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 -
A while ago, @anagast replied to one of my comments with:
There was something in that image that made me feel confused. Later, I realized what it was: to me, liberalism and turning everything into samey globalist soup are a non sequitur.
Consider what is probably the epitome of liberal globalization: New York City. Out of the roughly 8.5 million people who live there, 37% are foreign-born. With over 800 languages spoken there, it's also the most linguistically diverse place in the world. And while the city is easy to characterize, and often is, as politically and bureaucratically a American-Democrat stronghold, it's not really how it looks like on the street.
There's a ton of conservatism here. Walk around long enough and you'll bump into a wedding or funeral or some other celebration that's done in a beautiful traditional style. Or, talk with enough people, and you'll learn that while they put on the right face for the DEI training at white collar job, they're against abortion and other markers of leaning right.
It's hard to describe all of it unless you've had a few week to live here. The city is a patchwork quilt of hundreds, maybe thousands, of groups, some taking up a single block while others, like the Chinese or Hasidic Jews, basically run whole neighborhoods. Walking in a straight line for maybe an hour feels like traveling through half a dozen countries.
Now, all these people, at least most of them, enjoy the fruits of globalization. They drink coke. Eat pizza and sushi. Browse reddit. But overall, their primary cultural identity is unaffected. I suspect it's because liberalism creates a free market for ideas, allowing people to pick and choose, which strengthens good ideas and causes weak ones to fade away.
Put another way: if you try to enforce culture in a top-down way, you'll get a lot of "coverage", but most adherents will be on board just because everyone else is. Their identity is weak, ripe for the taking by the next guy who takes over. But if you allow people to sort themselves out on their own, the feeling of ownership creates a much deeper, stronger sense of belonging that's not going to be changed by a coca cola advertisement.
That's how I explain to myself why so many cultures in NYC have integrated but not assimilated. Integrated, because they follow the common, basic set of rules: mind your own business, treat others with respect, do your job. Not assimilated because despite living here for >1 generations, they've not become part of some bland, uniform uberculture. If anything, the need to exist alongside so many other tribes has made them work on distilling the best parts of their culture to make it appealing and strong to outsiders and a source of pride for the insiders.
Also, what I think all these rather conservative immigrants bring to the table in the city is that they keep the politicians and bureaucrats honest. No ooey-gooey feel-good diversity--no, they're gonna get the real thing, they're gonna get respect for the culture and community. In a way, I suspect they're the ones responsible for the success of liberal ideals in the city.
(There's some parallel here between how marrying the state and the Church led to calcification of religion in Europe, whereas the freedom of religion in the USA led to an explosion of it, but I'm not familiar with history enough to use that as an argument).
That's why I think that liberalism and globalization don't lead to creating a samey globalist liberal soup, but just the opposite--they lead to differentiation, fragmentation, and and constant evolution and improvement of culture.
And the reason why both sides of the political spectrum are afraid of this (lefties crying about dying languages and indigenous customs; righting crying about the death of tradition) is because they are afraid of the creative destruction that liberalism brings to bear against their ideas. But in doing so, they are actually restricting the growth and refinement of their cultures.
(cough All hail Tzeentch cough)
I will defend the opposite view.
Yeah, you have the language, the foods, the music, but those will eventually melt together. Even you provide a constant stream of new immigrants, and they willingly self-segregate, the million small markers of culture will eventually disappear. Only a few larger ones will remain, as a symbol of identity, like some Americans celebrate St. Patrick's day.
Which brings me to my second point. The larger empire will tolerate the harmless and meaningless traits of the constituent cultures, but not anything meaningful. You can keep the foods. You can keep the songs (most of them). You cannot enforce a community with your norms.
While the EU is nominally in favor of cultural diversity, it means they will subsidize folk dresses and bland exhibits with 27 flags. It does not mean they will allow an Eastern European country to be against gay
marriagerights. It does not mean they will allow a country to practice eugenics, or protect key industries. You might agree with these decisions, but my point is that the EU and ANZAC allow only surface level diversity.Because culture is downstream from economics and politics. Japan's building codes make it very easy to make tiny restaurants on the first floor, so their streets are alive with such restaurants. In the Middle East, the climate is dry and the laws forbid alcohol, so they have cuisine with figs and shisha bars everywhere.
Yes, you have a constant stream of immigrants that self-segregate in neighbourhoods, and that slows down the integration. It might take generations to melt them, but it is happening nonetheless, because the laws are the same, the economics are the same for everyone. The first generation will do everything the same as back home, the second will adjust, but their children will eventually meld.
Interesting points.
