site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 14, 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.

12
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Kanye is also somehow impossible to look away from. I don't know what it is. Some innate sense of comedic timing and pitch-perfect camp I guess. It doesn't seem like he intends it, it just seems to be part of who he is.

This is one of the funniest videos I've seen recently and he isn't even trying to be funny, I don't think.

His, erhm, "personal trainer" was the one who originally made the phone call to have him committed. If you read this recent exchange that Jewish "personal trainer" had with Kanye I think it's hard to not understand Kanye's perspective:

I'm going to help you one of a couple ways... First, you and I sit down and have an loving and open conversation, but you don't use cuss words, and everything that is discussed is based in fact, and not some crazy stuff that dumb friend of yours told you, or you saw in a tweet.

Second option, I have you institutionalized again where they medicate the crap out of you, and you go back to Zombieland forever. Play date with the kids just won't be the same.

This isn't a doctor telling Kanye to take his meds. This is somebody threatening him and his children, threatening to medicate him to send him to "Zombieland forever" for criticizing Jewish people.

On one hand, Kanye is pretty unhinged, or at least that's how it looks, and I can believe your interpretation; a personal trainer, Jewish or otherwise, absolutely could send that message in good faith and without malice (though without «love» either). Antipsychiatric narratives are popular with exactly the kind of people who would benefit from some treatment – many among them Black adherents of insane doctrines.

On the other hand: «meds, schizo» is something I'd be receiving here for every second post of mine, but for the standards of local moderation; and indeed that's what I often get on platforms with lower (they'd argue higher, naturally) standards. This has nothing to do with the quality of the argument and everything with the fact that certain topics are coded as psychotic. The ability to define psychiatric norm, and therefore the bounds of permitted (or rather, conceivable in a polite society) discourse is a political superpower precisely because it lies nominally outside politics (cue Foucault), and punitive psychiatry is a well-known practice. The peace activist (and notable Philosemite) Andrei Sakharov was probably crazier when he proposed the tsunami-causing nuclear weapon than when he got forcefully medicated in 1984 for a hunger strike in the name of his wife Yelena Bonner, but the system, that is, the set of bureaucrats and careerists running the place, approved of the former way more, so that's how it went down. And if Black celebs were as policed by their Jewish agents and doctors for their takes on systemic white power... yawn. Well, you get it.

By “latent” is meant that form of schizophrenia in which all manifestations of the illness are expressed only to a degree that is “marginal” or “slight,” and there are no such gross symptoms as hallucinations. The following symptoms are those most characteristic of latent schizophrenia (they are quoted from a textbook for students at medical institutes): introversion, listlessness, lessened interest in life, generalized pessimism and melancholy, preoccupation with inner experiences, inappropriate thoughts and actions, bigotry ana rigidity of opinions, and suspiciousness, etc. So that if you are an introvert with a penchant for self-analysis; if you are uncommunicative; if you do not want to change your convictions because you do not consider then “groundless”, if the fact that you are being tailed and your telephone conversations are being bugged is attributed to “suspiciousness,” or perhaps a “delusion of persecution,” the conclusion is clear… Nor will you be saved by the fact that you are successfully coping with your job responsibilities, or with creative work; that you show an interest in it and are even “growing” professionally. Although formally the presence of a psychic pathology does not rule out responsibility for your actions your “exculpation” is inevitable.

A Dissident’s Guide to Psychiatry, Vladimir Bukovsky and Semyon Gluzman, ~1973

The interesting thing is that schizos act against their interests and can't keep their mouths shut, unlike normies who learn from example; so if you institutionalize people for X, eventually only schizos will keep bringing X up, which will tie X to schizophrenia in the public mind and retroactively justify your stigmatization of X back when you were institutionalizing dissenting normies. This is another good case for always doubling down, a la Greenblatt, I wonder how far down that path we are with regards to this topic.

Gluzman is an interesting character. Bukovsky is fairly well-known.

Do people really call your writing schizophrenic? Is that like...a default slur?

I could buy “manic” or maybe “autistic,” if I were desperate to label your style with a condition, but schizophrenic seems odd.

Thanks for high praise, hah.

Well, they do. In lesser venues, writing a lot (writing little is beneath me), and on unconventional topics too, is enough to get the diagnosis (unless it's rdrama and they call you a cute twink instead?)

By the way, there are estimates that SZ is overdiagnosed by 500% in Russia, so I could have received the same diagnosis from a shrink. In my real interactions with them this never happened; but then, I never tried motteposting at shrinks.

And hey, manifestoposting (which long posts can pattern-match to) is robustly associated with schizo and paranoid traits.

(unless it's rdrama and they call you a cute twink instead?)

What's your account there?

More comments