What kind of diverse universe do you want?

If we're expanding human civilisation to other star systems, what kind of universe do we want to create as writers?  There's a lot of discussion right now about including diverse characters and cultures in our writing.  This is a good thing, but sometimes people are suggesting that today's ethnic groupings and cultures be transplanted wholesale to the future, and I don't think that's realistic.

Cultures and religious beliefs change with the ages, and with the environments they find themselves in. Archeologists and historians know that cultures are more fluid than the labels we give them.  Usually there's no violent disconnect between one period and the next.  More likely, one religion or cultural strand segues into the next.

I think some of the current discussion on diversity smacks of formulas and quotas.  We're so busy counting the people of colour, the LGBT characters, in our books that we lose sight of the fact that our function as a novelist is to tell a story.

I tend to see cultures of the future as rather more mixed-up.  We'll have dark-skinned and light-skinned people working alongside each other doing the same job and not noticing their skin differences.  We'll have women and men equally appointed to top jobs.  Faith probably won't disappear, because I think it's a basic need of the human, but the forms it takes will morph and change.

This is the sort of universe I write about.  I'm a white English woman, so I'm going to be massively influenced by western culture's beliefs and values when I write.  No surprise there, it's what I know.  But in my books people of both genders and all ethnic backgrounds get along fine together generally.  I don't make a big deal about ethnic or religious differences.

When we start travelling between the stars that distance, and the challenges of the new worlds we settle on, will change our culture and faiths.  They'll acquire an intergalactic overlay.  When we're twenty light years from our home world some of our beliefs and religious practices won't make sense any more. And preserving ethnic and cultural heritage won't be as relevant.  We'll be busy creating new cultures. 

And then I think we'll get people working alongside each other, just getting on with their jobs.  That's the kind of diversity I like to use in my books, a diversity where the characters don't even notice the issue.