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'm curious to probe why we have all chosen to use primarily left-coded examples, when the same examples on the right abound. The identitarian rot runs so deep in our culture that everything is infected.
Only half of self identified evangelicals attend church weekly. Two thirds of evangelicals have premarital sex. There's no expectation that one's activities must justify one's self-identification.
The universe of Tradwife and conservative girl influencers and followers seems to consist of women who claim tradition as an identity, while rarely being willing to commit to actual values when it requires sacrifice.
Country music has been infected by poseurs, self identified "country boys" who grew up nowhere near a farm. Men who make up their lack of masculinity with a leather clad pickup truck. People who buy hunting themed stuff, but never hunt. There's no expectation that one must do something to earn credibility.
And most confusing to me, men who talk about supporting the troops and honoring the troops and loving the troops, and never tried to serve.
We have financial analysts who self-identify as blue collar, and day laborers who self identify as entrepreneurs. The poison is so deep in the American system, that I don't know how we get it out anymore.
It's easy to see the flaws in one's opponents, it's hard to see them in one's allies, it's near to impossible to self examine.
On this topic in particular: a survey conducted in Ireland over a decade ago found that nearly two-thirds of self-identified Catholics don't believe that the communion wafer literally transforms into the body of Christ.
Never mind the fact that they're non-observant: from a theological perspective, most Irish Catholics are Protestant in all but name. And that's not even mentioning how many of them voted to legalise abortion and gay marriage.
Which is more important to identity, ideological orthodoxy or activity? I would say having one or the other allows one a claim to identify as X, while having neither prevents it, and having both makes it impossible to avoid the identification.
Interesting. Imagine four people who call themselves Catholic:
Alice goes to Mass every day, observes the Sabbath, and follows every papal edict to the letter.
Bob professes to believe every papal edict and tenet of his faith – but in practice, he never goes to Mass, doesn't observe the Sabbath, eats meat on Fridays, doesn't give up anything for Lent etc.
Carol goes to Mass every day, observes the Sabbath, gives something up for Lent etc. – but her actual worldview is functionally indistinguishable from any of her woke friends, which entails major doctrinal disagreements with the Church on abortion, homosexuality, pre-marital sex, divorce etc. She also doesn't believe in transubstantiation.
Like Bob, David is non-observant, and like Carol he has major doctrinal disagreements with the Church, including disbelieving transubstantiation (I think this accurately describes an absolute majority of nominal Irish Catholics).
I'm sure most people would say that Alice is the "most" Catholic, or most "authentically" Catholic, or a "central example" of what we call Catholic. Equally, most people would say that David is only nominally Catholic, neither walking the walk nor talking the talk.
I'm torn on whether Bob is "more" Catholic than Carol, or vice versa. On the one hand, Carol "walks the walk" in making at least some of the sacrifices her faith demands of her, including getting up early on Sundays. On the other hand, if Catholicism is a belief system first and foremost, then holding the correct beliefs ought to be seen as far more important as following the rituals – observing the rituals when you don't believe in any of the beliefs underpinning them strikes me as sort of insincere and performative.
[Edit: by pure coincidence, the morning after writing this post I was re-reading an old post of Scott's which includes this gem of a quote from CS Lewis: "Going to church does not make you a Christian any more than going to a garage makes you a car."]
Authentic membership in a religion is a special case, as it's usually determined based on privately-held beliefs and active, observable behaviour. For a lot of the other categories I discussed above, authenticity is often based on only one or the other. While support for animal rights and opposition to factory farming are beliefs commonly held by vegetarians, they're not generally considered rule-in criteria: as far as I'm concerned, anyone who doesn't eat meat is a vegetarian, regardless of their worldview. Saying "I'm a vegetarian who doesn't eat meat, but I don't really have a problem with factory farming" doesn't sound incoherent to me in the way that "I'm Catholic and I go to Mass, but I don't believe in transubstantiation" does.
Catholicism is probably a bad example to debate, in that the Catholic view of this is that if Alice, Bob, Carol, and David were all Confirmed Catholics at some point in their lives, then they are all Catholics. One can lapse, or be in a state of apostasy or heresy or excommunication, but one cannot cease to be Catholic once one has become one, Catholic identity is an indelible mark even should one wish to shed it. Essentially the view is, in your terms, that if one does a sufficient quantum of activity+belief at any point in one's life (typically but not necessarily while young) then one has become Catholic and remains Catholic forever. One can be more pious than another, or in Communion with Rome as opposed to lapsed, etc. But one is always Catholic.
That all being said, within any belief system I think there are multiple types and layers we have to distinguish, some of which Catholicism has traditionally taken note of.
One should distinguish between sins, where one fails to meet the standard that one believes in as we are all weak and fallen, and dissenting beliefs. Somebody who slips up on occasion and does something against the teachings of the faith while still believing in the teachings of the faith, is different from someone who believes the teachings of the faith are wrong. Then there's the difference between dissent, believing the church is wrong, and error in ignorance where an individual is either insufficiently Cathechized or just too dumb to understand the finer points of doctrine. Obscure theological points, or third order logical conclusions, just won't be properly comprehended by a lot of people, and a skilled sophist could lead them through clever phrasing to deny them. And there's a difference again between His Holiness' Loyal Opposition, a reformer who dissents from church policy and wants to change it, and someone who hates the church whole cloth.
