Karmaze
1yr ago
I'm long someone who has argued that a lot of the conflict regarding the culture wars is actually a personality difference between people with externalizing personalities and people with internalizing personalities, and along that spectrum, people are just going to react to things differently, and in a way that's a lot of the time inherently incomprehensible. Because talking about this, looking at it in this framework, and when talking about both your sister and your father (and note: I think there's a LOT of externalized bigotry out there. And this is a good thing. Not that the bigotry exists, but that externalized bigotry is a hell of a lot better than internalized bigotry. People just don't all that often treat individuals all that badly IMO, at least not nearly as much as you'd expect if you just looked at the discourse) those are both views that are high in the externalized part of the spectrum.
But what about those on the other end? The people with highly internalizing personalities? I think we're (and yes I'm one of them) going to generally avoid strong political messages of any type, largely because those strong messages are personally unworkable. There are exceptions of course, and it's fundamentally unhealthy, and it's going to lead to some....out-there behavior.
It's not that these things are not beliefs. It's just how different people interface with their beliefs, more than anything. Ideally, we'll get a sort of balance on these things. Truth is, we want moderates on the Internalize/Externalize spectrum running things. But I'm not sure that's usually the case, and I do think Externalizing mindsets are very effective in gaining and achieving power. This is to me a big fundamental part of the problem. It's why, as other people have mentioned, politics often does turn into this culture war without any sort of empathy or room for pluralism. And maintaining power is important...because I do think everybody can see the hypocrisy. And at the end of the day, there's always the threat that the rope of power that's preventing the sword from falling will eventually break.
Truth is, I think this is why people need to lead with workable, material models AND a concept for when it goes too far. To me, this is how you reign these things in. Keeping it vague, I think, is just playing into these personality conflicts.
Karmaze
1yr ago
Gender dysphoria, at least for me, is something that makes sense that it exists to a degree. I have compassion for people with it, and I think we should do what we can to best help them (within reason). My major concern about it, is something akin to what I think about body dysphoria....I'm worried about social pressure that might actually causes these various forms of dysphoria. And because of that, I'm not convinced that everybody with Gender dysphoria is best served by transitioning. Some people would be better served with understanding and dealing with those social and cultural pressures.
Karmaze
1mo ago
Let me put it this way. If a candidate put forward in some form about why Margin of Error hacking isn't something we should want in a democratic system, that would be a huge green flag for me, in that I'd have much more significant trust in the quality of politics/policy that would come from that candidate/leader. I don't think a campaign should be based around it, to be clear. But I do think there's a smart way to approach the subject.
Karmaze
1yr ago
Certainly there's some element of bad faith here...but I do think there's an open question in terms of determining what. Is it a way to slag off those dirty hippies? Or...is the person just defending the culture of alcohol/psychedelics? (more than likely the former).
It's surprising how many people out there for whom talking about the potential downsides of social alcohol use is a 3rd rail.
Karmaze
1yr ago
As other people have said, I do think there's problems with male sex toys that don't exist nearly to the same degree as with women's sex toys. And these frankly, are largely biological in nature and I don't expect them to be solved easily. Clean-up is a bigger problem, as an example. That said, I do think the social/cultural things are true, and male sexuality is largely seen as a very status sensitive thing, men not having sex makes you low status, but at the same time, nobody wants low status men to even acknowledge their sexuality, and think they should know their place, and that creates a lot of problems.
So I think it's a mix of these two things. Like I keep on saying, I don't think the Male Gender Role is going away anytime soon, no matter how much we might try to undermine men's ability to actually fulfil it. As such, I think for most men the focus is going to be on pleasing their partner. Just the way it is.
P.S. The Magic Wand thing is so....normal now that makes sense. But the Satisfiyer thing? From what I've been told that shit works wonders. Hell of a lot better than the toys men have access to I think.
Karmaze
1yr ago
Actually enforcing these laws is a third rail. Largely because I think it obviously goes way beyond the question of immigration.
What we're really talking about is giving labor laws/labor-related white collar crime laws serious teeth. And I do believe that this is something that's going to be seen as a bridge too far for many people, left and right. The one thing that comes to mind, well there's two things. The first is Wage Theft, which some people say is a huge issue (and I say if it's not a huge issue it's a substantial one). And the second is Fraud/Misrepresentation. That brings me back to the Wells-Fargo scheme as the poster child for corporate malfeasance. I do think in this case investors should have been zero'd out and managers sent to prison. But people say...what about the pensions that have investments about them. And I mean, on one hand I can understand it, but on the other hand lots of people have to live off base governmental support alone. It sucks, but that's life.
