Or is this all just me becoming jaded and bored with the culture war?
Probably, yes. You can ignore much of it. I know I do.
What you describe are (at least) two different things. I understand your suggestion as the topical discourse which has condensed into a few topics and because of that the Culture War is receding. On the first point, I believe you are wrong. Discourse is narrative, the stories we choose to tell and feed and build and listen to. Sustaining a discourse is cheap these days, but an individual can only be interested in and sustain so many extra important things in their head. Three, maybe four big narratives at a time can be managed-- of those, a couple are short-term and tend to flame out, while longer lasting or more impactful ideas can stoke the flame of commentary for years.
Whose discourse do you share? Discourse was democratized and decentralized. You choose AI and Trump, but now there is curated discourse each for Anorexia TikTok, Turkish nationalists on X, and lynching-in-21st-century-America enjoyers on Threads. You might argue they are all moot against AI and I'd probably agree, although for any individual Important Things have multiplied.
The Culture War is how the average American perceives conflict in the world and their position according to the tribes therein. America exported the Culture War so now many other hundreds of millions share certain aspects of it in their own cultural contexts. Perhaps in a village in Slovakia cultural conflict is experienced differently, but over here in the center of the universe even the sections of society with strong cultural cohesion and homogeneity are not immune. In our culture, it has been proven the absence of conflict is an invitation to the Culture War. Something must be wrong if my ideas or my people are not represented in an area of our democratic society. There can be no escape from the ideas monster or the values monster.
The result is the most well documented history of human cultural conflict ever created. We can view it granularly, down to every nook and cranny. We understand cultural conflict as something much more grand, possibly due to exposure to discourse, and thus we find the Culture War in knitting clubs, lesbian bars, workplaces, and church.
The Culture War had its Cambrian explosion. I don't think there's anything to derail it except the kind of catastrophic hardship that radically reshapes the world. Gay Space UBI Millionaire Communism might just help better resourced, funny looking creatures grow legs and bicker on land instead of underwater. If the robots put 100 million well armed people out of work and it goes poorly... a radical change in the Culture War understanding or an alignment of values for a time seems plausible.
p
Probably, yes. You can ignore much of it. I know I do.
What you describe are (at least) two different things. I understand your suggestion as the topical discourse which has condensed into a few topics and because of that the Culture War is receding. On the first point, I believe you are wrong. Discourse is narrative, the stories we choose to tell and feed and build and listen to. Sustaining a discourse is cheap these days, but an individual can only be interested in and sustain so many extra important things in their head. Three, maybe four big narratives at a time can be managed-- of those, a couple are short-term and tend to flame out, while longer lasting or more impactful ideas can stoke the flame of commentary for years.
Whose discourse do you share? Discourse was democratized and decentralized. You choose AI and Trump, but now there is curated discourse each for Anorexia TikTok, Turkish nationalists on X, and lynching-in-21st-century-America enjoyers on Threads. You might argue they are all moot against AI and I'd probably agree, although for any individual Important Things have multiplied.
The Culture War is how the average American perceives conflict in the world and their position according to the tribes therein. America exported the Culture War so now many other hundreds of millions share certain aspects of it in their own cultural contexts. Perhaps in a village in Slovakia cultural conflict is experienced differently, but over here in the center of the universe even the sections of society with strong cultural cohesion and homogeneity are not immune. In our culture, it has been proven the absence of conflict is an invitation to the Culture War. Something must be wrong if my ideas or my people are not represented in an area of our democratic society. There can be no escape from the ideas monster or the values monster.
The result is the most well documented history of human cultural conflict ever created. We can view it granularly, down to every nook and cranny. We understand cultural conflict as something much more grand, possibly due to exposure to discourse, and thus we find the Culture War in knitting clubs, lesbian bars, workplaces, and church.
The Culture War had its Cambrian explosion. I don't think there's anything to derail it except the kind of catastrophic hardship that radically reshapes the world. Gay Space UBI Millionaire Communism might just help better resourced, funny looking creatures grow legs and bicker on land instead of underwater. If the robots put 100 million well armed people out of work and it goes poorly... a radical change in the Culture War understanding or an alignment of values for a time seems plausible.
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