site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 17, 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.

16
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

It's perhaps particularly worse in them than many other ideologies, because woke-ism specifically has concepts designed to turn off critical thinking

What do you mean by this? Do you have any examples?

The concept of "lived experience" being that, when someone belonging to a demographic group that has been deemed oppressed claims something, it is to be believed without skepticism. Any sort of good-faith questioning or checking is deemed to be a form of oppression. This concept is repeated in many places, such as the "microaggression," which is, by definition, a behavior that the "microaggressor" doesn't perceive as being an aggression and is entirely up to the judgment of the "microaggressed upon" but which is still something that the potential "microaggressor" has the responsibility to avoid doing. There's also "believe women" and "believe all women," which are slogans designed specifically to push people away from applying basic good-faith skepticism to claims of fact when women make claims of specific sexual assault against individuals.

Of course, in practice it's impossible to apply this sort of thing in a consistent manner; if 2 different black people claim contradictory things to each other, then what do you do? In practice, it just means you have license to believe whoever is more convenient for your own social status and comfort while dismissing the other through various means (e.g. "internalized white supremacy"). And this sort of thing can lead to self-reinforcement, because by believing the right people, you can lead yourself to the conclusion that concepts like logical consistency and empirical science are themselves merely tools of the white supremacist patriarchy designed for the purpose of oppressing minorities; and it doesn't get much more anti-critical thinking than that.

There's also the attacking of free speech as a principle, the mockery of "Well Akshually", the attacking of "just asking questions" or playing devils advocate (you're derailing!). So there's a whole bunch of anti-heresy mechanisms in place.