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 -
Inter-generational responsibility
Sometimes I have these moments when I realize I've got a big hole in my mental models for other people. This came up a few weeks ago, but I didn't get around to posting about it because other stuff happened.
The hole in this case is inter-generational responsibility. To what extent are parents responsible for the actions of their kids, or kids responsible for the actions of their parents. And how much of that responsibility carries across multiple generations.
My answer has always been something like "kids are never responsible for the actions of older generations, and parents are mostly responsible for the actions of their kids while they are guardians of those kids, but most of that responsibility goes away when the child reaches adulthood". I thought this was close to most people's take, but I'm pretty certain its not. I had all the clues and information I needed to put this together sooner, I just didn't. So any comments that basically say "how are you so stupid that you only just now figured this out" my response is yeah yeah yeah, whatever, congrats on being so smart, I was busy noticing and caring about other things.
Evidence I had but didn't really put together:
Anyways, now that I am unmoored from my previous set of assumptions, I'm not really sure where to set anchor again. I'm curious what people here believe in terms of inter-generational responsibility, and what you think the general consensus is on inter-generational responsibility.
In partial defense of my original view and thinking it was standard ... the US legal system mostly seems to take the same viewpoint. Deviations by other countries legal systems is often something that is noticed and gets commented on. Like North Korea still doing full family punishments, or Singapore having a built in legal responsibility for kids to take care of their parents in old age, or the grown adult in Italy that sued his parents for not continuing to treat him like a kid.
But the political system doesn't so clearly take the same viewpoint. Welfare and social security are mainly paid for by the currently young and healthy to the current old and infirm. Debt is taken on by the federal government, and that debt will inevitably be paid off by the children of those alive today.
Honestly rather than arrive at a surface-level verdict one way or the other, I find it both more useful and more accurate to speak more broadly and say that opinions and values about inter-generational responsibility are more grounded in culture rather than a rationalist conclusion based on axiomatic principles.
For example, the modern United States has for a long time been one of the most significantly individualistic societies of all time. Many of us do indeed carry an attitude of 18-21 as being a hard border of personal self-responsibility and somewhat related to primacy of a conjugal bond over all other relationships, and the somewhat non-sequitur that parents have a strong and longer-lasting responsibility for their kids than vice versa. However, many other cultures do indeed view family units as having their own collective sense of honor, of responsibility, and of continuity.
As an aside, I find that the whole collectivized Social Security setup isn't really related to any actual American principles but rather was just a convenient kick-it-down-the-road approach. Well, okay fine, that's not entirely true. You might find somewhat interesting the Social Security Administration's own short history, which notably traces the true beginnings of this kind of collectivization to Civil War pensions -- which to me reflects a tacit admission that the State more broadly was somewhat responsible for so many people dying unnaturally, undermining traditional self-sufficiency. Then later, you had the forces of urbanization, more mobile workforces, longer life expectancy, and basic "nuclear family" stuff. But the main Social Security idea was originally one more similar to regular "insurance" against sudden unpredictable bad things, and as time passed on the system only got bigger and bigger and the principle debt burden shifted earlier and earlier. In fact some early participants were explicitly given kick-backs in acknowledgment that they might not have participated long enough to get vested.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link