USA: #BigSort. Bill Bishop on why we live with people just like ourselves (52:42 min). @Richard_Florida: BigSort is only getting bigger

MPR News Staff Jul 11, 2017: „What are the implications of an America where the places we live are increasingly crowded with people who live, think and vote just like we do?

Bill Bishop, says some of our political polarization comes from the fact that we’re ideologically inbred — we don’t know, can’t understand and can barely conceive of people who live just a few miles away.

„Places are getting increasingly different from one another,“ said Bishop, co-author of „The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart.“ „We’re constantly broadcasting to others who we are, where we are and what our lives are about.“

As we move through life we’re all trying to figure out who we are, and oftentimes that means looking at who other people are, Bishop said. Technology has made it easier than ever to find the people we want to be like, and then move to where those people are.

„Left and right are complicit in all of this,“ he said. „The left wants a world where individuals have utter social freedom, individually. And the right wants a world where every individual has total economic freedom.“

This move toward individualism means when people vote they aren’t just voting their political interests, they are asserting their identity. …

Recorded in Aspen, Colo., June 30, 2017, the session was titled, „Trust, Individualism and the American Identity.“ … .“

https://www.mprnews.org/story/2017/07/11/why-we-live-where-everyone-thinks-like-us

Richard Florida