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 -
What do you think about the whole question of austim rates? I am listening to Trump's press conference from 2024/12/16 and at one point he talks about how he totally supports vaccines like the one against Polio, but he wants to research modern vaccines more thoroughly, and now we have 100 times the autism rates that we did back in the day?
My immediate reaction was to think that this is either false or just an artifact of reporting rates and aspects of modern society that have nothing to do with vaccines. But who knows, maybe there is actually some underlying real issue. I certainly don't believe that there is 100 times more autism now than there was back in the day, but I think it's certainly possible that maybe there's like 2 times more. Not saying there is, necessarily, but I find it credible at least.
My opinion is that most likely, supposed changes in autism rates have much more to do with changing social phenomena than with anything more on the biological level. The more humanity pushes mentally away from its instincts' origins back on the African savannah hundreds of thousands of years ago, the more one will see supposed mental disorder rates go up. The more stress is necessary to turn a human infant into a modern human adult, the more mental trouble is probably likely.
To be fair, this is neither new or necessarily a bad thing. I am not a Christian, but I believe that Christianity did a lot of good in changing human morality from "haha tough shit you're a slave who got crucified, the gods must hate you" to "even the lowest man can talk to God".
And in doing this, Christianity pushed us a bit further from the monkeys. Which maybe added some stress to us, but also helped us a lot... and in any case, the added stress might be made up for by the new morality's tendency to make society less scary than one based on blood feuds, which then in turn might even help unlock creativity and scientific revolutions and economic prosperity and so on.
In any case, not sure how Christianity did it, I like reading about early Christianity but I still have no clear idea how it won against its competitors. Yet it is pretty clear to me that it pushed us further from the monkeys, despite its supposed core being the rather unscientific idea of having faith that a man a while ago rose from the dead.
Did the average Roman of those days think that the Christians were insane? Did he think they were evil? Did he secretly sympathize with them?
But back to autism... what do self-reported autists think about the genesis of autism? My personal opinion is that autism is probably almost entirely determined by genetics and early upbringing, yet there may be cultural factors that make it so early childhoood development is extra stressful, in part because it takes us further away from the monkey. Which would tend to more and more children becoming in some way abnormal, because they face more childhood stresses in being made into a modern human. Which is not to say that is necessarily a bad thing. Mentally so-called abnormal people in the modern West are probably much less violent on average than the typical person back in the Bronze Age
Is there any reason to think that autism is well-defined? If there is, is there any reason to think that autism rates have been rising? And to be fair, if the rates were rising, would that even necessarily be a bad thing? It's hard to say, most self-reported autists whose words I've heard expressed that they would rather not be autistic. So I guess making there be less autism in the world would be a good thing. I don't know, I do know that there is also a very small subset of autists out there who think that autism is more like a new Homo species, similar to the whole X-Men concept of mutant superhumans. I write all this as someone who has very limited experience with autism. I have known autistic people before, but to a very limited degree. Apologies for any offense. My understanding of autism is mostly limited to the 4chan meme idea of "autism", not to the medically-defined phenomenon.
Christians, like Jews before them, asserted quite strongly that the gods the average Roman of the day worshiped were false: non-existant and worthless at best, if not evil. This was unique to Jews and Christians, polytheist cultures in the region usually had an inclusive attitude towards foreign gods; not usually calling them "not real gods", but just ignoring them or sometimes adapting them within their own mythology.
This exclusive approach to God tended not to make monotheists very sympathetic to Romans.
But if that is true, then how in the world did the Christians win?
I'm not sure what part of pigeonburger's narrative makes it implausible that Christians might have done a good job of convincing pagans of this?
Indeed, on a more macrohistorical level, one of the observations I would make is that firstly polytheism seems remarkably fragile or weak in the face of robust monotheism, and secondly monotheisms seem remarkably resilient to each other.
Both Christianity and Islam expanded remarkably quickly and did excellent jobs of sweeping over pagan resistance - what efforts there were (sorry Julian) were mostly ineffective. Even factoring in that both Christians and Muslims used the sword and other incentives to an extent, they did this very rapidly. (And the sword by itself hardly seems to explain it - after all, polytheists are just as good at using brute force as monotheists.) To an extent we can continue to see this today, where traditional religions frequently don't put up much of a fight, looking through more recent evangelical or da'wah efforts in Africa or Asia. Hinduism is probably the only great polytheism to have resisted very strongly, and Hinduism has always had a bunch of quasi-monotheistic tendencies of its own.
Meanwhile, Christianity and Islam have both been noticeably ineffective at converting each other. There are a handful of exceptions (Muslims in Spain, Christians through parts of the Middle East), but for the most part, and barring a handful of individual exceptions, monotheist-to-monotheist conversions are quite rare. Judaism is also a strong example here. The biggest exception I think of here is Zoroastrianism, which did mostly collapse in the face of Islam (though it took a few centuries; most of early Islamic Persia remained Zoroastrian for a few centuries), and maybe you could argue Manichaeism or something as a Roman monotheism that also fell before Christianity, but in general it seems that when a monotheistic religion gets entrenched, it is extraordinarily difficult to convert people away from en masse.
Of course, today there's a third combatant in the ring in the form of atheism/secularism/irreligion, and it seems to be doing pretty well at smashing both Christianity and Islam. Perhaps in a few centuries my descendants will be discussing how zero-theism outcompeted monotheism just as monotheism outcompeted polytheism. But please forgive me if I hope that is not the case.
It seems like substituting "Abrahamic religions" for "monotheistic religions" in your model makes it fit with fewer epicycles.
Perhaps, but then I think I would have to deal with a new epicycle - what makes Abrahamic religion different to other monotheism? If there's an Abrahamic advantage separate from just monotheism, what is it?
A pro-social covenant premise?
Abrahamic religions have a common premise that not only is [God] real and present, but that while love may be unconditional favor is not- if you / your collective society sins greatly, not only will god permit the outsider to overthrow you, but God may throw the first meteor. On the flip side, the way to earn / retain gods favor is a bunch of tenants / commandments that, coincidentally, happen to be good for healthy societies that can succeed in cooperation, unleashing those benefits of scale.
This sort of covenant premise is not inherent to monotheism. You could believe there is one god, but that it expects nothing of you and implies no type of action. You could believe there is one god, but they are eternally absent. There could be one god, but it hates you. There could be a god and a covenant, but the demands are less socially beneficial. Etc.
It's interesting to note that the other ancient monotheistic religion which survives to this day, Zoroastrianism, is also very pro-social and big on sin reducing the favor of God.
The difference is that Abrahamaic religions command their adherents to improve the world. Zoroastrianism does not; in Zoroastrianism the adherent is commanded to do charity, but it doesn't actually matter if that charity helps the recipient. There is no equivalent to teach a man to fish as there is with Christian charity, which is big on education, hospitals, etc in comparison.
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