Us vs. Them... Too Much Information

Peace
Photo by SB

My finger is slowly mustering to write again after the injury last Friday. While my writing finger was on the injured list this weekend, I photographed a wedding. In principle, I don't like photographing weddings, but I will do it to help out.

A friend of mine, Claire, was asked to photograph her friend's wedding. This was Claire's first wedding and she was nervous. This was my fifth. Up front, I want to say the wedding couple were beautiful, their families were mostly nice to each other, and everyone thanked the photographers. I don't know why they thank the photographers before seeing the photos we captured.

Most of the groom's and a small part of the bride's families attend a non-denominational mega-church. The pastor of the church presided. His order of ceremony was different because he married the couple then gave a sermon. Usually the sermon is before the vows.

During his sermon, he read every passage from the Bible mentioning marriage between a man and a woman (or as the former Miss California called it, "Opposite marriage.") He did not outright say anything about the gay marriage issue, but it was floating in the air. I found out later the groom's uncle (dad's side) who attended is gay. I wonder how he felt.

I am not going to go off on some rant about their limited views. I was in their space. This was their event. I respect their free speech rights. I just snapped a few more pictures of the guests and tuned him out.

Over the rest of the weekend, I didn't think about it. This morning I read an interesting article at Slate.com. It was a review about the new book, Going to Extremes, by Cass Sunstein. This article made me think of the cultural divide developing in our country. Here are a few key points in the review.

"In the roughly three decades between the election of Ronald Reagan and last autumn's global financial collapse, social scientists and public-policy thinkers were obsessed with the way society seemed to grow more fragmented as it grew more prosperous. Almost everyone diagnosed a growing gap between rich and poor, but the polarization was not just economic."

"...people were sorting themselves by measured intelligence and scholastic achievement."

"... while daily newspapers confront people with all kinds of material they didn't ask for, the Web allows them to dodge what they disagree with." (emphasis by me)

"In theory, the Internet opens people up to new ways of looking at things. In practice, it lets people wall themselves off in informational micro-environments of their own design. It makes them not more cosmopolitan but more parochial."

Very interesting points. With all the information available to us, we should be more enlightened and cosmopolitan. Instead, we are insulating ourselves with an overabundance of like-minded thought and material. We are not exposing ourselves to other views because we can find so much concurring beliefs that we can avoid the me easily.

It is so easy to look at the people at the wedding and think of them as narrow-minded conservative Christians. They were in a sheltered place of like mined people sharing in their extremist ideas. Tsk tsk.

Wait a minute, as I look through my browsing history on my computer (ignoring my "research" of nude photos) I notice almost all my web travels are to left-leaning, artistic, erotic, anti-2257 sites and blogs. Slate.com is pretty liberal as is NPR and other news sites I read. My blog friends share a majority of my views. Most of my daily life friends do to. Am I insulating myself as much as the conservative Christians I just tsked?

So, is it bad that I insulate myself as much as the other groups? My answer, yes and no. I should learn more about their side. Maybe if I understand their motivation, I can find ways of addressing them and finding middle ground. On the other hand, we need the extremist beliefs on both sides to keep the middle in check.

I am naturally attracted to people who share similar passions, beliefs, desires, tastes, and motivations and so will people on the other side of the cultural divide. All of this is a bit disconcerting because I don't want to live in a fractured country.

At the end of the review, there are some interesting ideas from legal philosopher Heather Gerkin concerning the different levels of diversity.

Gerken distinguishes between first-order diversity (diversity within institutions) and second-order diversity (diversity among institutions). To simplify, the first involves insuring that the newsroom of the Los Angeles Times has a certain number of Latinos; the second involves ensuring that the public can choose between, say, the Los Angeles Times, the New Republic, and the Final Call. It is OK if certain institutions aren't diverse as long as society has a diversity of institutions.

It is unrealistic to expect me, or them, to willingly increase the diversity of our groups. We may have different flavors in my group, but we are all basically ice cream. The other side is jello, many flavors, but still jello. My point is not about race or religion, it is about how humans congregate together and what pulls us into like-minded groups.

I really hope the internet and other media sources can achieve the second-order diversity. Since I am not going to join a conservative Christian church to inject my liberal ideas and try to learn theirs, I doubt they will join mine. By having all of these sources of knowledge and ideas available to everyone, those seeking answers may find what they need. There is the problem again though, as stated by the article author. "...it lets people wall themselves off in informational micro-environments of their own design." With that, the cultural divide continues to grow.