One. What explains our hunger for sameness in terms of the people we surround ourselves with?

We’re anxious and alienated from “people who aren’t like us.” We’d rather feel connection and comfort from being with “members of our tribe,” be it in education, politics, class aspirations, etc. We want to be around people who share our values and our way of seeing the world.

Such tribalism is both comforting and effective in making us happy.

Here’s the killer fact we don’t want to confront: We’re happier by remaining in our tribe. We don’t want to be around people who don’t share our values.

Why?

Because we are hard-wired to be self-segregating based on interests and values.

If we’re hipsters, we want to live in a community of hipsters.

If we’re suburban consumers, we want to be around suburban consumers.

If we’re creative, we want to be around a community of artists.

People who shop at Trader Joe’s are of a certain educated and political ilk.

People who shop at Whole Foods are of a certain educated and political ilk.

People who don’t vaccinate their children hang out with other likeminded parents.

People who watch Fox News hang out with Fox News viewers.

People who watch MSNBC hang with MSNBC viewers.

People who like luxury watches create online watch communities.

The Internet with its millions of blogs is all about consolidating people of common interests. The same can be said with YouTube and its over 500 million channels.

If you’re a college graduate the chances are your friends will be college graduates.

If you’re not college educated, the chances are your friends won’t be either.

If you’re fat, your friends probably are also.

If you’re skinny, your friends probably are also.

If you're beautiful, your friends probably also enjoy a fair amount of pulchritude.

If you’re an MMA fighter or enthusiast, your friends probably are also.

If you’re a vegan, so are your friends.

If you’re sympathetic to civil rights and equal justice, you probably don’t have friends who harbor racist views.

If you’re against guns, you probably don’t hang out with outspoken members of the NRA.

If you’re an atheist, especially an outspoken one, you probably don’t have a lot of Christian friends.

If you think skinny jeans on men look stupid, you probably don’t have a lot of male friends who wear skinny jeans.

Foodies hang out with foodies.

Coffee connoisseurs hang out with coffee connoisseurs.

Gamers hang out with gamers.

Sommeliers hang out with sommeliers.

If you're a gourmand who gorges on camembert, you probably hang out with other gourmands who wallow in camembert.

If you're a member of the cognoscenti, you probably hang out exclusively with other members of the cognoscenti.

If you're a Morrissey freak, you probably hang out with other Morrissey freaks.

We want to live in a bubble with people just like us. We feel comfortable being insulated from the “outside world.”

So let’s get real: There is no diversity. There’s only sameness.

Writing Option

Support, refute, or complicate the assertion, based on the context of Brooks' essay, that humans are hard-wired away from diversity and toward sameness.

Sample:

Brooks is accurate to say that we are hard-wired to live in our Same Tribe because we are a lazy people evidenced by _____________, _____________, ______________, and ____________________.

We should not denigrate ourselves for hanging out with people who are "just like us." We do so for survival reasons, which include _______________, _____________, ____________, and ______________.

Sentence Fragments

No subject

Marie Antoinette spent huge sums of money on herself and her favorites. And helped to bring on the French Revolution.

No complete verb

The aluminum boat sitting on its trailer.

Beginning with a subordinating word

We returned to the drugstore. Where we waited for our buddies.

A sentence fragment is part of a sentence that is written as if it were a complete sentence. Reading your draft out loud, backwards, sentence by sentence, will help you spot sentence fragments.

Sentence Fragment Exercises

After each sentence, write C for complete or F for fragment sentence. If the sentence is a fragment, correct it so that it is a complete sentence.

One. While hovering over the complexity of a formidable math problem and wondering if he had time to solve the problem before his girlfriend called him to complain about the horrible birthday present he bought her.

Two. In spite of the boyfriend’s growing discontent for his girlfriend, a churlish woman prone to tantrums and grand bouts of petulance.

Three. My BMW 5 series, a serious entry into the luxury car market.

Four. Overcome with nausea from eating ten bowls of angel hair pasta slathered in pine nut garlic pesto.

Five. Winding quickly but safely up the treacherous Palos Verdes hills in the shrouded mist of a lazy June morning, I realized that my BMW gave me feelings of completeness and fulfillment.

Six. To attempt to grasp the profound ignorance of those who deny the compelling truths of science in favor of their pseudo-intellectual ideas about “dangerous” vaccines and the “myths” of global warming.

Seven. The girlfriend whom I lavished with exotic gifts from afar.

Eight. When my cravings for pesto pizza, babaganoush, and triple chocolate cake overcome me during my bouts of acute anxiety.

Nine. Inclined to stop watching sports in the face of my girlfriend’s insistence that I pay more attention to her, I am throwing away my TV.

Ten. At the dance club where I espy my girlfriend flirting with a stranger by the soda machine festooned with party balloons and tinsel.

Eleven. The BMW speeding ahead of me and winding into the misty hills.

Twelve. Before you convert to the religion of veganism in order to impress your vegan girlfriend.

Thirteen. Summoning all my strength to resist the giant chocolate fudge cake sweating on the plate before me.

Avoiding Comma Splices and Run-Ons

Fused (run-on) sentence

Klee's paintings seem simple, they are very sophisticated.

She doubted the value of medication she decided to try it once.

A fused sentence (also called a run-on) joins clauses that could each stand alone as a sentence with no punctuation or words to link them. Fused sentences must be either divided into separate sentences or joined by adding words or punctuation.

Comma Splice

I was strongly attracted to her, she was beautiful and funny.

We hated the meat loaf, the cafeteria served it every Friday.

A comma splice occurs when only a comma separates clauses that could each stand alone as a sentence. To correct a comma splice, you can insert a semicolon or period, connect the clauses with a word such as and or because, or restructure the sentence.