But these things are the reason why I strongly believe you'll never see any sort of strong enforcement of these laws.
I'm just going to add in my take on this subject as a whole. This is what conflict between external players and internal players is going to increasingly look like in the future. I.E. people with skin in the game are going to demand that people who don't have skin in the game but take strong stances on things actually have skin in the game as well. They're going to show how the external players react when they become internal players. Now, I think there's a lot of room to criticize the details pretty much whenever this is done. That said, I don't think we shouldn't lose sight of this as well. There is a message here, I think. And note: I personally don't see this as an anti-left thing, I see this more as revealing differences between the up and the down, between the universalists and the hierarchists.
Karmaze
1mo ago
See, to me this feels odd because it leaves out one crucial point. People being primarily motivated by social status. It's not, why should I bother to save if government money is coming in the future? It's why should I bother to save if I'm going to take a significant hit to my social status and image today? Lockdown and stimulus basically served as a sort of supercharger for this competition. People are not going to like the solution however, which is essentially that the middle class/upper middle class has too much discernable income, and probably should be taxed significantly more.
Karmaze
2mo ago
FWIW this is more of a meta fight than anything else. And I mean, for me I always thought that eventually all the culture wars really settled into the "Who, Whom" question. Who creates the rules and on whom are they enforced. I think everything else falls away to the side next to that. Modern Online Progressivism falls particularly hard into that I think, being that the Oppressor/Oppressed dichotomy is stupid toxic to actually internalize/actualize, and I think everybody knows it. People focus on diversity and representation, but I don't actually think that's the issue...I think it serves more as a sort of MAGA hat, a visible symbol of personal politics, although certainly nowhere as clear. In fact, I would certainly say that I think people are oversensitive in that regard.
But that doesn't mean that the "Who, Whom" question isn't a problem.
The other thing I'll add on that, is that you're talking about in-game transactions...I'm going to make the argument that these things might not be as far unrelated as you think, for a couple of reasons. First, I think there's the issue of Moral License, which I think is real here, and essentially, that MOP culture is a Moral License factory. It has to be to prevent itself from self-destructing in a spiral of pain, self-destruction and shame. It has to believe itself is not part of that Patriarchal, White Supremacist, Colonialist society on an individual level. So...does this Moral License extend to kinda justifying exploitative business models?
But I think there's another thing. I do think there's an assumption that the Blue Ocean audiences being looked for are of a higher socioeconomic class. And I think there's a belief that they tend to be more monogamers, I.E. people more focused on a title or two rather than something much more broad. (My understanding/experience is the people who are upset about the double standards/hypocrisy in Progressive journalism tend to be more Polygamers, people who play a wide variety of gaming experiences...but that means that we don't spend as much on individual titles...although I'd argue there's a higher level of value sensitivity there as well) But more than that, I think they're fishing for the so-called whales. The people who will drop absurd amounts of money on a single game.
That's my take at least. I do think that this is a meta issue and it's a class issue, as across the board, entertainment and culture companies are looking to replace lower-status with higher-status audiences.
Edit: I just want to add one thing I've been thinking about this. One of the thing I'm seeing from the Progressive side, is that none of the critiques aimed at them make sense. I disagree entirely. I think raw anti-Progressivism is actually rational for some people. Not all people. But some. I think if you're more vulnerable to internalizing those models of power, or you think you lack the social cred to not be judged based on those models of power (and let's be honest, that's what's going on here by and large) it makes complete total sense why people would be straight-up reactionary against this modern Progressive culture. I actually wish there was a better alternative to be clear. But it kinda is what it is.
Karmaze
11mo ago
In theory the lockdowns made sense to me.
But when I saw that aspect of it starting to form, I realized how much of a shitshow it was going to be.
Karmaze
11mo ago
The left has a clear idea of what it means to be "woke." They believe that since American life is built on a white supremacist foundation, equality demands race-based redistribution policies. These include mandatory racial quotas in hiring, DEI indoctrination in schools and businesses, and criminal justice reforms designed to benefit POC. Race is central to how the left understands "wokeness." Everything else follows.
I actually don't think that's the case. Sure, that's the message...but in reality, note that anything that actually negatively affects them and their circles are omitted from this. I would actually argue that this "Woke"...this modern Pop Progressivism is more defined by what it isn't rather than what it is, what it excludes rather than what it includes. That is, protecting and enhancing the role of class and status privilege in our society. The focus on certain identity characteristics...first it was sex, then it was race, and now we're on gender in terms of a strict oppressor-oppressed dichotomy serves that purpose.
