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 -
President-Elect Trump is starting things off with a major bang, announcing his intention to honor the 250th anniversary of America’s independence by sponsoring a new wave of World’s Fairs.
I’ve been very critical of certain aspects of Trump’s first administration, his personality, his leadership style, his viability as a long-term political force, etc. My support for him has always been qualified and half-hearted. So, I have to acknowledge that he’s hitting pretty much exactly the right button to get me genuinely excited and inspired less than one full day into his budding second regime. Just a few months ago I lamented the ways that the Online Right™️ was disappointing and alienating me. I expressed a desire for a new political coalition that would revivify the sort of ideology and political culture which produced the World’s Fairs of the 1890s.
Well, I’m still far from convinced that Trump’s larger coalition is worthy to carry forth that vision; between liberal states openly defying or subverting the vision and purpose of the project on the one hand, and tasteless red-state hobbits serving up mediocre chintzy slop on the other, there are plenty of potential pitfalls facing this project. (It’s also not exactly unlikely that the United States will be embroiled in a serious shooting war by this point, which would render the whole thing fairly moot.) However, I want to give him very sincere and vociferous credit for this idea; between this and the fact that he (or possibly, by that point, his Vice President) will preside over the next Summer Olympics, Trump will have the opportunity to genuinely glorify this country and contribute to a cultural renaissance. Whether or not he makes the most of such an opportunity is anyone’s guess, but there’s no part of me that can even entertain the idea that a Kamala Harris administration would have been a more capable steward of such a momentous occasion.
I'm only now just reading this post, but I think you misinterpret the Nietzchean pole of the Online Right, which is dedicated toward reforming Morality in a eugenic direction. This does manifest as a glorification of paganism, Aryan conquerors and the like, which (correctly) regard that thumos as fundamentally eugenic in nature. It was violent, and it was eugenic.
And there's a big difference between pirates and barbarian warlords! With the latter representing an undeniably violent but Civilizing force of nature, and the former actually representing a slave morality, or slave revolt in opposition to Civilization. I can't say I've ever seen the Online Right glorify pirates, as much as relate them to a force, if anything, Semitic in nature- in contest against civilized behavior. This dynamic is exuded by any Hollywood production which is careful to contrast, i.e. the Pirate culture with that of the British Empire. There's a conflict there, and Nietzsche is not on the side of the pirates. Nietzsche is on the side of the British Empire, and Hollywood is on the side of the Pirates.
So I think you misinterpret the Nietzchean perspective. The Nietzchean perspective is- how do we reform Morality to orient Civilization in a eugenic direction? And you seem pretty aligned with that being the operative question of the day. You say you don't want to live under the Ubermensch, but the Ubermensch is the man/men who accomplish that task of reforming Morality, or as you acknowledge, casting off the slave morality that rules over us.
Nietzsche also directly compares Merchant Morality to Pirate Morality, calling the former a refinement of the latter:
I just found that part of your comment interesting because in my experience the Nietzschean Right are the only ones who interpret pirates in popular culture as a symbolic glorification of counter-civilizational slave morality.
I think this difference is absolutely fake. Both are anti-civilization.
This is also nonsense. Mercantile trade is a vital part of actual civilization.
Ultimately this comes down to the fact that I do not believe that our society had become so rotten and degenerate that we need violent men to conquer and remake it. I believe that the current institutions we have are quite sufficiently well-equipped to accomplish eugenic ends without extreme violence and predation - hallmarks of all barbarian warlords - being necessary at all.
I'm really curious as to what exactly you think the Roman Empire was except tribal warlords that conquered the Italian Peninsula and then put pen to paper formalizing their rule? Ditto for literally any Empire you would regard as civilization? Especially the United States of America?
Certainly that is the primordial beginning of Rome. The Roman conquest of most of Italy took place several centuries before the blossoming of Rome into a proper empire, though. So yes, one can point to any empire as having its roots in barbarian warlords, if one chooses an arbitrarily long time frame. The Anglo-Saxons who conquered the post-Roman Britons were textbook barbarians, but that doesn’t mean that the refined and mature imperial civilization of Britain was equally barbaric.
I think Nietzsche and the Online Right are correct to point to a profound difference, a moral and even genealogical difference between the Anglo-Saxons who conquered a continent and Pirates who harrassed the forces of civilization out of bitterness and desperation owing to their low status. Nietzsche is correct to identify the former, as it percolates into Civilization, as a Master Morality and rote piracy as a Slave morality.
As a Nietzschean I find it abhorrent to compare the Anglo-Saxons to Pirates. One was building civilization, the other was trying to undermine it.
What aspects of pre-1066 Anglo-Saxon culture do you find particularly impressive or admirable? They strike me as no better or more civilized than any of the other mystery-meat Germanic tribes who kicked around the ruins of post-Roman Europe for a few hundred years before they figured out how to do Civilization again. The Normans were at least a more refined and literary people given their great level of integration with the continent.
And the Lombards and Ostrogoths didn’t? I mean, what are we talking about here? The armies of illiterate savages who sacked Rome were actually a civilizing force, but the pirate captains and their crew who harried the Caribbean were anti-civilization? What is the difference between these classes of people, other than the boats?
King Alfred passed a law for universal (free male) literacy in about 800: https://cpercy.artsci.utoronto.ca/courses/1001Guthrie.htm and Old English was the second vulgar (of the common people) European language used in widespread writing after the fall of Rome (the first was Old Irish).
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link