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 -
Some Guy writes a riveting blog which often includes extended anecdotes purportedly from his childhood and youth. Most of these mix horror, humor, pathos, and sentimentality into a compelling brew. One of his stories ends with his Dad telling him "I don’t fucking care if you’re a faggot or anything. You’re still my son and I still love you". Another is titled "My Micronesian Stepfather was a White Supremacist Amateur Elvis Impersonator". It seems unlikely that all the stories could possibly be true; if they are his is truly one of the more unlucky childhoods of anyone in the United States, and his ability to transcend it to become (what seems to be) an upstanding citizen is miraculous. But in another sense, it doesn't really matter if these stories are true: even as fiction they lose none of their power. Each of these stories could happen, and they contain a core of truth about large swaths of our society.
Some Guy seems to (cautiously and mildly) align with Jordan Peterson on the topic of Cultural Christianity: that is, the concept that even if you don't believe in God, or the Incarnation, or the Resurrection, you should still go to church and perform the outward rituals and ceremonies of the Christian religion. Christianity has, as a meme, proved itself to be pro-social, pro-growth, and pro-peace and we don't have a better replacement. Better to treat Christianity as a Chesterton Fence and embrace it even against your reason than to cast it aside and be left in a Nietzschean void.
Some Guy recently published an article in favor of Cultural Christianity. His main goal in the essay seems to be to convince sympathetic atheists to attend religious services. He calls the "obvious" objections distractions, and seems to think that many of these objections will be naturally addressed through interactions with the religious community. If he is holds orthodox Christian views (I believe he is Roman Catholic), then such questions could only be addressed truthfully in the Church; but he asks these atheists to attend synagogues and mosques as well. Perhaps he considers any religious exposure a positive step in an atheist's journey towards Christ.
In his next section of the essay on Dawkins, he reveals another glimpse into the way he thinks of Christianity. Given the question "Do you believe Jesus died for our sins?", he answers "Yes, but you have to begin from the position that Jesus wasn’t just some guy who arbitrarily claimed a particular title. It was as if morality itself became a person. I find the moral innovations of Jesus to be something close to the mechanical equivalent of finding a functioning F-35 jet plane in ancient Egypt. Do you know what people were like before that guy got nailed to a cross? Crack open a history book.". What an astonishing thing to say! "Jesus died for our sins" is "real" because after Jesus died, we literally sinned less! We went from barbaric and cruel to civilized and moral*.
I'm guessing that the following is a fair summary of Some Guy's theology: Some Guy believes in God. He believes God reveals himself in various ways. Humanity, in its own way, tries to comprehend the transcendent Truth, and does so imperfectly. Over time, humanity gains more and more knowledge of God. Judaism may have been the best human effort to understand God until Christianity came along; and still holds much wisdom and truth. But both Judaism and Christianity merely scratch the surface of what we can possibly understand about God and should not be treated as the final or only word on the matter. The Gospel narrative was humanity's closest interaction with the divine (even if there wasn't a literal incarnation) and the resulting Testament gives us an opaque glimpse into that divine, using the only means that imperfect and distinctly sub-divine humanity could use. "For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known."
I disagree with this argument, but I also find it difficult to counter. It is a much more compelling line (though superficially similar) to the "all religions contain truth" platitude that many Gen Xers felt was the best way to end uncomfortable conversations in the 90s and early 00s. I do hold that humanity can never know everything about God (mathematically, this is a certainty: He is infinite, we are finite). And much like I enjoy Some Guy's writing even if his stories are fiction, I accept that there is much wisdom and truth in parables and fiction. As Jordan Peterson might say, "there is more truth in Dostoyevsky than in a newspaper". People will fight and die for an idea much more readily than they will fight and die for a fact. Someone who "believes" in Christianity in such a way could even say the Nicene Creed with a clear conscience: while the words may not be literally true they come the closest that we can come today in capturing our understanding of God.
And yet, the Bible makes many assertions that do not countenance ambiguity. "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.". "Today you will be with me in paradise". And "For if the dead do not rise, then Christ is not risen. And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins! .... If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable." These are not the words of apostles that are struggling to describe the transcendent: these are definitive statements made by those who believed they were writing factual accounts. Without the literal Incarnation, the Crucifixion, and the Resurrection, we truly do not have hope and are among all the most to be pitied.
