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 -
What if our fundamentals are exactly backwards?
New to The Motte, looking for constructive, critical discussion.
Here's an example of what I mean by a "fundamental":
Every economic system that has seemed credible to most people since the dawn of civilization has revolved around the legal establishment and safeguarding of property through the concept of ownership.
But what is ownership? I have my own ideas, but I asked ChatGPT and was surprised that it pretty much hit the nail on the head: the definitional characteristic of ownership is the legal right to deprive others.
This has been such a consistently universal view that very few people question it. Even fewer have thought through a cogent alternative. Most people go slack-jawed at the suggestion that an alternative is possible.
Here's something from years back, before I'd zeroed in on the perverse nature of ownership:
Anyone want to brainstorm a viable alternative to "ownership"?
/images/17459352527399495.webp
Freeing oneself from old paradigms can be a very noble effort. Capitalism, Communism, Economics, Rights... These concepts, along with many others, have in many cases done discourse more harm than good. But it is easier said than done to get past them.
I appreciate the argumentative nature of your post. It certainly fuels discussion. I do however think it is marred by the fact that it tethers itself to a few poor concepts. To that end I'm not sure if it is conducive to your goal of brainstorming alternatives to ownership, as you've seemingly managed to push a lot of people into old 'capitalism vs communism' trenches. And, as we can see, many people here will jump at any opportunity to brandish old bayonets, if only to see if they are still sharp.
To chime in I'd ask you, as I've seen you post about your 'personal riches' in a comment: Can you, in some sense, hold 'ownership' over your family? I for one would look at myself as having a certain duty towards my family members. But I also see there being a certain kind of possessive nature to these relationships. Is there some way you would broach this topic?
As for inanimate objects in general, the old Venus Project line came to the conclusion that human society was on the cusp of post scarcity, and that the main problem was organization and distribution. Is that close to an alternative to ownership in your mind or are you looking further afield?
My personal caveat, and where I diverge from Jacque Fresco and friends, would be that I'm very partial to the notion that our 'possessive nature' is very much innate, along with a lot of other things. To that end I find imagining a society, even a post scarcity one, that doesn't have a problem with emergent hierarchies based on other peoples possessions to be very difficult.
I mean, figuratively, what are you to do when your boys go out into the woods and one finds a cool stick, and the other can't find one that looks as good and becomes jealous? Instigating a search for some sort of final solution to this sort of problem seems odd to me. Rather I'd say that encountering this problem is a part of being a child and a parent. Both have a duty to ameliorate the situation, but both are also saddled with their emotions and competence, or lack thereof. Parents usually demand one son suffer. Be that to be forced to share or be that to settle for whatever less cool stick they can find, as the forest is full of them.
To that end I'm not sure if the question can be answered in any meaningful sense. Take the low road and side with either boy. Keeping the stick, if you have it, seems emotionally straightforward for one boy. Demanding it, by the same token, being emotionally straightforward for the other. Or assume the role of a parent and find some kind of answer on the high road. Which is where I'd ask for your take.
Actually, my approach turns out to be very conducive to brainstorming alternatives, because there is no such discussion possible with people entrapped and entangled by dogmatic ideas that have never been intelligently assessed, let alone established, when they're committed, regardless, to defending them just because the ideas have "always been" there and they're the only things they know. The same kind of thing happens when I discuss authority. I manage to glean good stuff amidst the ordinance buzzing and blowing up all around my head, and in the process I do make connections. It's worth it.
To your question on family, first, we need to make distinctions that are pretty cut and dry, but almost no one makes them. Ownership is not possession or belonging or any other form of attachment. Belonging does not constitute ownership -- in fact, it's not even relevant. Ownership is a legal right and a legal status as one holding that right. If I satisfy the legal requirements to acquire the right to own something, then it's legally mine and I'm its owner. It's got no necessary or meaningful connection to any other form of attachment. "You belong to me" can mean anything from "You're mine to love, protect, and cherish," to, "No one else can have you," but "I own you," is on an whole different level of its own. And none of those constitutes legal ownership.
I admire the hell out of Bucky and Fresco, love those guys, but they missed the true nature of the problem. My lesson on this was in the 80s, working in the "Information Systems" department for the largest HMO in the Puget Sound area. This was during the period where CIOs first started to emerge in corporations. I'd gotten into IT in large part so that I could spend my time solving information problems ("data processing" back then). I was soooo worn out dealing with the narcissistic drama of company politics, I just wanted no more to do with people, lol. After a short while, I realized that none of the information problems were the problem. They were relatively easy. The real problems were people problems. My department would get tasked to build systems whose very existence boiled down to workarounds to compensate for departments that refused to communicate with each other and share their data. It was so bad that the key guy in accounting showed me the Excel spreadsheet he managed by hand to bring together all the information needed for the company's financials. The HMO employed around 9,000 staff, had over 450,000 enrollees, and a budget of over half a billion at the time. The whole company was dependent on this one spreadsheet maintained by one guy on his PC because its systems wouldn't talk to each other. The systems wouldn't talk because the system owners were so territorial, it wasn't possible to get them to talk so that we could figure out a way to put Humpty back together. The problem lay in the people and their mentalities, not in the information systems. Likewise "resource management". You can't fix mental brokenness by new ways of manipulating the stuff that we fight over because we're broken and never learned to behave as mature adults.
