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There appears to have been a mild resurgence of Hlynkaism on the forum. This is concerning, because I believe that the core tenets of Hlynkaism are deeply confused.
@hydroacetylene said:
It's not entirely clear what's supposed to be the determining criteria of identity here. Are wokeism and the DR the same because they're both revolutionary, or are they the same because they only differ on who gets the cushy sinecures? At any rate, I'll address both points.
Revolution (defined in the most general sense as rapid dramatic change, as opposed to slow and gradual change) is a tactic, not an ideological principle. You can have adherents of two different ideologies who both agree on the necessity of revolution, and you can have two adherents of the same ideology who disagree on the viability of revolution as a tactic. Although Marxism is typically (and correctly) seen as a revolutionary ideology, there have been notable Marxists who denied the necessity of revolution for Marxism. They instead wanted to achieve communism through a series of gradual reforms using the existing democratic state apparatus. But does that suddenly make them into conservatives? Their tactics are different from typical Marxists, but their core underlying Marxist ideological principles are the same. I doubt that any of the Hlynkaists on this forum would look at the reformist-Marxists and say "ah, a fellow conservative-gradualist! Truly these are my people; they too are lovers of slow, cautious change".
"Tradition above all" is an empty formalism at best, and incoherent at worst. If tradition is your sole overriding source of moral truth, then we just wind up with the old Euthyphro dilemma: what happens when the tradition that you happened to be born into isn't worth defending? What if it's actively malicious? "Support tradition" is a formal principle because it makes no mention of the actual content of that tradition. If you are living in a Nazi or communist (or whatever your own personal avatar of evil is) regime whose roots extend back further than living memory, are conservatives obligated to support the existing "traditional" regime? Perhaps they're allowed to oppose it, but only if they do so in a slow and gradual manner. You can understand why this response might not be appealing to those who are being crushed under the boot of the regime. And at any rate, you can only arrive at the position of opposing the regime in the first place if you have an alternative source of substantive ethical principles that go beyond the formal principles of "support tradition" and "don't change things too fast".
As for the assertion that wokeism and the DR only differ on "who gets the cushy sinecures"; this is simply incorrect. They have multiple substantive policy disagreements on LGBT rights, traditional gender roles, immigration, foreign policy, etc.
Hlynkaism to me represents a concerning abdication of reflection and nuance, in favor of a self-assured "I know what's what, these radical Marxist-Islamo-fascists can't pull a fast one on me" attitude. This is emblematic of much that is wrong with contemporary (and historical as well) political discourse. The principle goal of philosophical reflection is to undermine the foundation of this self-assuredness. Actually, you don't know what's what. Your enemies might know things that you don't; their positions might be more complicated and nuanced than you originally thought. Undoubtedly the realm of political discourse would become more productive, or at least more pleasant, if this attitude of epistemic humility were to become more widespread.
And as a tactical choice it is itself a ideological commitment. It’s not merely ‘rapid change’- it requires an acceptance of top down impositions, rationalism, the idea of de novo societal shifts implemented by a vanguard party. I reject all of that ideologically. Western trads should seek to weaken state capacity where possible, capture institutions available for capture, and in other situations focus on building parallel institutions and weakening those institutions which cannot be captured. In so doing it is possible to build a functional society which envelopes and digests the rotting hulk of modernism.
I admit this is an exaggeration. However, there is a kernel of truth- a mere commitment to political incorrectness does not a social conservative make. I agree with much of the DR that gays are perverts who shouldn’t be allowed near kids, that women shouldn’t vote, etc. But my reasoning and therefore implementation of these ideas is very different.
You are right to point out that the distinction between tactics and principles is not as clean as I made it out to be. But I'm skeptical that recourse to revolution is always indicative of the deep ideological commitments that you portray it as having. Whatever it may entail ideologically, I don't think it's a good criteria for cleaving the global ideological space at the joints.
The American Revolution was, by most accounts, based on the principles of classical liberalism; principles that I imagine Hlynka and his fellow travelers would endorse wholeheartedly. Was there something ideologically objectionable about the American Revolution just because it took the form of a revolution? Does it have to be denounced? Were the founding fathers necessarily committed to a certain "top down rationalist" view of human nature that true Red Tribers would have to reject?
