4 Reasons Why We're So Divided

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Mr. Beat explains why (it seems like) we are so divided as a society. Check out Dr. Sam Richards and his class/channel @SOC119!

Uh ok, so this is, like, the description of the video so keep reading. This was produced by Matt Beat. Music by @ElectricNeedleRoom(Mr. Beat's band), Bad Snacks, Cooper Connell, Francis Preve, Mishegas, NoMB, and LATASHA. Creative commons credits: Jackie Vlogs

Here's an annotated script with footnotes

Sources/further reading:

Age of Fracture by Daniel T. Rodgers (2012)

Purchase here

Why We’re Polarized by Ezra Klein (2020)

Purchase here

Echo Chambers and Epistemic Bubbles, C. Thi Nguyen

Situational experience around the world: A replication and extension in 62 countries, Daniel Lee

Contagious: Why Things Catch On by Jonah Berger (2016)

Purchase here

The Evolution of Tribalism: A Social-Ecological Model of Cooperation and Inter-Group Conflict Under Pastoralism, Nicholas Seltzer

Identity Politics, Mary Bernstein

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People seem to be more tribalistic than ever. Often, there are two teams, and you’re either with US or you’re with THEM.

And if someone from our team joins the rival team, boy we hate them even more than our enemies, don’t we. The word “TRAITOR” seems to roll off our tongues a bit easier these days.

And sure, most of the time it just seems like there are TWO teams, but within these two teams there is an endless amount of smaller teams. The number of people we identify as part of our team seems to be shrinking. The number of enemies we have? Well that seems to be growing. And we seem to hate our enemies more. And while our teams used to be more aligned with families, nations, countries, or religions, now our teams are more aligned with political parties, universities, neighborhood associations, media figures, or even Discord servers. This realignment has even caused family members to not talk to each other anymore. We have splintered so much that it’s even difficult to find someone to date on one of those dating app thingies.

And while the political divide in the United States seems to get all the attention these days, I argue that this is a much more systemic problem.

So why do we no longer have anything in common? In this video, I will tell you exactly why we no longer have anything in common, and I even got some insights from Dr. Sam Richards, the brilliant sociologist who runs the famous SOC 119 class at Penn State that has quite a YouTube following as well.

Chapters: