Trying to understand how people think has become sort of a fad among political consultants and partisan advocates.

A recent Elway Poll survey divided people of our state into those who value authority and hierarchy versus those who are egalitarian. It made a similar divide between individualists and communitarians.

As could be predicted, the survey shows Seattle to be in one corner, with a cultural preference for egalitarianism and community well-being, while Eastern Washington falls in the opposite corner, favoring hierarchy and individualism.

Pierce and Kitsap counties are right in the middle of the individualist/communitarian line, but lean a little toward hierarchy. Most of the rest of Western Washington falls smack in the center of the grid.

Surveys that focus on worldview may help politicians hone their messages, but they get in the way of finding common ground. Most of us, in fact, believe in individual liberty and community, equality and hierarchy. We want the right to pursue our own individual paths to happiness, and we value our families, neighborhoods and communities. We believe that every kid deserves an equal shot in life, and we want strong leaders in tough times.

The “worldview” divides that political consultants trumpet become less obvious when we look at basic institutions such as public schools. Public schools are the foundation of our democratic society. Do we embrace this egalitarian institution? You bet we do.

But counter to what we might expect, parents in most of “individualist” Eastern Washington universally send their kids to public school. In Pasco and Kennewick school districts, 95 percent of children are in public schools. In towns like Oroville, Othello and Omak, more than 99 percent of kids go to public school.

In contrast, one quarter of the children in liberal Seattle are in private schools. In Tacoma, which also regularly sends Democrats to Olympia, 86 percent of kids are in public school, but in the towns of rural and suburban Pierce county that elect a mix of Democrats and Republicans to the Legislature, public school enrollment reaches 95 percent to 100 percent.

Seattle is often seen as the center of rebellion against organized religion. Yet according to the Association of Religion Data Archives, 43 percent of King County residents are affiliated with churches, synagogues and mosques. It’s 44 percent in Walla Walla and 45 percent in Benton County.

So if religion is an indication of acceptance of hierarchy on the one hand or community values on the other, it appears that there is not much difference between King County and the Tri-Cities. Pierce County, closer to the center of the cultural “divides,” has far fewer people involved in organized religion at 35 percent.

Perhaps another angle is to look at how different regions benefit from government supports.

In Eastern Washington, more than 80 percent of family child-care homes take low-income children whose tuition is paid for by the government. In King County, only half of home day cares include publicly subsidized children. How does that stack up for rural rugged individualists vs. urban believers in community and equality?

In this fractured world, maybe we’d all be better off if we focused on the things that unite us rather than coming up with new ways to describe our differences. We all have an interest in every child in our state being well-cared for and well-educated. Someday that child from another town may be our nurse or the police officer responding to our call.

We need nurtured and educated kids so we can live in a thriving economy and functioning democracy. Farmers of our state need the cities and ports to sell their produce. All of us need to have safe and efficient transportation routes across the mountain passes, through the cities and throughout the state, for our own use and to get the stuff we want.

The fact is we all believe that part of our role as citizens is to be productive workers. We know that as workers and as citizens, we are all dependent on the social, physical and transportation infrastructures that government provides. We are not communitarians (whatever that awkward work implies) nor individualists. We are interdependent on each other, our government, and our society.

That’s the culture of democracy.

John Burbank, executive director of the Economic Opportunity Institute (www.eoionline.org), writes every other Wednesday. Write to him in care of the institute at 1900 Northlake Way, Suite 237, Seattle, WA 98103. His e-mail address is john@eoionline.org.