Or consider the Iranian Revolution of 1979, which instituted an Islamic theocracy. They certainly claim to be following a conservative tradition of some kind; it might not be your preferred tradition, but it's a tradition. Are they too committed to an Enlightenment rationalist view of human nature? Does Islamic theocracy share a deep philosophical affinity with Marxist communism that has hitherto gone unnoticed? And the American Revolution too?
The most reasonable conclusion, on my view, is not that revolutions are a result of people having a deep ideological commitment to the idea of a top down rationally organized society. Revolutions are a result of people wanting power, and having the means and opportunity to seize it. This is universal to left and right, old and new.
Would you be willing to elaborate on this? I'm just curious.
I've argued yes in the past, and would do so again. Likewise I've argued at some length that the "principles of classical liberalism" are fundamentally flawed, and they've failed in the ways we observe for clear, predictable reasons.
More or less. More precisely, it should not and probably cannot be repeated, and its problems were identified early on. The ideological amalgamation of the American Revolution was a one-shot thing; it worked as well as it did the first time around due to ignorance in the form of an absence of specific elements of common knowledge. Now that those specific elements of common knowledge exist, large portions of the project no longer work and cannot be made to work again.
There was a strong element of this, yes. It was moderated by contrasting, competing worldviews that were absent in, say, the French Revolution, and I believe that these moderating influences explain why it worked as well as it did for as long as it did. The French Revolution provides excellent contrast, as I've argued previously.
I argued this point with Hlynka back in the day, and my recollection was that the dispute came down to semantics; IIRC we both agreed that it came down to Hobbes vs Rousseau, and what label you apply to each of them. Likewise the argument I just linked: The American and French revolutions were very, very different, such that if both were "Enlightenment" revolutions, we should be able to say which was the more "Enlightened" than the other. It doesn't really matter which a given person picks, because the point is that if the term covers both perfectly equally, the term is actually meaningless, and by choosing, one reveals one's own definition. The American Revolution did contain a heaping helping of "top-down, rationalist" thinking, and the structures that resulted have failed us badly, and failed us the worst when we approached them from a top-down rationalist mindset.
What do you think the missing "common knowledge" in question is? The first thing that would come to my mind is HBD, and I think it's a bit of a stretch to think that the Founding Fathers didn't think that cognition could vary between races, or even between individuals. I presume that's not it then.
The various mountains of skulls and famines in the name of technocratic progress and rationality.
At its most common denominator, the Enlightenment presumed that good thinking would lead to good results. The Hlynka-claimed divide is that this different upon whether changes mattered most from internal changes or external environmental changes, but they both shared a belief that if you thought through things better, progress would deliver better results as a matter of course, both in a moral and a practical sense.
WW1 was a major culture shock to this mentality, and discredited democracy-enlightenment-rationalists enough that 20th century totalitarianism became an intellectually viable alternative, precisely because the enlightened European states and cultures did incredibly stupid, senseless, and wasteful things to their own delegitimization... twice. And after WW2, the technocratic elements of the Enlightenment that took power in the form of the communist-socialists social engineers proceeded to build mountains of skulls and engineer famines as a result of, disputably, well-meant social reforms. On the other hand, the more individualist-leaning enlightenment descendants of the West otherwise discredited themselves in various Cold War abuses, ranging from the Imperial Presidency of the Americans, the imperial/post-imperial conflicts for influence over the third world, and so on. Plus, you know, that whole MAD thing of deliberate and purposeful preparation to destroy the world.
Had the American founding fathers had the 20th century as common knowledge of how badly enlightenment value evolution could mesh with state powers, it probably would have triggered some substantial shifts in not only the revolution, but the post-revolution American consolidation.
So, do all the pre-Enlightenment famines and mountains of skulls just… not count for anything? The Great Famine of 1315-1322 so thoroughly devastated Western and Central Europe that some populations were even reduced to cannibalism and mass infanticide. And don’t even get me started on all the skulls from the medieval wars of religion, the Crusades, the Roman wars of Conquest, the wars against the Mongols and Huns, etc. (And, of course, that’s just in Europe; much of the pre-Enlightenment non-European world comes out looking even worse.)
You have reasons to oppose Enlightenment rationalism which are independent from any objective measure of famine prevalence, relative likelihood of starting massive wars and killing civilians, etc., and you’re pointing at the failures and shortcomings of certain ostensibly Enlightenment-derived regimes without actually proving that said regimes did worse on those metrics than the ones which came before them.
