video. But I think that Mark might actually mean it.

Does that mean that he was principled enough to stand up to the government that was pressuring him to censor certain viewpoints? Apparently not. But it would seem like he was principled enough to consider something wrong, even if he hesitated to act or speak against it for years.

I could point out that Mark didn’t become right-wing during the first Trump presidency, but I know that it’s easy to make the point that the initial Trump administration wasn’t strongly establishment, as the establishment largely resisted or even undermined Trump. I think that the safer position to take is that the mandate implied by Trump’s overwhelming recent victory made it far easier for Zuckerberg, and many others, to finally take a stand.

If you’ve ever been threatened in any way over what’s right, like if your employment was threatened, and you refused to back down, you’re probably more principled than Mark Zuckerberg. But he does seem sincere in the position he is now expressing, so I don’t see any reason to doubt that his redemption is valid.

People tend to overlook just how valuable redemption is, even if from a strategic point of view. If the continuum between right and wrong were to only allow traffic in one direction, towards wrong, then anyone who ever goes in that direction would only be lost. If no path towards reconciliation is allowed, then there’s no reason for anyone who becomes an enemy to pursue it. If a religion were to tell a person that they couldn’t be redeemed, they’d have no reason to join. Political ideologies are similar when it comes to those who may change sides.

As I see it, there isn’t much reason to doubt someone’s redemption if they’re determined to be an asset. What would be the alternative? To insist that such a person must continue to resist them?

When Abraham Lincoln was asked what he’d do with the southern states after the Civil War was over, he answered that he’d treat them as though they never left. His answer was excellent, and his attitude characterizes the relationship between the states today pretty well. Consider the value of having this attitude towards those who wish to join, and you didn’t have to fight a war against them beforehand.

We’ve all heard the classic example of the loaded question, “Did you stop beating your wife?” While most would recognize the ruse for what it is, it still succeeds in tripping people up.

The question is designed so that its underlying presumption goes unchallenged, if the person being asked is predisposed to giving a “yes” or “no” answer.

In Japanese, there is a third one-word answer that a person could give, where “hai” means “yes”, and “iee” means “no”, the third option would be “mu”, which means “impossible”. It’s a one-word way to say that the question doesn’t apply. The English equivalent could be “wrong”, which could be considered a shorthand way to say that “The question is wrong.”

This is not the only way that dichotomous thinking can influence people. Another would be to split the world in two, as many cults often do.

For example, you might be asked what your market philosophy is, “Marxism or capitalism?” In most cases, you’d probably say “capitalism”, whereas where your life depends on the answer, you’d probably say “Marxism”.

Turns out, the term “capitalism” doesn’t much narrow it down, because it’s a broad term that encompasses many economic schools of thought. The term “capitalism” is as popular as it is because Marxism has succeeded in dividing the world into two, and since then, they’ve succeeded in getting the rest of us to use their language.

Upon learning of this, I had a bit of an economic identity crisis, as I’ve suddenly found myself learning about a handful of economic schools of thought, which would have fallen into the “capitalist” compartment in the thinking of those influenced by Marxism’s memetic legacy.

For those curious, I’m not strongly committed to any economic philosophy, but I do recognize that the Austrian school has some interesting ideas. The Keynesian system embraced by much of the world is problematic, but I’m willing to live non-belligerently where it’s the order of the day, even if I were to point out its problems.

But back to the topic at hand, the dichotomy of Marxism vs Capitalism is one of many ways that the world is oversimplified, and can obscure some of the nuanced ideas that may be worth considering.

Another example that I could think of off the top of my head is the idea of the political right versus the political left. It’s a trick that Liberalism has used to make “the right” appear to be monolithic, when in reality, “conservatism” is most ideas outside of liberalism.

When you understand this, it becomes much easier to comprehend why the right has often struggled to develop a coherent message, while the left has done so much better at organizing. And you’ll recognize their carefully-manufactured image of being a bunch of underdogs for the ruse that it is.

So, what’s the point of this thought exercise? Odds are, you can think of another false dichotomy that’s relevant to you that may have been carefully-designed to limit your choices or perspective. Or it might be that there’s one that you might not have thought of, yet.

I suspect that there’s a great many people whose minds are shackled, though they’ve been led to believe that they have been freed.