*Empirically, I do not find this argument compelling...humanity even in "Christian" Europe remained quite "cruel" (at least by modern sensibilities). Yes, Christianity elevated the status of children, women, and the downtrodden; but wars and violence continued (and continue) to be the norm.
I think the way that Christianity works — and the only way it can work — is if Jesus is perceived as a person in your community and becomes the sole measure of social status within your community. Everything else is corollary to this, an innocent dramatic exaggeration, or mystical poetry. You can learn every theological argument about God and not have your behavior changed; you can be an atheist yet a Bible scholar; and you can be a literalist Bible-thumper who also thumps his family. There’s no shortage of Bible-expert Church-going villainy in the world. But if Jesus (as moral exemplar) is the sole measure of all social status — all social interest, all self-worth, all peer competition and ranking, all value — then this will necessarily change your behavior. You might have your behavior changed kicking and screaming, feeling like a “prisoner of Christ”, or “a servant doing his duty”, or a chained foreign soldier dragged behind Christ’s imperial victory procession, but your behavior will certainly be changed for the better if all socially-mediated reward is contingent upon the imitation of Christ.
Christianity as a spectacle-sport where you hear someone charismatic and then go about your week (unless your whim or nonexistent “self-discipline” tells you to do something) is not its original form. It is amply shown in the primary text document of the religion that participation is cult-like. The apostles give up everything to follow their teacher across the nation. They exist at times in complete poverty. It is required that the church become your new family (Mt 10:37, 12:49). Disagreements between members are mediated by the community and the unrepentant defector is thrown out. The Church Fathers write about banning Christians from ever going to the theater or attending sports. They share everything in common and wash each other’s feet. The religion is called “the Brotherhood” — women don’t speak in church, and they keep their hair covered.
Imagine you were transported into this world. You try to bring up the local gladiatorial games and an elder gently rebukes you. Someone else talks about being a Rome First voter — they are gently corrected. Someone tries to talk about all he knows about the Bible — he is immediately questioned on why he is claiming to know anything at all when the illiterate shepherd boy shows greater faith through his conduct. Now imagine that, because everyone believes they will be judged by every unproductive and idle word they speak, that the conversations are always centered on (1) encouragement of moral conduct, (2) support for one’s moral conduct, (3) genuine brotherly love, (4) that the only thing of value is whether moral conduct is pursued as shown through their social superior. You will not get any social reinforcement or friendship except if you do this, and the only thing being reinforced is if you do this. What an alien world: no distractions, no (false) status signaling, no “empty knowledge”, just pure… effective altruism? In a Christian sense that is. “Taking captive every thought for Christ”. Poetry and hymns and incense are piled onto this substantive kernel, as morale-boost, but are not the main thing.
I like Jordan Peterson as an “idea factory” — he has produced some great ideas and a lot of bad ones. But JP is more like a pastor than an exemplar: he gives a dramatic performance with little evidence to back up his way of life. He extols cleaning his room and his own room is a mess. He extols reason but he cold turkey’d his psychiatric medication, putting him in a coma in Russia. His daughter is a divorced single mom who once met up with Andrew Tate. He literally only eats steak. He yaps a lot and sells a lot of courses. He is very much not Christ-like, just to draw the comparison.
The world you write about has zero antibodies against a woke style purity spiral takeover where the infiltrators find their niche and then start gently rebuking everyone for everything because they don't adhere to the rituals in the 100% correct way, always ensuring that they are "holier than thou" for the people they are rebuking.
Then they can start the whole ostracizing process where they begin throwing out people permanently for more and more minor stuff, always ensuring that the group currently being thrown out is a relatively small minority to ensure you have the support of the "silent majority" with the implied threat that whoever speaks out against you are acting like the enemy of the day and you wouldn't want to be like them now would you? When they are eliminated you move on to the next slice and so on.
Extra care must be taken to swiftly eliminate anyone who might notice what you are doing but you are well placed here because your instrumental goal is takeover and you can dedicate all your time to it, only mimicking the true values of the group enough to keep up appearances while the people trying to stop you presumably actually believe in the values of the group and so they have to waste more of their time on that, meaning they have less time to fight you.