At any rate, we should recenter the question. I don't really care what you call yourself, I care about how seriously I have to take it. A constant problem within the legal cases surrounding Freedom of Religion in the United States is how do we know who is a believer? I want to see a broadened freedom of religion, but I also want to see enhanced tests of belief to access those protections. Similarly socially and ethically. It's fine for anyone to call themselves a Christian or a Jew or a Pastafarian, it's not fine for that to impose requirements on me to take their beliefs seriously.
More options
Context Copy link
Carol would generally be regarded as more Catholic than Bob by most practicing Catholics and by the church hierarchy. This matrix is a live question and the Catholic Church has a literal definition of the minimum standards to be accounted a practicing Catholic- the six precepts of the church.
If Carol was a public figure she might be subject to church discipline for heretical views(Nancy Pelosi notably is), which would change the equation. But church discipline is not levied against random people for heresy.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Oh it’s worse than that. There’s three methods of counting church attendance-
is survey data- just asking people how often they go to church. For social desirability reasons, this tends to be biased upwards, but it’s probably close enough for government work to the monthly rate, or the Christmas and Easter rate.
is checking attendance counts at the churches themselves, which suffers from poor and inconsistent methodology. There’s also usually no way to tell which people are going to church here.
is cell phone tracking data. This is almost certainly an undercount for a wide variety of technical reasons- notably reception tends to be worse in church buildings and attendees tend to ping less than elsewhere because of behavior at church(lots of people have their cell phones off, for example).
So basically we have no way of knowing what actual church attendance rates are, except that the ‘official’ rates are overestimates.
Interesting, I never thought about it like that, but you're probably right!
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
You're right that a disproportionate number of examples in my post were left-coded, which was unfair of me. In my defense, at the time of writing I was sincerely thinking of "identifying as a good person even though you've never done anything good" as a bipartisan phenomenon. When we hear a term like "performative virtue signalling" our mind reflexively goes to AWFL women sharing black squares on Instagram, but it's equally applicable to boomer wine aunts who share posts on their Facebook pages about violent criminals coupled with demands that the UK "bring back hanging". When it comes to slave morality, the kinds of people described in Hillbilly Elegy are just as prone to self-destructive crabs-in-a-bucket begrudgery as the residents of any urban ghetto. And a lurid fixation on the nastiest crimes committed by others (as a means of downplaying one's own moral shortcomings) can and does afflict anyone regardless of tribal or political affiliation.
As for the self-examination piece: well, earlier this year I released a solo album on an actual legit indie record label, and completed an (as yet unpublished) novel — and yet I would still feel hesitant to describe myself as a "musician" or a "writer". (I'm not saying you can't call yourself one of these things until you make a living from it, but it has to be a major part of your lifestyle, not just a hobby.) I have no illusions about having enjoyed a privileged middle-class upbringing (attempting to pass oneself off as coming from a more underprivileged background than you really did — class-Dolezalism — is endemic in Ireland and the UK, and equally common regardless of political stripe), although with the qualification that I did earn a partial scholarship to my private secondary school. In the past I had a very bad habit of really "identifying" with the fact that I'd been diagnosed with depression as a convenient excuse for my various shortcomings (ethical and otherwise), but I don't do this anymore and can't honestly say I've suffered from depression for many years, if I ever did. Offhand, I truly can't think of any way I habitually describe myself without "walking the walk" or meeting the traditional criteria for such a designation.
As for the "identifying as a good person" bit: the main reason I abhor performative virtue signalling of all stripes is because it reduces the preconditions for being a "good person" to simply holding the "correct" opinions, making pro-social actions completely irrelevant to the moral calculus. To give a current example: over the past two years I've donated somewhere in the region of €1,700 to assistance for Gaza (via charitable foundations such as Médecins sans Frontières, Medical Aid for Palestine and Realign for Palestine) — not a vast sum, either in absolute terms or as a percentage of my income, and yet I can only assume it's a damn sight more than most of the people accusing Israel of genocide have donated over the same period, by either metric. (As I've mentioned before, there are few things that infuriate me more than being lectured and scolded about how I ought to do more to help the less fortunate — by a person who is doing a damn sight less to help the less fortunate than I am.) The belief seems to be that, because I'm not terribly sympathetic to the cause of Palestinian statehood and acknowledge Israel's right to exist, I am forever and always unclean, whereas a person who holds the "correct" opinions on this cause is therefore One of the Good Ones, regardless of what actions they undertake. My friends and family members won't actually come out and say that Alice (who has the "correct" opinions on the
JewishIsrael Question, but who hasn't donated a penny to helping the people of Gaza) is morally superior to Bob (who's donated a decent chunk of cheddar to helping the people of Gaza, but who acknowledges Israel's right to exist, doesn't think they're committing a genocide [while acknowledging they've committed war crimes], has minimal sympathy for the cause of Palestinian statehood and zero sympathy for Hamas) — but it's abundantly clear that's what they believe, at least subconsciously. It seems at some point the idea that "well, he hasn't done much, but he means well: at least his heart's in the right place" was surreptitiously supplanted with "because his heart's in the right place, he has therefore discharged his moral responsibilities and no longer needs to lift a finger to help others — he is already One of the Good Ones".To be a good person, you have to do good things: people's lives are saved with bandages and splints, not retweets and vibes.
You can release a solo album, but they won’t call you a musician. You can complete a novel, but they won’t call you a writer. If you fuck one goat, though…
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
https://youtube.com/watch?v=CORANvT8l9A "Got a beer in my beer, and a chevy in my truck..."
This is my new favourite country song. For the full experience, read the lyrics.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link