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 scattered thoughts on personal Agency.
A number of recent comments about consciousness, agency, neurological development, and Trump's first couple weeks in office have gotten me thinking...
When you first bring home a new baby they are functionally just a lump of flesh that converts milk into noise and feces. At some point in the first year they transition from a mostly inert lump to a small animal seemingly intent on ending itself. Like a moth beating itself against a light-bulb you can practically watch the random path Selection algorithm execute in real time. Over time though a transition occurs. Simple insect level algorithms give way to basic instincts (eat, sleep, squirrel!) which are in turn displaced by something else. What exactly that something is hard to characterize, but one day you wake up, look down there is suddenly a tiny person looking back at you. Someone with a personality, opinions, and a complete disregard for neither propriety nor posterity. They just do things.
My point with this tangent is that children (especially small children) are basically just little bundles of human agency. I make this observation to contrast it with a sentiment that I commonly see expressed here. The sentiment that "the voters", "the normies", "the plebs", or whatever you want to call the teaming masses of humanity, are "barely sentient" and "less developed" than those of us that post on theMotte and that "the normie" will inevitably believe/do whatever they are told to by their betters. In short, "the normies" are not agents in their own right. When I see such sentiments expressed, one of my first thoughts is often "this person has clearly never tried to wrangle a 4-year-old"
It seems to me that the minimization (if not outright dismissal) of the role human consciousness and agency plays has become a core belief of our intellectual/managerial class. Most of our existing intellectual and managerial norms seem to be oriented around deflecting and diffusing blame such that no one person ever has to make and, and more importantly own, a decision. It's not the individual who is responsible, it is society, it is the process, it is "structural" issues. The buck is passed from hand, to hand, to hand, until it is worn away to nothing.
Nobody feels responsible for anything and so everything just gets shittier.
I think that much the managerial class' collective freak-out over and antipathy towards Trump, Musk, and "MAGA" movement in general is rooted in the observation that "the normies" have demonstrated that they are not going to just believe/do whatever they are told. That they are agents in their own right.
"You can't just decide to not trust someone because they lied to you in the past, or because they might have an agenda" cries the priestly caste. "The fuck we can't" the normies respond. "Nobody elected Elon Musk" cries the priestly caste, "We elected the guy who said he would hire Musk to take a chainsaw to the federal budget. Also, who elected you?" the normies respond.
I am surprised that other people seem to be surprised by this. As Steven A Smith put it in his interview with Bill Maher, most of the complaints about Trump in the last 2-3 week boil down to "he did what he said he was going to do". That is not much of a criticism if you ask me, if anything it is an endorsement because who the fuck does that these days?
I don’t deny human agency. There are three issues here that create the teeming masses as easily manipulated.
First, most people don’t know or understand politics. Not just in the third grade civics class stuff (although I would seriously doubt that the median voter has more than a vague idea of how the government is supposed to work), but the informal mechanisms that make the sausage. And so most people could probably give a better explanation of how American football works and tge strategic planning of plays in football than could do the same in American politics.
And the world in which the political system is being used is hugely complex on top of that. In the best of circumstances, politics should be the job of professional leaders who not only know the system inside and out, but understand how the complex systems that the political system works within. The people working on trade and international relations in MENA understand the players, they understand the religion and more than likely speak Arabic, Hebrew, and Persian well enough to read newspapers and get an idea of public sentiment. People working on the tax code generally have degrees in economic theory and management. They talk to the movers in big industries and know how that code affects them.
The average person has an unrelated job that takes up 50 hours a week, kids, and hobbies. He is unlikely to have the time to sit down and become well informed about dozens of issues in politics. That’s assuming he actually wants to. Which most people actually don’t. Normies don’t watch Washington like even we do. They’re interested in TV shows on Netflix, sports, and other similar topics.
Add in the literal firehose of propaganda beamed into every home, car and business all the time, and often with a singular message and purpose, and yes, normies are easily influenced to believe whatever they want to believe about their leaders and proper leadership of their country.
Yeah, I think this is basically correct. I think most people actually make pretty sensible decisions for themselves. But it is very hard to make sensible decisions for other people, and at the end of the day due to the complexity of our modern political system people are often at least in theory asked to do this.
At best, our republican system makes us a country full of hiring managers who get their idea of what the people they’re hiring actually do from a 3rd grade civics class they barely remember, and with an understanding of the issues that they glean from 30 minutes of heavily curated news be it newspapers, online news sources, or TV. The rest comes from Hollywood, through stories where certain people and certain acts are given hagiographic treatment, and certain other people are held up as villains and certain acts are considered evil. Or music celebrating causes, acts or ideas.
I don’t think it can work. It might work in the early industrial era when the world was small enough and simple enough that a person with basic literacy and numeracy could learn enough to let “common sense” be a good way to make decisions.
I think democratic government scales poorly. There's a reason that large countries tend to take on imperial tendencies. Humans have innate psychological difficulty scaling that I think comes into play here - people can only know around 200 - 400 people. As it grows, representative democracy can either be extremely unwieldy due to tremendous amounts of representatives in the government or its representatives can slowly become isolated from their constituents due to their sheer numbers.
True, but it’s also the problem that the system itself and the systems it touches are extremely complex. Democracy could work even with a decent sized population if the system is fairly simple and stable. 300,000,000 people could manage a simple tax code of five pages, or a transportation system that consists of horses, buggies, human feet, and boats powered by wind or oars. At this point, the American tax system is so complicated and has so many books of rules, it’s impossible to understand unless you are a specialist. The transportation system includes trains, busses, planes, boats, road maintenance, crossing points for trains and cars, management of the airspace for commercial traffic, rules for vehicle maintenance, traffic control and traffic laws, and probably dozens of other things im not aware of. Multiplying that by the number of things that the government does, and you have a system that nobody can understand with just a casual reading of the New York Times.
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