Humans are creatures of habit and, more often than not, it’s hard – if not impossible – to change or completely destroy these habits. Sometimes these habits are physical actions and sometimes they are things that have been ingrained in a person’s mental state through socialization. In his article “People Like Us,” David Brooks explores the idea of the human habit of gravitating to like-minded people through the concept of diversity. Brooks uses the examples of both racial diversity in neighborhoods and political diversity in the academic field (n. pag.). In the very first paragraph of the article Brooks describes his idea of a diverse neighborhood and at the end, he implores the American public to make an attempt at increasing the diversity of their institutions and communities (n. pag.). However, in doing so, he implies that it is possible to have a “truly diverse neighborhood” despite having said previously that he has “never seen nor heard of that neighborhood” (Brooks n. pag.).
He has not seen that neighborhood because it does not exist and, as long …show more content…
The rate of socialization has only increased with the use of the Internet; the connectivity made the effects of socialization more obvious and widespread. This only makes previously opposite groups more polarized, and the inability of these groups to get along is what will keep us from ever being able to achieve Brooks’ idea of “true diversity” (n. pag.). Brooks states that “we are increasing our happiness by segmenting off so rigorously,” and while this may be true, it is also detrimental to the overall health of American society. However, there are so few people willing to actually try and change the way they think, there’s little to no chance that the necessary shift in perspective will ever happen fully, if it happens at