An important irony is the ever-growing disparity between the descriptive diversity of contemporary culture and the actual homogeneity of the communities in which we experience day-to-day life…. Under the pressures of pluralization, we tend to socially migrate to safe havens of unity. Social conservatives tend to listen to socially conservative commentators. Social radicals tend to read other social radicals. We migrate toward homogeneous communities as a response to the increase of diversity around us.
Matthew Crawford argues this point persuasively in The World Beyond Your Head. He points out how beneath all the rhetoric around freedom, choice, individuality, self-expression, and self-actualization, we are actually manipulated consumers, addicted to our tech and prone to groupthink. For all the apparent diversity, we inhabit a mono-culture. As Crawford demonstrates, the task of “becoming an individual” is not as simple or straightforward as we might assume.