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 -
For what it's worth I feel like there's a common thread in @xablor's post on voting and some of the replies to @zataomm's post on WWI that really ought to be broken out and examined on its own that being how exactly do we ascribe agency and responsibility.
It's trivially true that the current war in Ukraine could've been avoided had the Kievan Russ welcomed Moscow as liberators and acquiesced to their rule instead of choosing to fight. It's trivially true that World War 2 may have avoided or postponed if the Poles had acquiesced to being partitioned between the Bolsheviks and the Nazis instead of choosing to fight, or if the British Empire had valued Germanic notions of racial brotherhood over their own self-conception as World Hegemon/police or desire to adhere to previously made agreements.
But that's just the thing, they didn't, and the arguments that they ought to have seem to be relying on a lot of legwork that is not in evidence.
I recently read a book of CS Lewis' letters and essays including the full version of The Abolition of Man over the course of a cross-country flight, and it struck me as surprisingly relevant/contemporary for something that was written over 80 years ago now. It also reminded me of an argument between Habryka (or maybe Hlinka?) and some long-standing DR aligned poster from back in the day. I don't recall whether it was on LessWrong or in the CW thread on SlateStar codex but it was prior to the move to reddit and in anycase I can't seem to find it now. The jist of it was that it was impossible for an actor to be both moral and rational because having "moral principals" was effectively a precommitment to behave irrationally in specific circumstances. IE While I know that I could easily get away with lying, cheating, stealing, or otherwise "hitting the defect button" and that it might even be in my personal interest do so, I won't do that because to do so would be wrong and right/wrong is something that trancends rational self interest.
For example I'd like to think we could all recognize that killing 77 men over a puppy and a car is wholy disproportionate and perhapse even a bit extreme but at the same time I would also like to believe that all but the most autistic of contrarians would agree that a world of men like Neo is preferable to one of men like Theon Greyjoy
I feel like this is something that Lewis saw clearly that a lot of otherwise intelligent commentators today do not. Namely, that it is easy to argue with the benefit of hindsight that the British were idiots to abide by this agreement or that, but this must be whieghed against the question of what value does any agreement with the empire have once you've set the precident of reneging on any agreement the moment it looks like the bill might come due? After all, the thing that makes a debt a debt is the obligation to pay.
I feel like we see something similar in a lot of the rhetoric around voting and other forms civic duties. There seems to be this widely held belief that voting doesn't matter unless your specific vote gets to be the deciding vote but how dumb is that? how many elections are decided by one vote? and how do you decide which specific vote for candidate A or policy B out of however many is the deciding vote. It seems to me that the sanest, if not neccesarily most rational, approach is to stop asking dumb questions. Voting, even when your vote isn't neccesarily the deciding vote, has value for the same reason honoring your agreements has value. Doing so (or otherwise not doing so) tells the rest of the world something true about you.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but the original Kievan Russ community founded Moscow and then stationed there when the Mongols utterly destroyed Kyiv. They then re-colonized their old territory centuries later. From Wikipedia —
What happened to Kievan Russ is actually relevant to the topic. Kyiv decided to fight against the Mongols, which led to the total desolation of Kyiv and the destruction of the original Kievan Russ culture. Something similar happened to Baghdad. But the Slavs in Moscow decided to acquiesce to Mongol rule, which allowed for the salvation of Kievan Russ culture and the continuation of Russian Orthodoxy. So there are two important things to consider here: Moscow and Kievan Russ are historically the same culture / people, and history shows how delusional concepts of self-determination have destroyed Kyiv before — until, of course, Moscow liberated its former territories, because they chose to submit to the Mongol’s greater strength. (nota bene: being zero percent Slav, I don’t care about anything happening east of Poland, and having the Slavs destroy each other is as beneficial to the West as having the East Asians destroy each other or the Semites destroy each other. But I genuinely feel that there is something deeply wrong with the waste of life in the Russian-Ukraine war especially with Ukraine’s low TFR.)
You one part wrong: Moscow did not bend to the Mongols, it was destroyed. Vladimir (and others) bent. Vladimir had (vague) issues which led to people moving to Tver and Moscow, who then fought over Vladimir. But yes, the main part is right. Russia's national mythology's founded on bending to greater powers (like China, today.) For detail (since your main point is incoherent or evil to me):
The Kievan Rus was barely a single entity and disintegrated by 1100. Where the Holy Roman Empire for most of its existence was a very lose collection for a long period, the Kievan Rus was a section of the Rus (East Slavic lands, post facto held by Russia in the 19th century, but can also mean something like city state or East Slavic statelet). Somehow, this concept stretches far beyond Kiev's rule.
Novgorod's, Rostov's, Kiev's etc. territories are considered as one, because Yaroslav the Wise temporarily controlled them (but they didn't hold together afterwards.) Why consider Vladimir's efforts 100 years later part of Kiev, when at best, the connection by this point is Vladimir briefly conquering Kiev (after Ryazan) around 1150. None of these people wrote of themselves under the Kievan Rus or fighting for some past Kievan unity.
150-200 years after temporarily being together, Rostislav, Prince of Smolensk took Kiev (for 1 week). His son held Smolensk and Novgorod. His son took Kiev in 1215, then took Vladimir, losing Novgorod. In 2023, ~20 independent princes and Turkic tribes sent a host to fight the Mongols, half died. In 1237, Bantu Khan took Kiev. Other statelets like Novgorod and Smolensk were unaffected. The village of Moscow was destroyed at this time. A new Yaroslav asks the Mongols to become prince of Vladimir in 1238. When he dies, the Mongols give the eldest son Vladimir. The younger son, Alexander Nevsky is given (the ashes of) Kiev (not physically by their family). When the Khan died, they were to all go to Sarai and pledge allegiance, which Andrey didn't. The Mongol army returned, removed Andrey and gave Alexander Nevsky all of Vladimir's possessions. Alexander Nevsky then led a Mongol army back to Novgorod in 1259... His son, Daniel, born in 1261, founded a monastery and the first stone church in Moscow, ruling over Tver.
Records are sparse, but from 0 inhabitants in the 1240s, Moscow was able to wrest Vladimir from Tver in the 1300s, gaining the right to... Collect taxes for the Mongols. (You don't hear about Kiev again until the 1650s. The Western Eastern Slavs (ancestors of Belarusians and Ukrainians) had their own stories with/in/as Lithuania and Poland, using the Ruthenian literary language etc.) (Remember, the Polish national poem starts "Oh Lithuania, my native land..."!)
A far better connection between Kiev and Moscow forms from the 1660s, where Ukrainian statesmen, clerics and scholars move to Moscow and establish the structure of the Russian state, reform its church, found schools etc.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link