Eventually you'll end up in complete control of everything until the spiral gets smaller and smaller and the whole movement is effectively dead because most everyone who used to be in it now has a genuine grievance against it and now wants nothing to do with it, much like what's happening to woke right now. Plus because of your salami tactics people in different "layers" of being kicked out of the original movement now likely hate each other more too because you fed propaganda to the later layers about why the earlier layers were extremely bad people and should be shunned, so now they are less likely to come together and re coalesce into a new movement with similar goals as the initial one but without you.
Were I transported into such a world I'd try and do such a thing, not because I particularly dislike Christianity or anything, but for personal amusement (because like you said, no talking about the local gladiatorial games, so what else is there to do to keep myself busy other than try and take over the movement?) and just to prove to myself that I was capable of it. I'd give myself around 20% or so chance of being successful.
On the contrary, such a culture would, at first blush, seem to be substantially hardened against such threats compared to the current mainstream one. As our dear departed Barnaby and Hlynka were fond of pointing out, you don't survive as a sincere traditionalist in the year of our lord twenty-twenty-something without developing strong "antibodies" against entryism and parasites.
How do you plan to status-maximize and "take over" a society where overt status-maximization gets you kicked out? Sure you might be able to fool some people some of the time but you'll never fool everyone all of the time.
Sure, I agree modern day trad societies are rightfully very wary of overt status maximizers because they have plenty of comparable real life examples they can learn from but the comparison in the parent comment was being made with Early Christians. Those people were a virgin population that had zero defenses against this sort of stuff. Honestly they'd probably even welcome the initial stages of the takeover because at that point they would have zero idea just what was setting itself up among its midst and treat the infiltrators as just another ordinary bunch of converts which were more keen than most people.
If only they could have possibly been not completely naive to the idea that folks like you would intentionally do evil things in attempts to wreck stuff. Hmmm... what's this?
Oh, but you say, it's only a particular type of evil attempt to subvert others that you'd try. You'd try being overly-restrictive in your readings, giving you license to ostracize others and kick them out. If only they weren't completely naive to some people being overly-restrictive in their readings! Hmmm... what's this?
Obviously, there are no guarantees when trying to protect something from evil people such as yourself trying to subvert it. Like all of civilization, it takes work and effort to be on guard for folks like you. You've done a pretty good number on society in general, but at least now you've come clean in saying that you like to destroy societies for the lulz. I'll try to remember that you're a self-admitted bad faith actor the next time you make suggestions as to what our current society should do.
Evil? I do not consider myself evil at all, I would do this out of boredom rather than evil. Provide me with a more interesting way to spend my time (say by discussing the local gladiatorial games) and I'd spend my life doing that instead. Our current society has enough other high quality outlets for boredom that attempting to destroy it doesn't make sense, plus I mostly like our current society and think tinkering around the edges is better than destruction.
I don't consider my hypothetical discussions here as being any more evidence of me being evil than a similar discussion I might have about eradicating every last trace of the Carolingians from the earth in Crusader Kings III. That wouldn't make me a genocidal maniac, just a bored person looking for a way to spend my time in an interesting way. In fact if you put me in the environment above but gave me access to a super secret side room with a PC installed with enough of the latest games to last a lifetime I'd probably just whittle my life away playing the games rather than try and usurp society because the former is simply more fun than the latter (which is at least more fun than dedicating your life to be closer to Jesus).
In fact I will go one step further: I will say a society where everyone has a mindset like me will very likely be extremely successful while a society where everyone is like the ordinary man will collapse post haste. Only caveat is that I am not smart enough to invent all the things we take for granted these days, so a society of BurdensomeCounts will probably stagnate around the Iron Age, but then again the society made up of copies of the ordinary man only wouldn't even get past the mesolithic. But assuming that there's a proper distribution of intelligence for both cases (so we have the few super geniuses who really propel humanity forward) a society made up of people like me would very quickly get settled into a game theoretic positive equilibrium where any deviations are swiftly punished (we would be able to impose this equilibrium because we are smart enough to understand the payoffs), and then everyone, down to the lowest mentally retarded BurdensomeCountClone would behave because e.g. the rest of society would be open to beating him whenever he defected, realizing that he is so stupid that the only thing that works on him is something that works on dogs, namely operant conditioning.