Because not freezing out those facets, frankly, things look awfully different. It looks a lot more like the dismantling of the managerial class, both private and public in favor of lower-class workers, giving the latter more status, power, and most importantly, money and wealth. We don't see quotas in hiring, we see pressure to increase the churn among established workers along with a post-bias process for new hiring. We see largely a dropping of those DEI departments, to be frank, to increase funding for front-line positions in terms of additional wages and manpower (so their jobs are less difficult). The criminal justice thing? You know, that would probably look like both a more responsive and a more responsible police policy. Basically what liberals (I.E. the south of center range of people flowing from materialist Marxists to Classical Liberals.) have been calling for.
I think it's a mistake to actually take these ideas at face value.
Karmaze
1yr ago
We should establish a norm that as a blanket rule advocacy groups should not be seen as actually representing the groups they claim to be doing advocacy for, but instead, their own personal interests first and foremost.
That's always been my take at least. And speaking as a liberal, I really do believe that doing this would dramatically reduce the amount of active bigotry that exists in the world. The activists and advocacy groups are creating their own boogiemen out of thin air, more or less.
They're the ones dreaming up the Stay-Puff Marshmellow Man in a Klan hat, and manifesting it into reality.
Karmaze
1yr ago
I think the other side of it, is that I think there needs to be a standard on where and when intent actually matters. I think largely that's what's being talked about here. And one of my...let's just say frustrations, is that it tends to be used in almost an entirely partisan/tribal fashion. And I don't think that's helpful in any way, shape or form. So I'm not sure where I sit on the discourse argument...just that I feel like it needs to be sorted out one way or the other. (Same way I feel about a lot of topics actually)
That said, my own personal belief is that I do think there's a LOT of recklessness in terms of certain parts of Progressive culture in terms of the effect that their culture has on people. I've said that down below, it's THE issue for me. I don't think people actually mean to hurt people....people see this in more of a political sense, maybe changing who they vote for or so what rather than something that deeply influences who people are....but I do think that not everybody gets that super secret decoder ring, as I've always put it. Note: To put this in a non-partisan frame, I'd make, and have always made the same criticism about religion, that I think that it's a problem with kids not having religion framed in a proper way either, to where they take it too seriously/internalize it too much.
Karmaze
1mo ago
My take on him has always been that he's an anarcho-socialist who understands the dangers of the managerial state. There is a theoretical model to thread that needle. I've always said I like anarcho-socialists, but I don't see how you actually thread that needle, how you bring that into practice. How do you defang the managerial state, and how you deal with people who are simply not "wired" for living with the necessary personal aesthetics for anarcho-socialism? (I.E. very concerned with relative status and power games)
Karmaze
1yr ago
I raised the issue. It's something I believe about the whole thing...not that he never existed however.
I think it's fair to say that the way things shook out, there were essentially "two camps" in the atheism sphere after that. You had what became the Atheism+ Progressive camp, and you had what I'd call the "south of center" liberal/libertarian camp. I'm assuming there's not going to be many conservatives hanging around atheist conventions. Nothing personal against conservatives intended here. I just think there's so few it's hard to even say there's a camp.
The way Elevatorgate was used, I really do think, was to redirect power and influence away from the liberal/libertarian camp towards the Progressive camp. However, I strongly believe what makes the most sense is that "Elevatorguy" was actually from the Progressive side, not the Liberal/Libertarian side. Which of course, would look very poorly on that particular circle.
That's my take at least.
I think it's more complicated, at least I'd say that there's a clear fourth category: That the social/cultural/institutional power given to modern activism based around postmodern Critical concepts of power creates situations that are rife for abuse. I think there's a second side of it...in that I do think that internalizing/actualizing said postmodern Critical concepts of power is unhealthy on a personal level. In reality, when people talk about "Grooming" in this context, I think that's largely what they mean. It's just a very....ugly shorthand?
But someone down below said something I agree with. I don't think this language comes out of nowhere. I think people either try, or they see the reaction given to less ugly ways of saying/presenting the same idea. And it's not like those less ugly ways of presenting it, or even more moderate ways of presenting the same thing get a better response. You're just as much of a bigot either way. So there's really no incentive to NOT go full culture war TBH.
I'm not saying this in approval, to make it clear. And I'm not saying it as any sort of traditionalist. I'm a modernist liberal who does value diversity, but I also think that the above postmodern Critical concepts of power are stupid dangerous and unsustainable, speaking as someone who actually grew up internalizing them.
