One day I realized that entirely by accident I was fulfilling
all the Jewish stereotypes.
I?m nerdy, over-educated, good with words, good with money, weird sense of humor, don?t get outside much, I like deli sandwiches. And I?m a psychiatrist, which is about the most stereotypically Jewish profession short of maybe stand-up comedian or rabbi.
I?m not very religious. And I don?t go to synagogue. But
that's stereotypically Jewish too!
I bring this up because it would be a mistake to think ?Well, a Jewish person is by definition someone who is born of a Jewish mother. Or I guess it sort of also means someone who follows the Mosaic Law and goes to synagogue. But I don?t care about Scott?s mother, and I know he doesn?t go to synagogue, so I can?t gain any useful information from knowing Scott is Jewish."
The defining factors of Judaism - Torah-reading, synagogue-following, mother-having - are the tip of a giant iceberg. Jews sometimes identify as a "tribe", and even if you don?t attend synagogue, you?re still a member of that tribe and people can still (in a statistical way) infer things about you by knowing your Jewish identity - like how likely they are to be psychiatrists.
The last section raised a question - if people rarely select their friends and associates and customers explicitly for politics, how do we end up with such intense political segregation?
Well, in the same way "going to synagogue" is merely the iceberg-tip of a Jewish tribe with many distinguishing characteristics, so "voting Republican" or "identifying as conservative" or "believing in creationism" is the iceberg-tip of a conservative tribe with many distinguishing characteristics.
A disproportionate number of my friends are Jewish, because I meet them at psychiatry conferences or something - we self-segregate not based on explicit religion but on implicit tribal characteristics. So in the same way, political tribes self-segregate to an impressive extent - a 1/10^45 extent, I will never tire of hammering in - based on their implicit tribal characteristics.
The people who are actually into this sort of thing sketch out a bunch of speculative tribes and subtribes, but to make it easier, let me stick with two and a half.
The Red Tribe is most classically typified by conservative political beliefs, strong evangelical religious beliefs, creationism, opposing gay marriage, owning guns, eating steak, drinking Coca-Cola, driving SUVs, watching lots of TV, enjoying American football, getting conspicuously upset about terrorists and commies, marrying early, divorcing early, shouting ?USA IS NUMBER ONE!!!?, and listening to country music.
The Blue Tribe is most classically typified by liberal political beliefs, vague agnosticism, supporting gay rights, thinking guns are barbaric, eating arugula, drinking fancy bottled water, driving Priuses, reading lots of books, being highly educated, mocking American football, feeling vaguely like they should like soccer but never really being able to get into it, getting conspicuously upset about sexists and bigots, marrying later, constantly pointing out how much more civilized European countries are than America, and listening to ?everything except country?.
(There is a partly-formed attempt to spin off a Grey Tribe typified by libertarian political beliefs, Dawkins-style atheism, vague annoyance that the question of gay rights even comes up, eating paleo, drinking Soylent, calling in rides on Uber, reading lots of blogs, calling American football ?sportsball?, getting conspicuously upset about the War on Drugs and the NSA, and listening to filk ? but for our current purposes this is a distraction and they can safely be considered part of the Blue Tribe most of the time)
I think these ?tribes? will turn out to be even stronger categories than politics. Harvard might skew 80-20 in terms of Democrats vs. Republicans, 90-10 in terms of liberals vs. conservatives, but maybe 99-1 in terms of Blues vs. Reds.
It?s the many, many differences between these tribes that explain the strength of the filter bubble ? which*have I mentioned*segregates people at a strength of 1/10^45? Even in something as seemingly politically uncharged as going to California Pizza Kitchen or Sushi House for dinner, I'm restricting myself to the set of people who like cute artisanal pizzas or sophsticated foreign foods, which are classically Blue Tribe characteristics.
Are these tribes based on geography? Are they based on race, ethnic origin, religion, IQ, what TV channels you watched as a kid? I don?t know.
Some of it is certainly genetic ?*estimates*of*the genetic contribution to political association range from 0.4 to 0.6. Heritability of one?s attitudes toward gay rights range from 0.3 to 0.5, which hilariously is a little more heritable than homosexuality itself.
(for an interesting attempt to break these down into more rigorous concepts like "traditionalism", "authoritarianism", and "in-group favoritism" and find the genetic loading for each*see here. For an attempt to trace the specific genes involved, which mostly turn out to be NMDA receptors, see here)
But I don't think it's just genetics. There's something else going on too. The word "class" seems like the closest analogue, but only if you use it in the sophisticated Paul Fussell Guide Through the American Status System way instead of the boring "another word for how much money you make" way.
For now we can just accept them as a brute fact - as multiple coexisting societies that might as well be made of dark matter for all of the interaction they have with one another - and move on.
V.
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