Not trying to overload you with my comments, but a few quotes just popped into my head that are totally fitting in regards to sameness and diversity, unity and division, myself and others, parts and the whole. It's a delicate balancing act, and a little deviation is (overall) pro-motive. Without the "spice of life" (variety), nothing could grow or evolve:
Bernard: "Out of repetition comes variation and after countless cycles of repetition, these hosts... they were varying. They were on the verge of some kind of change." - Westworld
Major Motoko Kusanagi: "If we all reacted the same way, we'd be predictable, and there's always more than one way to view a situation. What's true for the group is also true for the individual. It's simple: Overspecialize, and you breed in weakness. It's slow death." - Ghost in the Shell
A balance between sameness and strangeness. The herd may survive for a while due to safety in numbers, but unless they start to diverge into new types/groups of life forms, life becomes static. On the other hand, should there be no cooperation between groups, with everyone going their separate ways, it'd be an endless conflict leading to total annihilation.
I'm totally onboard with what you're saying. I tend to use the term 'novelty.' The universe is a novelty-generating engine; the further into the future we travel, the more novel forms the universe generates. Whatever creative force is driving these processes keeps stepping into the unknown to create anew. As we are an extension of this process, we too must continuously step out of our comfort zone to keep evolving with the world we inhabit.
We feel the solution here is decentralization. The EN is an alliance of many different organizations with their unique goals. We support each other in the specific ways we can, but everything is sovereign and working towards our own ends. It's like each group is a cell, and together we make a multi-cellular organism.