This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I wonder if there's not an alternative way of framing all of this, not as "should we have accountability" but rather, "must accountability be externally legible, and what are the costs and consequences if it must?"
As an example, one of the interesting things about the modern university system is it bolts two incompatible accountability systems on top of each other.
When my wife got her PhD, it was a long, grueling, intensive process. In particular, though, it was expensive in the sense that she had a world class expert in her field who paid quite a lot of attention to her during that multiyear process (she fortunately had a good and ethical advisor). And you can see (if this is working correctly) the outlines of an older system of accountability; in theory, my wife went through an intensive acculturation process by an existing cohort of experts who could, by the end of the process, vouch that my wife had internalized values and norms that meant she could be trusted by the broader cohort of researchers in her field, and thus ought to be able to independently drive a research program. That doesn't mean there's not also lots of peer review and criticism and whatever else, of course, just that she went through a process that, if it worked correctly, meant she should have an internal mechanism of accountability that meant she could be trusted, in general. All of this is much, much clearer in action if you look at universities operating many decades ago, when they had much less money, much less bureaucracy, and generally much more independence.
But clearly the current version of the University is flooded with extra deans, and administrators, and IRB reports, and massive amounts of paperwork, and giant endowments that are lawfare targets, and many layers of bureaucracy, and a bunch of arguably screwed up personal values from cultural evolution the last few decades. And many of those changes are intended to keep everyone in line and make sure everything is legible to the broader system. And so, in those spaces, the older model of producing virtuous professionals who can work cheaply by their own guidance is frequently superseded by this other "trustless society" model. And everything is slow, and expensive, and the values of the bureaucracy is often at odds with getting good work done, for all the reasons discussed in the linked conversation.
Or, to use another example, I've seen this claim made, by certain irritated black activists connected to screwed up urban neighborhoods, that there's just as much crime going on out in the white suburbs, but the cops are racist and just don't enforce laws out there. Which honestly, the first time I read that, was generally just kind of shocking and equal parts hilarious and depressing. Because of course, the entire point of going to a good suburb is that a critical mass of people have internalized an illegible, internal sense of accountability that means they mostly don't actually need cops around all that often. And everyone around them knows that about them, and about themselves. That's literally why certain people find them kind of stifling. (Obviously there are things that happen in suburbs like weed smoking or domestic abuse or whatever. But obviously we're talking about questions of degree here) Meanwhile, in distressed neighborhoods, you simply have to have cops and a legible system because a critical mass of people do not internalize that sense of accountability, and so you need the external accountability of the legible state.
Anyone who has worked in an effective small startup, versus a giant profitable corporation has almost certainly run into these same divides, I suspect.
Getting back to the question of government in this context, a few years ago, I read through Michael Knox Beran's "WASPS: The Splendors and Miseries of an American Aristocracy", which was a great book, as well as C. S. Lewis's "Abolition of Man". And they were a really nice pairing to capture some of these big questions, about whether a society needs to produce leaders who have an internal sense of morality and virtue, who try to do the right thing at any given moment based on an internally cultivated sense of accountability, versus the transition to a world where accountability is an external, entirely legible thing where independent judgement and virtue can't be relied on and instead bureaucracy and technocracy solve all problems (like, say, the way that Uber driver reviews might, as just one simple example). And I think you can find upsides and downsides to each approach.
Thanks for the rec! I've been thirsty for something exactly like this but didn't know where to begin looking. Serendipitous.
You might also be interested in George Marsden's "The Twilight of the American Enlightenment: The 1950s and the Crisis of Liberal Belief", Thomas Leonard's "Illiberal Reformers", and Helena Rosenblatt's "The Lost History of Liberalism: From Ancient Rome to the Twenty-First Century", all of which also cover this same era and dig into some overlapping topics and themes.
I've been trying to understand the shift from the worldview of the progressive era (where a lot of our inherited institutions were built and cemented) to... well, whatever emerged in the 60s and 70s, and all of these books were really useful for me in that regard. Leonard's book was a bit dry, but lots of great information. The other two read pretty easily, IIRC.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link