Bishop's "The Big Sort": Psychology of the Tribe

One minor aside to Bill Bishop's "The Big Sort" before I start carving up my own macro-level argument with it. This paragraph stood out for me on a variety of levels. One, it's spot-on. Chapter Three is devoted to understanding the "Psychology of the Tribe." And while there's room for debate over whether every point he makes applies to the way in which cities and towns (and other 'places') form political allegiances, many of them are great for understanding, at minimum, personal communication and small group psychology. Two, Bishop masterfully goes from quoting the Apostle Paul to the movie Breakfast at Tiffany's. Far be it from the likes of me to not give a tip of the hat to that feat.

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"It's an image maintenance kind of thing," explained social psychologist Robert Baron. Everyone wants to be a member in good standing with the dominant group position. It's counterintuitive, but people grow more extreme within homogeneous groups as a way to conform. "One way to make sure you aren't mistaken for one if those 'other people' is to be slightly ahead of the pack in terms of your Republican-ness," Baron said. "It's hard to be a moderate Republican or a moderate Democrat, in other words, because you're afraid that other people will call you whatever. In racial terms, you'd be called an Oreo if you [were] black [but went along with whites]." Saint Paul knew this. Before his conversion, Paul said, "Beyond measure I persecuted the church of God, and wasted it." The disciple knew that going overboard in his pursuit of Christians served him well in the homogeneous society of Jews. Paul explained that he "profited in the Jews' religion above many my equals in mine own nations, being more exceedingly zealous of the traditions of my fathers," Or, as Holly Golightly put it in the movie Breakfast at Tiffany's, it's "It's useful being top banana in the shock department."

More to come on the book, so stay tuned.