However a society made up of people who think like the ordinary man would devolve very quickly into some socialism-esque monster that keeps everyone poor and suffering where the members preferentially give scarce resources to the failures rather than the successes (you'd prefer to invest in a successful company rather than a failing one, wouldn't you? So then why to we pretend it's better to invest in failing humans rather than successful ones?) who proceed to squander them, but yet another fault of this society is that it is too "luvvie" to impose the correct punishment on defectors so the farce will go on, leading to a veritable kakistocracy before long that goes nowhere and squanders all its potential.
Such a world would in fact be an affront to Nature, Red in Tooth and Claw and I would say that it is Just and Right, nay, a Duty, for the next BurdensomeCount genetic mutation that arises to attempt to take over and rule in a manner that better befits humanity. Eventually one of these mutations will be successful and then that society can break out of its self imposed trap and proceed on the path to Greatness.
Now of course our real life society is none of these, fortunately we have enough correct thinkers running things that we can control the worst impulses of the ordinary masses and we've ensured a system where there's at least some sort of link where the successful get more stuff to play with which means Humanity will eventually reach escape velocity but the current situation can be thought of more like a horse cart in how quickly it gets us to our rightful place as suzerain of the observable universe while I want a society where we're more like a rocket ship in how quickly we get there.
But this works both ways: yes you can use it to criticize the person who tries to be holier than thou, but the person who wants to discuss the local gladiatorial games can also use this to push back against and usurp the elders who want to stop people discussing the local gladiatorial games because it's not Christ-like. This makes me think a better strategy for usurpation would be to use a two pronged approach where we have two groups of usurpers secretly working together, one on the ultra strict side where they try to slice off the less intensely committed genuine believers (Apollonian) while on the other side you have a rabble of superficially committed people who slowly yet openly try to degrade community norms, all the while using passages like your ones above to discredit the true elders (Dionysian) and lead a bottom up revolt against them. So now instead of just slicing people on one side you're doing it on both sides.
You'd need to ensure that there's minimal friendly fire (the Apollonians never go after the Dionysians unless absolutely necessary to keep up pretenses) but an additional benefit you get now is that the true believers are gonna see the hypocrisy of the Apollonians who are blended in with the true elders in how they go after them for minor infractions but seem to leave the Dionysians relatively unchecked. Assuming the Apollonians are relatively well blended the true believers will blame the hypocrisy on all the church elders as a group, thereby causing further internal strife and fragmentation.
All this is not even getting to the fact that the early Church members were very willing as a group to die for their beliefs. Your opponents an-heroing themselves is one of the biggest blessings you could ever ask for. Getting the most zealous true believers to choose to be persecuted and die (like how Ignatius of Antioch did) is a boon to you, even if it leads to more short term converts as the new members are likely the most uncertain about the faith so if you can get one of your agents to go over and feed them your twisted version of the beliefs before the OG ones reach them you'll have a higher success rate than trying out your tricks on already committed members. Plus once the true believer elder is dead they are no longer able to contradict you and what you are doing, you can even try to coopt their teachings and twist them around to to your goals by saying stuff like "XYZ is what St. ABC really meant in their writings, we are the true intellectual descendants of their thought rather than those other guys there" after they are gone.
Like I said, all these passages people are quoting are making it sound like a bigger and bigger challenge and all that's doing is piquing my curiosity and making me even more interested in trying my hand at it (this is probably a more general trait of Elite Human Capital but that's a discussion for another day). Maybe 20% was generous for me on my own, but I think if you give me 50x clones of me and a definable target, e.g. "you and your group are placed in Antioch in the year 200 AD. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to usurp the Church so much that by the year 400 AD Mithraism has a bigger following than Christianity across the Roman empire" I'd still say we would have like a 20% chance of success.
EDIT: Reading this again I sorta sound like Judge Holden which doesn't really help me when I'm trying to say "I'm not evil", maybe a different tone would have been better.
A bit, yeah. I don't think it's all that redeeming to say that it is everyone else's job to entertain you, because if you get bored and can't think of anything other than rapin' and murderin' to do to keep yourself busy, well then...
Boredom is not evil, but it is also not an excuse for choosing evil acts. You could instead put your bored mind toward coming up with positive acts to improve matters.
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