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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 7, 2022

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I don't know how you made that jump.

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.

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.

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.

  • Children are a special case. They are human, but not fully so for many years since they need that much time to exercise and perfect their ability to reason and judge. So they cannot be treated as equal adults in society. But that leaves them to the mercy of their parents, some of which are far from adults themselves. How much should the state be allowed to here? I weakly lean toward "more", but I'm not sure if the benefits outweigh the costs of state mismanagement.