site banner
ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   Edited 1yr ago   38156 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 12, 2022

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.

40
Top Bottom New Old Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

There are two separate issues with fantasy races here:

  • biodiversity of stats, which I won't discuss in this comment

  • biodiversity of alignment, which I will

Since most campaigns are technically about a bunch of murderhobos slaughtering their way to the BBG the DM needs a way to give mass murder an acceptable coating. Aggressive fauna and animated corpses can only take you so far, at some point you might want to start killing sapient opponents. And how do you justify the killing of sapient opponents? Making them evil is the simplest choice.

Most realistic "evil" opponents exist somewhere on the scale of "voluntary choice <--> victim of circumstances". The further an opponent is to the left, the easier it is to justify killing them. The further it's to the right, the more hoops you have to jump through: making them attack you first, turning them into faceless mooks, even letting the players derail the story by trying to redeem them.

D&D tried to avoid this whole conundrum by making whole races "inherently evil". Not even just "culturally evil", which would place them firmly in the "victim of circumstances" corner. Kobolds steal, orcs raid and mindflayers enslave simply because it's in their blood. You can't fix them or reason with them, extermination is the only solution.

Of course this leads back to the classical decoupling vs contextualizing problem.

Contextualizers say, "can't you see how this kind of portraial of races as inherently flawed is problematic? Would you play a game where you are a SWAT team gunning down Blacks because Blacks are criminals?"

Decoupling grogrnards reply, "But we aren't playing that! We're deliberately playing a group of fictional heroes in a fictional world killing fictional sapient creatures that are inherently evil to avoid any unfortunate implications and have fun without worrying about the ethical side of the game!"

Contextualizers say, "But you can't avoid unfortunate implications! By repeating the same claim about the nature of evil in every fictional world you play in you demonstrate that you are comfortable with this claim, that it you've internalized it, that you wouldn't mind if the real world worked that way."

Decoupling grognards reply, "What do you want us to do? Play campaigns where we have to investigate the violations of tribal land rights of orcish clans that caused their raids on human settlers?"

Contextualizers reply, "Well, this still sounds kinda problematic, with you transforming indigenous humans into non-humans. I bet you have some offensive stereotypes about feather headdresses and peace pipes in your DM notes"

Decoupling grodnards say, "You know what, why don't you fuck off and let us play the games we want in peace?"

Contextualizers say, "That's it, I'm outing you on Twitter. Prepare to get cancelled!"

Umm... They give experience and have loot. That justifies killing them enough. Why complicate things.

Thank you, Belkar Bitterleaf.

Now that Order of the Stick has entered the CW thread, I'll say that I always think of Xykon's legendary "power equals power" monologue to V whenever someone on here discusses conflict theory or institutional capture.

Weirdly enough, it was the invasion of my hobby-space by these kind of contextualizers that made me way more sympathetic to complaints about cultural appropriation. People with absolutely no connection to "nerd culture" suddenly decided D&D et al were cool but that I was playing the game the wrong way and my fun was problematic. Or, more to the point, that I was problematic and that they would keep my game but I could fuck right off and wasn't welcome any more.

If they try to make you fuck off, and esp. if they had the actual power to kick you out of the activity, then that might better be called cultural appropriation than what often gets attacked under that label.

If some white American wears traditional Chinese clothes or makes tacos or learns traditional African dances, or teaches yoga, or whatever they aren't *appropriating *from anyone else. The do what they want to do, and anyone who did it before is still free to do so.

But to the extent they could take over a campaign or a gaming venue, and then effectively kick the people that where there before them out of it, that could be considered appropriation.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats