Marketing analyst J. Walker Smith described the same phenomenon as extreme and widespread “self-invention,” a desire to shape and control our identities and surroundings. Technology, migration, and material abundance all allow people to “wrap themselves into cocoons entirely of their own making,” Smith wrote. People are unwilling to live with trade-offs, he said. So they are “re-creating their environments to fit what they want in all kinds of ways, and one of the ways is they are finding communities that fit their values — where they don’t have to live with neighbors or community groups that might force them to compromise their principles or their tastes.”
It would be a dull country, of course, if every place were like every other. It’s a joy that I can go to the Elks lodge pool in Austin to see the H2Hos, a feminist synchronized swimming troupe accompanied by a punkish band, or that I can visit the Zapalac Arena outside my old hometown of Smithville, Texas, to watch a team calf roping.
0 Responses to “‘The Big Sort’: Red and Blue Divide Neighbors Too”