I'd even go a step further, and honestly...I don't see this as "hate". I see this as fear. And yeah, they can look alike and one can bleed into the other. But I do think there's too much discussion that has the effect of declaring that marginalized identities should be given essentially blank checks. It won't be abused, of course, because they're the good guys, not like those non-marginalized identities who are the bad guys. And this isn't a strawman...this rhetoric is too common, even if I don't think people usually actually mean it. But...not everybody gets that message. And certainly we're not talking about what that actually means....if it's not meant why do people say it? (Covering up for uncomfortable facets of power, privilege and bias that discussion of such would negatively impact people with social/network power)
But yeah. As someone who thinks that "whataboutism" is like just one of the most illiberal memes out there....we can't look at stuff like this in a partisan fashion. Again, as someone else mentioned below, you're not going to get your Yellow Card/15-Yard Penalty aimed at just Conservatives. It's not going to do any good, I don't think. Hell, even if you could take enough control to get all "Groomer" language excised from the internet...I do not believe that's going to help. Frankly, I think down that road, you gotta keep on going until you get to straight up mass violence. Not an option. Which is why I think it has to be holistic. I think you have to understand WHY this meme exists, and actually work to defuse it. People SEE the power. And they react to it. The best thing you can do, IMO, is negate that power. Don't give the activists a blank check. Again, this isn't meaning to be any sort of reactionary thing. It doesn't have to be. What's important for a liberal, modernist order is the perception that we're moving towards everybody playing by the same rules. Not throwing that out the window.
Edit: Just want to add one thing. I really do think a lot of this is caused by people who have an unrealistic notion of what "normal" is. This is something that sets expectations at a degree that just doesn't work. I see a lot of language out there that's like......"majority X would get away with this", when that's obviously not true at all. Or the idea that like, any white guy could walk into a bank, give the manager a handshake and walk out with a loan. Things like that.
So you have activists who are demanding this notion of "normal", who legitimately believe that this is what it means.
Karmaze
1yr ago
You cannot trust these people, and not just limited to the media.
Yup.
It's not saying that you can't read what they right, or you can't take it into account. But frankly, anybody with any sort of actual position, no matter what that position is, happens to be facing loads of social, cultural and economic pressure in terms of their writing. People want to make it partisan...right? Act like only their opponents can be swayed by "audience capture", as an example. But nope. It all has to be taken with a huge grain of salt. No exceptions.
Karmaze
1yr ago
Iron Law of Institutions?
Doesn't shifting the process to a writing room dramatically change the incentive structure? If it's your name on it, I imagine you want to do something bold to catch the attention of the audience and critics. However, if your name isn't to go on it...what's your game? I would think it would be to build status and reputation INSIDE the writing room. You're angling for the next job. And in that case, I do think that's where all the signaling politics could certainly come to the forefront in the right kind of environment. As well as creating something..well...bland.
Karmaze
1yr ago
The we is society as a whole.
What I would argue, is in the effort to eliminate the male gender role, activists have created this thing where we're not helping men actually succeed the male gender role in a healthy, sustainable way. (Note: Just because I think we're not getting rid of the male gender role doesn't mean I think the same thing about the female gender role. I absolutely do not) That's what we need to do, that's IMO what the guy in this story did wrong. But I also think that so much of this relies on unstated assumptions that IMO are entirely unfair.
Karmaze
1yr ago
Trans rapists don't invalidate every single trans person. They do cast a really negative light on the thoughtlessness of some significant strand of trans activism, who prefers they just be swept under the rug and never figured out an "acceptable" answer.
I'd go as far as to say as this should be entirely what we talk about. This isn't meant to throw any sort of shade at trans people, to make it clear, the intention is exactly the opposite. In fact, I think the argument should be made that this really doesn't have anything special to do with Trans people.
Someone on Twitter asked an interesting question, which was essentially, why is this topic so fraught? And the best answer I can give, is that it's the first topic (maybe) to be "born" in the forge of Postmodernism and Critical models of power at a popular level. Sure, they existed in academia before this, but I do think there was this divide between these ways of thinking and a much more transactional, retail, boots on the ground level productive politics. Frankly, it's possible that the other candidate for the "First topic" is COVID, and I do think you see a lot of the same patterns in that debate as well.
