Idea for July 2021: homophily

My idea of the month is homophily

The love of people and things that are the same as the people and things we know. I discovered the word in Matthew Syed’s persuasive Rebel Ideas. We like working with likeminded people. We recruit for ‘cultural fit’. We enjoy having our views bolstered by others. But this, of course, hugely limits the perspectives open to us. Only when we love difference do we find newness.

My image of the month is this work by Edmund de Waal. Called ‘stone for two hands and water’, it’s a washbasin outside the exhibition he’s curated at the Henry Moore Foundation in Hertfordshire. Made of Hornton stone, with a water pipe of bamboo, it somehow sanctifies the now mundane act of sanitising.