1987... well then it is not new, just more obvious to me somehow.
Sowell isn't entirely correct here. Directionally correct though. I don't line up predictably.
I think you are on to something, but itβs been happening since long before our time. Have you ever read any Thomas Sowell? He was on to this in the 80s, and traces its origins back centuries:
βA Conflict of Visions (1987) represents Sowellβs best effort to put his ideas in dialogue with their opposite. He begins the book by observing a strange fact: people predictably line up on opposite sides of political issues that seemingly have nothing in common. For instance, knowing someoneβs position on climate change somehow allows you to predict their views on taxing the rich, gun control, and abortion. Itβs tempting to dismiss this as mere political tribalism. But Sowell contends that more is at work: that there are two fundamental ways of thinking about the social world, two sets of basic assumptions about human nature, and two conflicting βvisions,β from which most political disagreements follow. He names these the constrained vision and the unconstrained vision.β
It is the kind of insight that helps to explain the things you are noticing.
Read the rest here:
https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-nonconformist
A more scholarly take:
https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/serials/files/cato-journal/1987/11/cj7n2-17.pdf
Discussion
That's right, but we're all on a kind of "vision" spectrum. Few of us fall so neatly into any category. And I think he would also acknowledge there are more than two basic visions of reality, in the sense he's using that word. I think what's helpful is that we each tend towards one overall vision and that is much more influential on our political positions than the particular policies in question. As our intellectual landscape gets ever more impoverished we tend to oversimplify into these crude alliances that tend to miss the point of what's really at stake.
Too many people of either (any) political slant decide what is true by making references to these things he talks about. I think we have to find objective truth and accept it regardless of whether we want it to be true or not. Or what our tribe thinks.
I have found Sowell to be a model in this regard.
That said, tribes (banding together with the like minded) do serve a purpose. The real trouble happens when tribes grow far beyond a human scale. Decentralized tribes, localism, and wide distribution of property would be a very effective solvent to the reductive, two party Kabuki dance we are now living through. How to manage that in a society as tech logically advanced as ours? No idea. But if it gets us thinking about our cities and neighborhoods over these vast global agglomerates, only good can come of it.