Innocence Blog

Here are some interesting philosophical quotes that describe our modern era. Can you relate?

"We have built a country," Bishop writes, "where everyone can choose neighbors(and church and news shows) most compatible with his or her lifestyle and beliefs. And we are living with the consequences of this segregation by way of life: pockets of like-minded citizens have become so ideologically inbred that we don't know, can't understand, and can barely conceive of 'those people' who live just a few miles away."

Bishop argues that this clustering of like with like accelerated in the tumult of the 1960s when, unmoored from the organizations and traditions that had guided their choices about how to live, Americans grew anxious and disorientated--and reflexively sought comfort in the familiar, cocooning themselves in communities of people like themselves . . .

Does this balkanization matter? Bishop argues convincingly that it does . . .

"Mix company moderates; like-minded company polarizes. Heterogeneous communities restrain group excesses; homogeneous communities march toward the extremes."

From "Subdivided We Fall" New York Times Book Review by Scott Stossel

Review of The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart, by Bill Bishop with Robert G. Cushing