After each sentence, put a “C” for Correct or a “CS” for Comma Splice. If the sentence is a comma splice, rewrite it so that it is correct.

One. Bailey used to eat ten pizzas a day, now he eats a spinach salad for lunch and dinner.

Two. Marco no longer runs on the treadmill, instead he opts for the less injury-causing elliptical trainer.

Three. Running can cause shin splints, which can cause excruciating pain.

Four. Running in the incorrect form can wreak havoc on the knees, slowing down can often correct the problem.

Five. While we live in a society where 1,500-calorie cheeseburgers are on the rise, the reading of books, sad to say, is on the decline.

Six. Facebook is a haven for narcissists, it encourages showing off with selfies and other mundane activities that are ways of showing how great and amazing our lives our, what a sham.

Seven. We live in a society where more and more Americans are consuming 1,500-calorie cheeseburgers, however, those same Americans are reading less and less books.

Eight. Love is a virus from outer space, it tends to become most contagious during April and May.

Nine. The tarantula causes horror in many people, moreover there is a species of tarantula in Brazil, the wandering banana spider, that is the most venomous spider in the world.

Ten. Even though spiders cause many people to recoil with horror, most species are harmless.

Eleven. The high repair costs of European luxury vehicles repelled Amanda from buying such a car, instead she opted for a Japanese-made Lexus.

Twelve. Amanda got a job at the Lexus dealership, now she’s trying to get me a job in the same office.

Thirteen. While consuming several cinnamon buns, a twelve-egg cheese omelet, ten slices of French toast slathered in maple syrup, and a tray of Swedish loganberry crepes topped with a dollop of blueberry jam, I contemplated the very grave possibility that I might be eating my way to a heart attack.

Fourteen. Even though I rank marijuana far less dangerous than most pharmaceutical drugs, alcohol, and other commonly used intoxicants, I find marijuana unappealing for a host of reasons, not the least of which is its potential for radically degrading brain cells, its enormous effect on stimulating the appetite, resulting in obesity, and its capacity for over-relaxing many people so that they lose significant motivation to achieve their primary goals, opting instead for a life of sloth and intractable indolence.

McMahon Grammar Exercises: Pronoun Errors

Pronoun Errors

Vague Pronoun Reference

Possible reference to more than one word

Transmitting radio signals by satellite is a way of overcoming the problem of scarce airwaves and limiting how they are used.

In the original sentence, they could refer to the signals or to the airwaves.

Reference implied but not stated

The company prohibited smoking, which many employees resented.

What does which refer to? The editing clarifies what employees resented.

A pronoun should refer clearly to the word or words it replaces (called the antecedent) elsewhere in the sentence or in a previous sentence. If more than one word could be the antecedent, or if no specific antecedent is present, edit to make the meaning clear.

Lack of pronoun/antecedent agreement

Every student must provide their own uniform.

Pronouns must agree with their antecedents in gender (male or female) and in number (singular or plural). Many indefinite pronouns, such as everyone and each, are always singular. When a singular antecedent can refer to a man or woman, either rewrite the sentence to make the antecedent plural or to eliminate the pronoun, or use his or her, he or she, and so on. When antecedents are joined by or or nor, the pronoun must agree with the closer antecedent. A collection noun such as team can be either singular or plural, depending on whether the members are seen as a group or individuals.

Incorrect pronoun case

Determine whether the pronoun is being used as a subject, or an object, or a possessive in the sentence, and select the pronoun form to match.

Incorrect:

Castro's communist principles inevitably led to an ideological conflict between he and President Kennedy.

Correct:

Castro's communist principles inevitably led to an ideological conflict between him and President Kennedy.

Incorrect:

Because strict constructionists recommend fidelity to the Constitution as written, no one objects more than them to judicial reinterpretation.

Correct:

Because strict constructionists recommend fidelity to the Constitution as written, no one objects more than they [do] to judicial reinterpretation.

Confusing subject with object

Please give the chocolate to Randy and (I, me).

Between you and (I, me), the fat cats have all the cheese while the rest of us fight for the crumbs.

Rewrite each sentence below so that you’ve corrected the pronoun errors.

One. Between you and I, there are too many all-you-can-eat buffets mushrooming over southern California because a person thinks they’re getting a good deal when we can eat endless plates of food for a mere ten dollars.

Two. When children grow up eating at buffets, they expand their bellies and sometimes you find you cannot get “full” no matter how much we eat.

Three. As thousands of children gorged on pastrami at HomeTown Buffet, you could tell we would have to address the needs of a lot of sick children.

Four. Although I like the idea of eating all I want, you can sense that there is danger in this unlimited eating mentality that can escort us down the path of gluttony and predispose you to diabetes.

Five. When a customer feels he’s getting all the food they want, you know we can increase your business.

Six. If a student studies the correct MLA format, you can expect academic success.

Seven. It’s not easy for instructors to keep their students’ attention for a three-hour lecture. He or she must mix up the class-time with lecture, discussion, and in-class exercises.

Eight. It is good for a student to read the assigned text at least three times. When they do, they develop better reading comprehension.

Nine. The instructor gave the essays back to Bob and I.

Ten. We must find meaning to overcome the existential vacuum. Otherwise, you will descend into a rabbit hole of despair and they will find themselves behaving in all manners of self-destruction.

Subject-pronoun agreement

A person who doesn't plan ahead finds they cannot go to the big party.

Consistent point of view

When one ponders the state of education, we can't help wonder why you are lagging in critical thinking skills and one has to ask if there need to be improvements in this regard. Therefore, a person taking a critical thinking class should be prepared when they are asked to identify logical fallacies and other elements of critical thinking.