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I recently saw an item in my newfeed about The American Exchange Project:
There was some positive feedback in the news article I read. I found it a bit surprising just how much the rural/urban divide has grown. I've often lived between the two areas with my schools often having kids living in high density housing along with kids raising barn animals. My parents preferred living rurally, but still had to live close to cities to find jobs.
I've been on two exchange programs myself. One as a middle/high schooler going to Europe with Student Ambassadors (a now dead org). And the second as more of a work exchange trip going to the company's India office. There is something undeniably effective about just having very different people sit down and talk/interact with each other in a non-violent setting. Not that I really disliked either set of people before visiting them, but I felt I definitely understood them better afterwards. There are coincidences of living, and the things you see living in an area. They just sorta seep into your conscious. My young middle school self noticed that Europe generally did not give a crap about topless women. Tits galore on billboards and beaches in Spain. Europe was also pretty open with alcohol, and the 15 year old in the German family I stayed with openly told her parents about the drinking party she was going to. They had to remind her that I wasn't allowed to go, and American drinking ages had to be explained. Bunch of things I noticed in India as well, main one was just the sheer volume of people.
Had a shower thought today about how some people (like Joe Rogan) thought Covid would bring us closer together as we worked to solve and fight a collective problems. I think we maybe mostly agree that did not happen. I'm starting to think that covid was the opposite kind of problem we need. To get that kind of problem solving, humanity coming together juice, I think more people need to be offline, meeting in person, and ignoring things happening too far away from them.
Staring at the sun today.Watching the eclipse today, reminded me about solar flares. I'd predict that a widespread solar flare that knocked out communication networks would probably leave us all a little happier than Covid. It would probably be very bad for some people, but we'd know less about those people.I posit the greatest post-war cultural divide in America is along educational attainment, not race or ethnicity or even politics. College-educated Americans and everyone else may as well be distinct species for all practical purposes. They live in different neighborhoods, hold different values, their children attend different schools, etc. This is could be related to the so-called 30 point IQ communications gap, but also cultural capital and literal capital. Charles Murray has written a lot about this.
I cannot recall anyone ever believing this. From the onset of the virus it had a dividing effect as policy was split almost perfectly along political lines.
I would depend on the initial message or response. 911 was an exception in that it had the effect of bringing people together of opposing ideological lines, but the over-politization of Covid policy had the opposite effect. Had the left not immediately defaulted to masks and lockdowns and was so unyielding or unwilling to compromise, maybe it would not have been as polarizing. This shows the importance of the initial message after a catastrophe. Bush and others were smart to jump on a message of unification right after 911 instead of "you must comply".
OTOH, a pandemic is multiplicative and sensitive to initial values, hence the need for a swift and rapid initial response, but this also makes people want to push back, too, at the imposition, especially when social distancing and masks may not work as well as initially advertised.
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And yet immigrant groups who had very little literal capital managed to succeed. Interventions based on literal capital fail. When we compare groups in the same neighborhoods, gaps remain. Educational attainment is downstream of something. The case for "cultural capital" is IMO shaky but can be made. The case for literal capital just doesn't hold up.
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