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TRANSCRIPT
The Big Idea
Life Liberty
Pursuit of Happiness
`
“The constant clashing of opinions”
• Anti-federalists: Only homogeneous groups can self-govern
• Hamilton: Diversity of opinion “promotes deliberation and circumspection, and serves to check excesses in the majority”
• Cass Sunstein: The most profound insight of the framers was “to see diversity as a creative force which would enable people not to hate each other but to think more productively about what might be done to solve problems. It turned this vice into a virtue.”
• Madison: Factionalism as the ultimate check on power
E Pluribus UnumOut of Many, One
The Village Square is Born
American Marketplace of Ideas
The garden club, the bridge club
The PTA
The Elks Lodge, The Masonic Temple
The bowling league
The evening news
The hometown newspaper
The neighborhood church
The Divided States of America
Prosperity brings mobility
Maslow’s hierarchy: No longer about survival, but belonging
We seek out people “like us”
Groups, even communities become more likeminded
Choose your news & the alleluia chorus
Lifestyle and ideologically individualized churches
“The Big Sort:” 1965 - present
THE BIG SORT:Why the Clustering of
Like-Minded America isTearing us Apart
By Bill Bishop
The United States of “those people”The Psychology of the Tribe
100 years of social psychology experiments consistently document how humans behave in groups
Likeminded groups grow more extreme in the direction of the majority view
Risky-shift phenomena: Homogeneous groups consistently make riskier decisions than individuals in the group made by themselves
Ignore evidence their position is wrong
Mixed company moderates; likeminded company polarizes
Bishop: “As a result, we now live in a giant feedback loop, hearing our own thoughts about what’s right and wrong bounced back to us by the television shows we watch, the newspapers and books we read, the blogs we visit online, the sermons we hear, and the neighborhoods we live in.”
Early legislators lived in regional boarding houses
Jefferson: they came to work “in a spirit of avowed misunderstanding, without the smallest wish to agree.”
The Year of LivingThe Year of LivingDangerouslyDangerously
The Year of LivingThe Year of LivingDangerouslyDangerously
Take-out Tuesday
LunchAcross
TheAisle
68% Solutions
34.1% 34.1%
• We make better decisions by crossing the aisle • Solutions are more durable with a larger consensus• Outlast the last election• Better than the constant sparring to get just over 50%
www.tothevillagesquare.org
In YOUR Hometown…
The only place we can really begin to fix this
Neighbors reconnecting with neighbors
Reviving American common purpose and common sense
Remembering the Founders’ vision: We NEED each other, we balance each other
The resurgence of
The Village Square
The Village Square
I have always believed that a lot of the troubles in the world
would disappearif we were talking to each other
instead of about each other.
--Ronald Reagan
Our lives begin to end when we stop talking about things that
matter.
-The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.
Culturally, right now, we don’t have a broad conversation among people. . . We don’t agree with each other – and one of the biggest challenges, I think,
we face as a nation is how do we create those spaces?
--Barack Obama
Thank you to Luke Inhen Political Science Grad Student
Village Square Intern
For planting the seedsof this presentation
and for makingFounding Father
gums flap.
Literally.