site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 7, 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.

13
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Imagine a student getting plastered and, noticing her RA's MAGA cap, calling the RA a "Nazi" two hundred times.

In your hypothetical, the student is characterizing being a Nazi as detestable. In the real-life event, the student is characterizing being Black as detestable.

I'm skeptical of widespread American anti-Black racism narratives, and I don't think this case supports them (except weakly at the margin). I think it's possible (although unlikely) that the White girl doesn't harbor meaningful animus towards Black people, and that she was just grasping clumsily for an epithet that carried a powerful valence. I also assume the White girl has some fairly serious emotional problems (as do many people, such as myself) which were exacerbated by alcohol use.

Nevertheless, the White girl's behavior was grotesque. I have no objections at all to expelling her from school.

Exactly. The fact that you reach for a racial epithet when you're trying to inflict pain says something. Racism by the classic definition is thinking that someone is inferior or hating them because of their race.

Analogy, a man can't get it up, he's impotent after an accident. His wife says to him, over and over, "Honey it's fine I love you, not your dick, I don't think any less of you at all! You're still just as much a man as you were the day I married you!" Maybe he even believes her. Then she gets drunk one night, and they get into a fight, and she screams at him "You're not even a man, you can't even fuck me, you're a pathetic eunuch, half a man at best!"

Which is the truth? The polite bromides mouths when she's sober, or the hurtful epithets she reaches for when she is drunk? If someone brings it up when they want to hurt you, whatever they say sober you know they think it but they're too polite to say it sober. It's pretty obvious she does think less of him, and that she thinks he ought to think less of himself.

That said, this kind of incident is beneath notice.

I've never really understood this line of thinking, that the "real you" comes out when you're inebriated. Couldn't both sides of her - drunk and sober - represent what she really thinks, such that one could just as well say that when she's drunk she's being too impolite to say the truth?

Taggin @PutAHelmetOn as well, because this relates to his point about the "sacredness of race."

In Vino Veritas.

Alcohol affects the prefrontal cortex first. This part of the brain is responsible for judgment, reasoning, and suppressing impulsive behavior. That’s why after a few drinks you lose some of your inhibitions and feel more confident venturing out of your usual comfort zone.

For a bigger exploration see several chapters of Slingerland's Drunk or listen to him on Rogan, but at core alcohol weakens your ability to suppress impulses you had already. It does not create whole-ass new impulses.

An analogy:

I might get drunk at a party with my wife and hit on one of her female friends (or worse, one of her female enemies!). I might do 8 shots and tell her friend Brittany that she has great tits and we should hang out some time. Afterward, when my wife and/or Brittany's boyfriend confront me, I might say "I'm sorry, I was really drunk, I never would have done that sober." And everyone will understand that what I'm saying is that I wouldn't tell Brittany that I wanted to fuck her if I were sober; it's understood that my urge/impulse/desire to fuck Brittany exists when I'm sober (I'm a straight man after all!) but that absent alcohol I am capable of suppressing that urge in polite society. No one would think that meant that when I'm sober I don't think Brittany has great tits, that would be stupid.

On the other hand, if I get drunk at a party with my wife and I hit on one of her male friends, if I did 12 shots and walked up to Craig and said that I wanted to take him home and bend him over my Eames lounge chair, no amount of pleading about the top shelf tequila would convince them that I'm heterosexual. I might once again plead that I wouldn't have tried to hit on Craig if I were sober because I would suppress the urge to fuck Craig with my full-powered prefrontal cortex, but I couldn't argue that the bourbon created the urge to fuck Craig and I wouldn't have any homosexual impulses if I were sober. That homosexual urge necessarily already existed, before I started drinking, the drinking merely brought it out, suppressed my ability to suppress my urges.

Alcohol causes you to pursue your desires, it does not create those desires.

Same with any other urge I might or might not have. Alcohol doesn't produce new thoughts, just reveals old ones.

That's a nice analogy but should it also apply to people who think there are demons living in their walls after they smoke crack or any other psychoactive drug. Very compulsive and out of character behavior isn't even that uncommon among drunks. I doubt it has that much to do with one's "true character".

It's in vino veritas, not in coca veritas or in LSD veritas. Trying to apply it to other drugs, or to mental illnesses, makes it iffy. Alcohol has a specific known effect by a specific mechanism. Positing a similarity to other substances will work in some ways but not others, I lack the experiences to speak to it.

If you told me she was tweaking on meth or tripping on acid, the whole tenor of the event changes doesn't it?

"In LSD veritas" was the CIA's motto in the 60s. They tried with alcohol, but determined that alcohol wasn't good enough to be used to determine anyone's true sentiments. (neither was LSD)

People react very differently to drunkeness. Some get sad, violent, horny, lethargic, delusional or paranoid. Not all drunk behavior can be interpreted as uninhibited desire.

I would interpret most of those states as uninhibited desire in various forms. A sad drunk is sad inside all the time, the alcohol just leads them to drop the polite happy front they put up to keep moving through the day. A violent drunk is angry inside all the time, and the alcohol reduced the strength of their societal prohibition on violence. Our conscious can be forcing us to do all kinds of things, throughout the day I'm exerting my will to get excited or to stay calm or to stand up for myself or to stand down when I'm in the wrong. Alcohol throws all that haywire, but it doesn't create new urges.

For that matter, over time I've noticed that there are different kinds of violent drunks. A violent drunk who gets in my face after he gets rivered in stud is understandable, most people would be angry after that and the alcohol weakened his ability to avoid it. A violent drunk who attacks a vietnamese man at random would be someone I would avoid getting drunk with in the future, they have that inside them all the time.

Why does alcohol 'reveal desires' but other drugs not though? I don't think neuroscience is developed enough to conclude that "alcohol reveals desires" mechanistically.

More comments