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 -
I have a very smart friend who is also a talented decoupler, who could easily be a very quality contributer here if dealing with Culture War issues didn't make him bleed from the eyes. He is literally the only person I know whose Facebook posts about politics did not make me lose respect for him. Over the years, we have had a number of conversations about contentious CW topics that flirted with the border of Adversarial Collaboration, long detailed discussions handled with fairness, civility, and mutual respect.
Until the topic of student loan forgiveness came up. That discussion was unusually heated. He seemed almost frantic, heated about PPP loan forgiveness hypocrites and just not giving the expected degree of decoupled consideration for arguments about how the loan forgiveness was an overall terrible policy. He seemed personally invested, felt personally attacked, in a way he hadn't in conversations about abortion or gun control.
The thing is, my friend is a teacher. Education is a big factor in his identity. He has taught maybe a thousand students who might benefit from the forgiveness plan. Attacks on that plan are an attack on his class identity. Politics is the mind-killer, and it is a sad fact that a rationalist's Art is most likely to abandon him when he needs it most (or, rather, he will fail the Art). And so my arguments sparked an uncontrolled emotional response that was missing from other, less identity-laden topics.
The second thing is, I've been on the other side of that coin, back when we had our multi-day deep dive into the gun control literature. Gun control hits me emotionally as an attack on my class identity. When I hear a gun control proposal, before I hear a single specific detail or spend a second considering merits, some lizard part of my brain interprets it as "Fuck you, your father, your father's father, and your father's father's father". (Does the word "father" still mean anything to you?) I've begged off having spontaneous discussions about it in person, even with close family, because I don't want to spike myself into rage and other unpleasant feelings. During that deep dive, my excellent friend was so calm, fair and rational that he overrode that concern, and I ended up learning a lot and having a great time.
And I'm thinking about this now, because I notice a similar reaction to the trans discussion downthread. The idea that my children might be brainwashed into taking evolutionarily self-destructive choices, and I can't even attempt to oppose it without facing the full wrath of the modern State, kindles a pre-rational, animal panic/fury response. I find myself getting heated to an unusual degree just thinking about it. I don't think I'm particularly "anti-trans". I was willing to be accepting two decades ago, when I first learned it was even a thing. But something about the thought that the phenomenon might hit my kids triggers an atavistic survival instinct. That reaction doesn't trigger when I consider my son dressing like David Bowie, or my daughter playing sports. It doesn't happen when a peer goes trans. It triggers at the thought of one of the two corporeal incarnations of my DNA and memes getting sucked into a fraught psychological memeplex, and particularly at the thought of them being medically sterilized.
Imagine an alternate world where any time a kid expressed suicidal ideation, government employees would firmly nudge them towards euthanasia, and would jail you as a parent for protesting. That's roughly the level of emotional hit - some part of me considers this an existential threat.
But what are the odds? 0.3%? That's not that much worse than the odds of childhood cancer, or other kind of unexpected death that a healthy mind doesn't overmuch worry about, and deals with gracefully if it comes. But now it's apparently something more like nearly 2%? That hits me in the Papa-Bear-Who-Wants-Grandkids-In-Space-Forever. And it seems very likely that a lot of that is social contagion or could otherwise be wildly reduced with a minimal degree of skepticism towards youth fads.
So, two points. One, I think it might behoove activist types (assuming we're not in pure conflict theory) to try to notice when one of their pushes is hitting this sort of reaction and figure out a path to undermine or alleviate it.
Secondly, a question for the community: What gets you fiercely activated, beyond what you can rationally justify? What CW issues feels like molten hot war to the hilt, where your instincts fight to throw aside all reason and charity? Any thoughts about why?
Why not just get vaccinated? I also thought it was kind if bullshit but did it to avoid running my social life.
Are you concerned about health risks or is it a principle?
At first I just saw it as very unnecessary, since I had already had covid in the summer of 2020 and it had been harmless. By the winter of that year the vaccines were out but I was still feeling safe without one. Then everyone went crazy as described above, plus the creepy politics and media campaigns, and from there on you might call it principle or just spite.
