Michael Huemer - The Irrationality of Politics

[Professor S]

I think our current state of politics has a lot to do with what Marshall McLuhan talked about nearly 50 years ago: Tribalism. Modern media flattens the world and in doing so reduces the individual and deprives the individual of their own identity; Who am I if I am one amongst billions speaking over one another? In order to overcome this reduction on personal identity, people search out a new identity in the masses. They find small groups of like-minded people and then isolate themselves in the group, afraid to move from it because to do so would leave them alone again in a sea of interconnected billions. This is true of modern politics, "progressives" and "tea parties", but also truein any setting where people are unnaturally thrown to together in large numbers ("cliques" in schools, for example).

I highly recommend viwing the entire Centennial series. The man was a prophet. He predicted the Internet, and more namely Facebook, in the mid 50's.