The Big Sort is a term used to explain a slightly complicated and fantastic social phenomenon. We socially organize ourselves by what interests we have, if we read poetry, and other things about ourselves so we hang out with people like read poetry and don't support big business. You tend to hang out with people that are similar to you, right? We even do this when we're looking for housing; if you notice a neighborhood with a lot of lawn decorations and think you'd fit in well there, you're going to move in. But the interesting thing is, that neighborhood may be 80% Democratic. For no real good reason. Does that mean that decorating your lawn means you're bound to be a democrat? Well, not really. But there is a correlation between certain lifestyle choices and political parties.
To explain simpler, the Big Sort means we're organizing ourselves into groups based on similar hobbies, interests, and others and there seems to be a connection to political bias. Take a moment to think about what you're into, and what your friends are into. Are you guys into the same things? Do you have the same or close to the same political bias? If not, think about where you live, what the people are generally into, and what the general political bias is for the town you live in, the neighborhood, or other. Now that this seed of information has been planted, I've been seeing it a lot in where I live. People that live in town, for whatever reason, are mostly all very liberal, while if you go outside of the town and into the country a little ways, the people are mostly all very conservative. They might have organized themselves that way subconsciously. And while it's super interesting, what does this mean for democracy? Obviously, it means that more conservative towns will vote for more conservative mayors, but on the larger scale? This means that democracy isn't necessarily a thing anymore. Democracy depends on each individual person governing themselves, but if people tend into these groups of political beliefs, that means that they are polarized into one way of thinking, and not independent thinking. It means that democracy is a system being run not by individual people, but people functioning in a hive-mind mindset.
But the biggest question is not how it affects democracy, but if that's been happening for a long time. Just fairly recently we've noticed the tendency to stick to like-minded people, but that can't be something that is brand new to our ways of socializing. We've always been attracted to like-minded people. That might mean that democracy was never a system ran by individual thinkers. So it might not be the downfall of democracy, but we are now realizing that democracy depends on this political polarization. Because we have to have some kind of majority, and if you get enough like-minded people together, they become a majority.
To explain simpler, the Big Sort means we're organizing ourselves into groups based on similar hobbies, interests, and others and there seems to be a connection to political bias. Take a moment to think about what you're into, and what your friends are into. Are you guys into the same things? Do you have the same or close to the same political bias? If not, think about where you live, what the people are generally into, and what the general political bias is for the town you live in, the neighborhood, or other. Now that this seed of information has been planted, I've been seeing it a lot in where I live. People that live in town, for whatever reason, are mostly all very liberal, while if you go outside of the town and into the country a little ways, the people are mostly all very conservative. They might have organized themselves that way subconsciously. And while it's super interesting, what does this mean for democracy? Obviously, it means that more conservative towns will vote for more conservative mayors, but on the larger scale? This means that democracy isn't necessarily a thing anymore. Democracy depends on each individual person governing themselves, but if people tend into these groups of political beliefs, that means that they are polarized into one way of thinking, and not independent thinking. It means that democracy is a system being run not by individual people, but people functioning in a hive-mind mindset.
But the biggest question is not how it affects democracy, but if that's been happening for a long time. Just fairly recently we've noticed the tendency to stick to like-minded people, but that can't be something that is brand new to our ways of socializing. We've always been attracted to like-minded people. That might mean that democracy was never a system ran by individual thinkers. So it might not be the downfall of democracy, but we are now realizing that democracy depends on this political polarization. Because we have to have some kind of majority, and if you get enough like-minded people together, they become a majority.