site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 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.

24
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

If you expect 'evil' to mean 'they are pushing diversity because they want to undermine western civilization, the truth, beauty, God, country, mankind, and everything, because they are hitler satan nazis', then ... nobody is like that. Obviously they think what they're doing is good and will benefit their friends (and, because they are progressives/universalists/etc, "their friends" mean everyone). Everyone has all sorts of good-sounding, and even partially true, motivations - hitler, so did stalin, so did pol pot, so did the mongols, etc. Even active malice against something like jews is justified by their claimed subversion of truth, beauty, the race, etc. And if that's evil, it's evil because ... of what it causes, not some clear and obvious property of 'evilness'. (It can be justified that certain subgroups of the population are poisonous and toxic, need to be locked up and kept away from untainted people - for all sorts of infections diseases that was literally true. And, it can even be true as a matter of "inborn traits" - wild animals! So you can't just categorize that as 'evil, because that's what evil means'.) The "crazy person who wants to kill everyone and destroy the world because he is mean and hates the innocent joy of diverse babies" villian archetype exists because he's the simplest character to cast the "brave resistance poor weak underdog" against, and because the universalist claim is that killing people is bad, so people who do it do so because they want to kill everyone. If your enemies are evil (which they can be), it's because the effects of their actions are bad, not because they "intend" to be evil. So, they're stupid and they're evil, not one or the other.

Like, what does the 'evil', in the sense in which it's opposed to 'being mistaken', take on what the woke execs / writers are doing look like? What is it that they intend, maliciously, to happen as a result of casting more black people or showing off sassy strong independent women?

(and, because they are progressives/universalists/etc, "their friends" mean everyone)

Demonstrably not true. You can't have an oppressor/oppressed dichotomy if the set of oppressors is null; progressives definitely have an outgroup.

Like, what does the 'evil', in the sense in which it's opposed to 'being mistaken', take on what the woke execs / writers are doing look like? What is it that they intend, maliciously, to happen as a result of casting more black people or showing off sassy strong independent women?

Hypothetically, if one of their motivations was "this will cause anguish among my outgroup, which is good, for they are bad" and this social attack was in fact undeserved, then I'd think that would be sufficient?

What is it that they intend, maliciously, to happen as a result of casting more black people or showing off sassy strong independent women?

The dissolution of the social and cultural norms that produced our current civilization, because the current crop of culture-makers were taught to hate said civilization.