The Dip-Switch Society: When Loud Voices Replace Moral Clarity

For nearly thirty years, I worked in corporate America—particularly through the 1990s and early 2000s. During that time, there was something we did not debate. We were stronger when we were more diverse. Not as a political statement. Not as a cultural experiment. But as a business truth.

Companies invested heavily in diversity initiatives because they recognized something simple and undeniable: when talent is excluded, opportunity is lost. When perspectives are missing, innovation suffers. When leadership all looks the same, blind spots multiply.

We heard it in boardrooms and training sessions:

• Diversity is our strength.

• Inclusion fuels innovation.

• Different perspectives drive better results.

• 
  

This wasn’t sentimental language. It was strategic thinking. Organizations understood that if capable people were left outside the system, the system itself would underperform. By definition, corporations realized they were leaving money on the table when diversity was absent.

That mindset filtered into schools, universities, and communities. We were taught—and many of us believed—that we are better together. And then something shifted.

Here we are in 2026, and almost overnight, that confidence in diversity seems to have evaporated. Not because it failed. Not because it was disproven. But because louder voices began to say something different.

Now we are told that diversity is weakness. That homogeneity is strength. That exclusion creates safety. That inclusion creates risk.

And yet, at our core, many of us know that isn’t true. So what changed? Truth didn’t change.

Volume did.

The Dip-Switch Problem

There’s an image that keeps coming to mind. A dip switch.

Those tiny switches on the back of electronic devices. Flip it one way, and you get one function. Flip it the other way, and everything changes—brightness, color temperature, performance. It feels like a significant portion of our society has become dip-switch people.

When one ideology dominates, we flip. When another voice becomes louder, we flip again.

Our convictions adjust. Our moral temperature shifts.Our language changes.

Not because truth changed—but because influence did.

We become unstable, governed not by conscience, but by control, not by principle, but by pressure. The real danger is not disagreement. Healthy disagreement strengthens us. The real danger is instability—when we cannot hold a moral position unless it is socially safe to hold it. When we outsource our discernment to the loudest voice in the room, we stop leading our lives. We simply respond to noise.

The Biblical Call to Maturity

Scripture speaks directly to this condition.

In Ephesians 4:14–15, we are warned:

“That we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine… but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ.”

The apostle Paul describes spiritual immaturity as being “tossed to and fro.” That imagery is powerful. It suggests instability. Reactivity. A lack of rootedness. The call of faith is not to be controlled by shifting winds, but to grow up—to mature—into Christ.

Mature faith does not flip with every cultural breeze. Mature conviction does not surrender to every loud voice. Mature love speaks truth without abandoning compassion. Perhaps the issue before us is not diversity at all. Perhaps the issue is discernment. Perhaps the real question is this: Who is flipping your switch? And why did you give them access in the first place?

Truth does not change when the volume changes. And mature faith does not require permission to remain steady.