There is a fundamental perverseness in predicating our relationships to desirables on a carte blanche "right" to deprive them from every single person on the face of Earth -- especially at the point when immediate, credible potential for the desirables to benefit them exists, but there's no immediate, credible threat from any of them. Prioritizing potential future "security" at the cost of concrete present harm is perverse. Doing so without any facts or evidence that it's remotely relevant or necessary is psychotic. I'm quite sure, at this point, that its a basic form of paranoia that's been amped to the extreme. If I own a factory that produces beneficial goods for my community and an asshole organizes a bunch of thugs and starts raiding my warehouse, it makes all kinds of sense to hire security and repel them. "Ownership" doesn't even factor into it. But if I then start treating my own customers as potential thugs and thieves, I've crossed a line. Or let's say I've lived my whole life in a town, and for generations our family has run the town shop and never locked the door, there's never been a theft, not once -- because people know they can come to us when they're in need and we'll give them what they need whether they can pay for it or not. But then I start locking the door and putting iron grates over all the windows. Why? Whatever the reason, it's paranoid. It's psychotic in the sense that I have broken not only from reality, but I've broken from normal, healthy concern for my alignment to reality. I've prioritized abstract potential for harm to override all question whether any real potential exists. I don't care -- I'm going to take steps to ensure that no harm will befall me whether there's any basis for it in fact or not. And if my paranoia continues, it's likely to spread, as paranoia is wont to do. Eventually it will be a town where everyone locks their doors and sees potential thieves in everyone else. Then actual thefts will start and continue, "proving" that the paranoia was in fact prescience -- "See? I KNEW it!" -- because now there's no more trust and support for anyone when they fall on hard times, so stealing is their only recourse.
Ownership takes that fear of potential theft, generalizes it, and petrifies it into a principle with no regard to the actualities at play. Actually, in utter disregard of all actualities that might be at play. It renders everyone into a potential thief -- and there isn't even an "until proven otherwise", because the ownership perspective has no interest in that question. Its purpose is to make the question of what's actually going on irrelevant. We establish ownership to gain a sense of security without any need to deal with reality. It completely disregards facts and burdens reality with its evidentially, factually baseless preemptive defensiveness by endowing "owners" with the carte blanche to deprive and be held harmless for enforcing their deprivation. Whether it makes sense or not is completely immaterial.
Harry Frankfurt established bullshit as a valid phenomenon worthy of academic study. He differentiates bullshit from lying in that a liar knows the truth and tries to hide/misrepresent it, while a bullshitter doesn’t care about the truth at all—only about the effect of their words. Bullshitters disregard truth, whereas liars regard it and distort it. So, Frankfurt concludes, "... bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are."
In this way of looking at it, it's obvious that ownership, as we've long conceived it, is bullshit.
Hierarchies are not necessary results of attachment to desirables.
Re the boys and the stick, you've touched on the core problem: adults who still think and behave like children. Those boys can learn constructive ways to deal with that situation. Failing that, they end up as adults obsessed with this toxic, noxious thing they call "power" and this delusion of the merit and benefits of "riches".
I raised six sons as a single dad. I know all about these things, lol. Teachable moment, no? Sharing, handling disappointment, managing emotions, coping, tolerating lack, recognizing and appreciating benefits/detriments to others, not just our own, etc. And something that few adults seem to know how to do: recognize that behind the article or situation we've equated with what we want lies a desire that might well be satisfied another way or with something else that we can acquire or realize. I call it "faith". But in a nutshell: growing up, maturing. That's not really a problem. Billions of parents help their children toward it, some better and some worse than others.
The real problem is when grown adults persist in infantilism. Infantilism isn't mere immaturity -- it's the demand that others compensate for one's own commitment to persist in immaturity. The immaturity is a problem, of course -- but the commitment to persist in it and the demand that others compensate are the far greater problems. Infantilism expresses in codependence: the conviction of our own incapability/incapacity with no intention of changing it coupled with our demand that others do for us. Codependence isn't yet recognized as the crux of pretty much every major incalcitrant problem that adults have with each other, even though you won't find a major problem where codependence isn't right down at the root and removing it would not solve the problem. Mediators and arbiters and diplomats can tell you all about it. They rarely have a problem figuring out solutions to the issues. The problem is always the infantilism of the adversaries whose codependence frames the problems in ways that are resistant to solution -- which is why they ended up needing authorities and peacemakers in the first place. And here's a related angle: after almost 50 years of research, participation, and study on cultism, I'm very confident that we can say that the only people who get entrapped in cults are codependent people. Kids born and raised in cults are groomed from birth into codependence and cult loyalty. "Civilization" itself, stripped of its BS, amounts to a grand cult of codependence. "Leaders" are every bit as codependent as "followers" -- in some crucial ways, more so. And yet, people in general staunchly insist that the real problems lie "out there" in the mechanics of how we're going to deal with resources and property. Naw. First we gotta deal with that massive, paranoid elephant in the room.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link