The whole thing caught me off guard; I never saw the social pressure and the social ruin coming until was already too late. I had mistakenly assumed that people around me were running on mistake theory and that my reasons might matter to them. Silly me, it was conflict theory all along and I had strayed into the enemy camp.
But had I seen it coming, I would have done the same anyways. Only with more firing back right away.
Vaccine safety didn't factor into it for me.
I mistakenly assumed that everyone around me regularly got flu shots and would be totally ok getting experiencing less than a second of pain to avoid harming my family. And I suppose now that the old folks are already dead from covid I shouldn't have anything to worry about-it's not like they're going to die again. But just like you, I feel like it's the principal of the thing. Choose Team Mankind or Team Virus (or, hell, Team China if you believe in lab leak theory.)
I think people should have the absolute authority to choose what goes in their arm, but if I see someone with 'death to /u/evinceo's ancestors' tattooed on their forehead, I'm going to treat them with some amount of contempt.
Choose team liberty over team coercion. Choose team bayesian inference over team blind obedience. Choose team calm over team panic. Choose team economy over team lockdown. We can all spin this any way we like.
I'm really not sure what you're saying here, except for the surface-level reading which seems both obvious and very unlikely to occur.
Same, but please also make good decisions, not just decisions based on vibes.
What does that have to do with getting a shot?
I was hamhandedly drawing an equivalence, ie, a very expensive signal to show that you don't care about me and mine. Which is fine. I don't want to coerce you into caring about who you hurt. But it might affect my decision to invite you to parties, yeah?
Consider the pledge of allegiance-US school kids recite it every day. Compared to getting a yearly shot, this is an astounding amount of time, and a much clearer signal of conformity. I assume you're US-based, did you refuse that too?
And you never did mention if you got your flu shots.
I never got a flu shot. Why would I? I'm neither old nor immunocompromised.
Here's my good decision: I don't worry about what's not a problem. The flu is not a problem. It comes, it goes, its effects are negligible. Covid was not a problem. It came, it went, its effects were negligible. Nobody I know had any problems from covid more serious than flu symptoms, no matter how sickly or old they were. Yes, damn my lying eyes, the cost is low even for small benefits so just get the shot you troglodyte, and again as per the actual topic of this sub-thread: No. There is an ongoing conflict here, and I will not accommodate the opposition by retreating into mistake theory while they sit on their conflict theory gains.
Getting the shot, especially when there's no need for it, validates the ideological crusaders and policy-makers and nudges the overton window in their favor. Since their policies and ideologies would give away great amounts of freedom, prosperity and social trust in exchange for marginal protection from a fairly harmless virus, and no just "getting a shot" cannot be separated from this memeplex, I would rather spite them for all the harm they've done than cooperate to attain some minor benefit.
Do you care about me and mine? All that I can see is that both care about how our societies behave, where you are afraid of society's vulnerability to viruses and I'm afraid of society's vulnerability to totalitarianism/social engineering/witch hunts.
You assume incorrectly.
Because A) getting the flu can suck even if you're young and B) you might infect a child or elderly person, or infect someone who does.
I suspect you've had colds rather than the flu. When I was young I had a flu which kicked my ass. Though I'd actually been vaccinated, so I suppose that's not the strongest argument for vaccination!
Well not for those who didn't die I suppose.
Your anecdote; mine is that people I cared about died.
My initial post regarding the face tattoo wasn't conflict theory enough?
Let me get this straight: the insurmountably small protection you get from a covid shot is negligible, but the insurmountably small influence on policy you exert by getting one isn't?
This is hard sentiment to sympathize with, because you're hurting everyone to spite them. This is the type of thing I was comparing to a face tat. Or spitting in people's hamburgers because you hate your boss at McDonald's.
I would prefer that y'all not get sick, if that matters to ya.
I see 'surrendering to a virus' as just as dangerous a meme as what you've listed. We are mankind and we make shit extinct, damn the consequences.
That might explain some of the disconnect then. Maybe you live somewhere where the lockdowns were truly draconian. Stateside they, well, weren't. Unfortunately, having not actually imposed a lockdown from the top down, nobody had the proper authority to lift the lockdown either, so you've still got some folks for whom 2020 never ended, which is its own kind of problem, while the rest of us have long since resumed our lives.
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