But this creates an activism, where anything less than everything is nothing. And I think that's what we see. And I'll be blunt. Even though I do think, on an instinctive level, that brain-body gender/sex mismatches make sense at the extremes...we're talking about more than that now. We're talking about people who internalize these Critical models of sex/gender and develop something approaching gender dysphoria (ROGD). We're talking about people who do this not from a gender, but from a sexuality PoV (AGP). And frankly, we're also talking about narcissists and sociopaths who understand the underlying power dynamics that come from these Critical models and seek to exploit them.
Covering for the latter is just going to drag down the whole thing. But that breaks kayfabe. That all the bad people are on one side and all the good are on the other. Frankly, same with the Critical model stuff.
That's where we are, I think.
Karmaze
1yr ago
There's an alternative, maybe parallel take to this I think. J-school has been horrible for journalism across the board. It's that, instead of being Subject Matter Experts, be that Subject Matter anything from local politics to tech or whatever, people are just taught how to write more broadly. It's become an upward mobile, hierarchal structure, at least much more than it was in the past.
Karmaze
4mo ago
Gonna play a bit of devil's advocate on the subject. Not entirely, just a tad. Because I do think there's some reasonable concepts behind the core idea, that Canada's population needs to increase dramatically. Canada has a lot of open space. To be blunt. So I don't think it's unreasonable to think that over time Canada would be better off on the global stage with a significantly higher population. As well, it's a way to get around demographic surges among older people.
I actually think these are good points.
The problem is that the implementation has been awful. There's a number of problems.
The big one, is that I think that immigration programs needs to be controlled for skills (or desire skills). You need to maintain relatively healthy balances of your entire labor market to ensure that things don't go out of whack and you get shortages in one place or another.
The other side of that coin, is credentialism. That is, various licensing regimens doing their best to keep out outsiders in order to artificially boost wages. Then you put on top of that the role of post-secondary education itself, and their role in massively importing labor.
The end result is just tons of essentially low-skill labor and people locked into that role. Relatively few people are coming over to do construction work, and the barriers to entry for that are massive anyway. Truth be told, I have nothing against people coming over, taking high-end or relatively high-end courses and ending up with good jobs. I don't think that's where the problem is. The problem really is down the line.
There's another part of the problem as well, and that's geographic distribution. Yes, Canada has a LOT of room. We can't have an overwhelming % of people living in a few large cities. I'd argue we need the will and the ability to "upshift" smaller cities into larger ones. Or maybe even building a city from scratch. We can't just keep on dumping people into the Toronto area.
If we want to do the whole 100 million thing (that's the goal), there's going to need to be a plan to address all those things I mentioned above. And as it stands right now, there's absolutely not.
Karmaze
11mo ago
I think reducing it to sex/gender really hides what's going on, at least in my mind. I can absolutely respect women as agents. What I can't respect is narcissistic attitudes. And of course, not all women. I know plenty of women who are wonderfully good and what they do and maintain a very healthy center. But I will say that I do think that cultural pressures have been creating more "Girlboss" attitudes. And stories that feature those attitudes....no thank you.
Karmaze
1yr ago
I'd like to discuss the best ideas my political opposition has, but I'm increasingly concerned that "signal boost liars" is the best idea my political opposition has--or, if not their best idea, maybe just their most pragmatically effective.
This is going to sound harsh, but I do think it's accurate, in that I think there always has been a sense that the best argument actually is "We will have the power". You know...that whole "Right Side of History" thing? And sometimes that "will" in the first phrase gets lost, so it's just "We have the power". And with that comes all sorts of Moral License and all that. In reality, we're talking pure Toxoplasma of Rage.
I really am very progressive myself, as well as liberal. Small-p. But I do think the full-throated embrace and exploitation of post-modernism is worrying for a whole host of reasons. Again, I'm not even opposed to post-modernism in a reflective, sober perspective. But what we're seeing here is something more like a search for power. The further you can go, and get away with if not outright cheered and supported the more pressure it puts on people to adopt your views/join your group.
Note, this applies to parts of the right as well, I think.
Karmaze
1yr ago
I think he fucked up. But let me say this.
If your social media...and hell...maybe your social experience tells you that FwB relationships are very normal, maybe in that case you think that maybe that's LESS intrusive than asking someone out on a date. I can easily see how someone would think this. Again, I still think that's bad advice, and a dumb thing to do.
(I'll be honest, I don't understand how anybody can ever ask anybody out on a date, but that's just me)
For what it's worth, what's driving this thing right now is that the corporate view is that MTG has essentially peaked, and they need a new growth vector, and that's in D&D. This is public information, to be clear. There's no speculation, this is what they've said.
The speculation is that it's bad as they need to essentially quintuple their revenue on the quick or the department is going to be mothballed.
More options
Context Copy link