Starting from the end, I think you oversimplify the economics & laws angle. If humans were simple optimizers, then yes, they would all behave in a set of uniform, most optimal behaviors. There would be no new businesses, no new music, no new books, etc. Everyone in New York would just run laundromats, irish pubs, and sell hot dogs, to name a few things. But that's not really the case in reality--the laws, in the city and in most places in the US at least, are liberal enough for individuals to tinker, try new ideas, and find new ways of expressing themselves whether it's through commerce or art or whatever.
That's where I see the beauty of liberalism--let it provide a minimal set of laws that ensure more or less stability and... leave the rest up to people. In practice, given zoning and licensing and bureaucracy, this doesn't exist, but even in the much faded, weaker version of it that we have, we still see a ton of creative destruction. Much of it is garbage, but that's the cost of having monkey brains hitting two stones together until they find just the right stones that give sparks. This process, though, is made stronger by a steady stream of immigrants--whether internal or external--even though yes, after some n number of generations, they will likely meld in. However, by then, they will have very likely left a mark on the place.
I'm not sure I get the argument about surface diversity. If I set aside the EU angle, I don't see why it matters for a country to be able to be against gay rights? Like, if you live in Liberaltopia, there's nothing stopping you from not associating with gay people. There's nothing stopping you from forming a group with other people and having each other promise that you will not do gay things or associate with gays. There's also no size limit imposed on your group--it could be just your friends or half the country. Why would you want the state to interfere and set up some laws against gay people's freedoms? Surely, if gayness is in anyway bad, well, then in the free market of ideas, gayness will fade away while your non-gay group will grow and prosper?
This applies to other topics around enforcing culture.
I don't know how you made that jump.
There are no ways to enforce these shared norms. Imagine you live in an imaginary, hypothetical world where heroin, or murder, or dumping your garbage from the balcony is legal and normal. You and a group of friends agree that this should change, and you "form a group" and "promise" not to do that. So what? Your kids are still hooked on heroin, there is still garbage on the streets, and there is still a chance of getting murdered, because there are others who didn't agree and defectors.
You need a method to enforce that new norm. "Form a group" and "promise" is insufficient.
Gayness, specifically, was an example, of something the larger culture will impose on the sub-communities. You don't need to argue if it's good or bad.
I made it from this argument: " It might take generations to melt them, but it is happening nonetheless, because the laws are the same, the economics are the same for everyone."
In other words, if everyone is influenced by the same economic and political forces, then everyone is being pushed toward the same set of outcomes. If you leave that process going for a while, then humans become grey uniform goo that settled into some local maximum, hence no "new" or "different" things can be made.
Ah, you see, I am not arguing for not enforcing norms, but for a minimal set of open norms that allow individuals to express themselves, whether it be owning guns, being gay, partaking of the shrooms, etc. But I'm afraid that it's easy to misconstrue this as a call for post-modern, "reality is subjective" free-for-all, but allow me the benefit for the doubt. I am against that.
I feel like we're talking about two side of freedom. You're talking about "freedom from" as in: freedom from rotting in thy neighbor's garbage, freedom from having your kids being sold heroin, etc. I'm talking about "freedom to": freedom to stick your penis into another man's asshole, freedom to inhale smoke containing nicotine or THC, freedom to worship whatever deity/ies you wish, etc. Would you agree that this is the case?
The way I see it, the latter form of freedom requires the first one. But, for the latter form to truly blossom, the first one must be kept to a minimum. So yes, murder, rape, harming children* and other unilateral infringements of individual freedom must be outlawed. Totally agreed here. But not much more than that. Otherwise, you would increasingly stifle human expression.
This is where I see the beauty of a place like NYC. A basic set of laws ensures that people are not murdered (at least frequently) and that the garbage is (more or less; recently, sadly, it's less) taken care of. But because there is not much more than that, people can live in any weird way they want to, whether it's being a drag queen or an ultra-conservative jew. This, I believe, is core to "globalist liberalism", and something that is well expressed in the Bill or Rights, which I'm not bringing up for its legal standing but for its spirit, the spirit of freedom of expression as long as that expression isn't about yelling fire in a crowded theater or stoning unbelievers.
So, going back to the example you gave, the one about the EU and gay rights in an Eastern European country, let's first take away the label of gay rights, because that's just the outer layer that's not important. It could be anything else like ethnicity or abortion stance, or whatever. We basically have two minorities, the one that is arguing that a norm against X should instituted as law, and one arguing that X should be permitted. This might be the crux of the matter: X does not damage the commons. It is not a unilateral infringement of others' rights. Thus, I am against instituting a ban on X and for allowing to people to segregate into cultural groups aligned with what they think about X.
Now, aside from that, which Eastern European country are you thinking of? I happen to be from that part of the world and a little bit of the various cultures that people it.
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