I'd like to share a broadly aggregated day of my week.  I'll often cycle to work.  This morning I encountered a motorist who whizzed past me incredibly closely, causing the cyclist behind me to comment that he had nearly wiped me out.  When I asked the driver to be careful at the traffic lights (yeah he'd only got about 50 metres down the road), he replied by informing me that "fucking cyclists are always riding in the middle of the road", clearly oblivious to the motorist edging out of a side junction causing said middle of the road riding.

Battle #1 – Cyclists v Motorists

Anyway, it was the public sector strikes this week so the water cooler discussions at work revolved around the strikes, how they were affected, whether people agreed with them.  This often extended to Facebook where numerous contacts had given their views on the strikes, on Jeremy Clarkson and so on.

Battle #2 – Public sector workers v Private sector workers

There was then a debate about the Sports Personality of the Year shortlist that was announced, with MPs chastising the BBC for not including a single female athlete on their shortlist for the annual prize.

Battle #3 – Male v Female athletes

I might then stop by a fans forum to talk about Everton and see how the club is doing with the weekends match looming large.  Obviously football fans are quite a loyal bunch and so much banter goes on between fans of the various clubs.

Battle #4 – Everton v Liverpool

As the end of the week nears it slowly begins to sink in how polarized society appears to have become.  It's impossible to debate cycling without a clear motorist/cyclist divide forming whereby all of one group or the other are idiots in one shape or form.

Similar divisions were clear when debates about the strikes were had.  Those in the public sector couldn't see other points of view and neither could those from the private sector.

Likewise much of the commentary on the SPOTY shortlist was not based on objective criteria at all, instead focusing on the emotive point that women simply have to be included and that the list is somehow sexist for not including them.  I don't think I need to go into Everton v Liverpool as that is probably an obvious divide.

Polarization of society

Obviously trying to measure polarization is incredibly difficult to do as it's a rather abstract concept.  It does seem however that the media is increasingly polarizing itself and with the rise of the web we consumers tend to hunt down things we already agree with rather than seek out diverse opinions.  This has the effect of entrenching our point of view and making us inhospitable to things that are different to us.

It wasn't supposed to be like this was it?  I mean globalization was supposed to herald a new global village where the reduction in apparent distance between us all would hail a new era of tolerance and understanding.  Instead we seem to be falling into likeminded camps and are increasingly intelorant of those unlike ourselves.

Or is it just me?