WWI and WWII were utter catastrophes, of course, but their high levels of devastation were largely a result of technological developments, not the fact that they were wars prosecuted by rationalist regimes. (Imperial Japan, for example, was nothing like a rationalist Enlightened state.) Communism killed a lot of people, yes, but it’s not the rationalist or “top-down” elements which are primarily responsible for this result.
Oh, they certain count... as support for Enlightenment paradigm when you lack an anchronistic (future-history) basis of comparison.
Pre-Enlightenment famines and mountains of skulls were demonstrative of a lack of Enlightenment. Failures in the early Enlightenment were proof of insufficient enlightenment. These are common knowledge that make Enlightenment paradigms look good- after all, no Enlightenment movement had ever done such a thing!
If you're hearing the echo of 'real Enlightenment governance has never been tried,' that's not a coincidence.
Only a common knowledge of the historically unprecedented size of the mountains of skulls that Enlightenment-states could reason themselves into would credibly counter-balance a belief that Enlightened people wouldn't create mountains of skulls like those un-Enlightened barbarians. That is the relevance of the WW1 and WW2 common knowledge. It was a forced entry of common knowledge that, yes, civilized enlightened Europeans absolutely would create mountains of skulls. Enlightened despots would make skull piles on par with or greater than the un-enlightened savages of history, and use Enlightenment themes and principles to lead the publics to slaughter.
But that common knowledge was impossible in the late 1700s when the Americans were forming a state. Because the downsides of the enlightenment, first demonstrated at scale in the French Revolution, hadn't occurred yet.
It would be common knowledge now, however. Which is why @FCfromSSC says
The common knowledge is how the Enlightenment can go off the rails. Had that been known at the time, the American experiment would have proceeded differently on the basis of that (impossible) knowledge.
The Enlightenment regimes don't have to be worse. Equivalence can be just as damning. Equivalence brings into question the value of adopting an explicitly enlightenment model/approach to government as an unproven experiment. The point of the experiment is to lead to different, not equivalent, results / acts of despotism.
If pre-Constitution common knowledge had included things like 'the Enlightenment-camp can rationalize class-based persecution as a necessity and morally justified means of social reform,' the merchant-class that was heavily involved in American government formation would probably not have agreed to as much Enlightenment influence at their own potential expense.
These may have been the dark side derivatives of the enlightenment, but there are pretty direct arguments for how each and every one of these historical arguments can tie into various themes and expectations of enlightenment thinkers. It may be in 'that's not what we meant / wanted' forms, but that's a matter of uncontrolled / unpredicted ideological evolution, not a dispute of descent.
The uncontrolled / unintended / unpredicted failure-mode evolutions of the Enlightenment are what are common knowledge today, but not in the past.
I’m not even sure that’s what they demonstrate. I’d argue that they’re more a result of lack of state capacity, and of a lack of alternate methods of adjudicating international disputes.
Sure, we now know that states ostensibly influenced by the Enlightenment are still capable of waging massively destructive wars, at least under certain circumstances. If that’s supposed to discredit the entire philosophical undertaking, then I’m not sure what it would take to rehabilitate it in your eyes. It is, though, a fact that since the end of WWII — a duration of 80 years — the world has enjoyed the most consistently peaceful, prosperous unbroken period in human history. How much longer would such a period need to persist before you’re willing to admit that the Enlightenment is working out well for us? You can always point to the World Wars as a failure mode or black mark on modernity, but surely you have to compare how things actually look over time, instead of hyper-focusing on one very bad, but historically very brief, period.
If it can be shown that, as @self_made_human points out, the Enlightenment has produced incredible flourishing of life-saving technology, peace-facilitating international institutions, prosperity via reliable trade, and general improvement of quality of life for rank-and-file individuals worldwide, then it seems extremely shortsighted to criticize the Enlightenment for failing to be perfect. It’s like people who criticize rationalists for falling short of perfect rationality; okay, fine at least we’re making an effort! Have you seen how much worse the rest of you are doing?!
I think a lot of criticism of the Enlightenment come down to a sort of Traditionalism of the Gaps. You take for granted all of the positive aspects of modernity which you’d be loath to give up, yet pile criticism onto the relatively small number of kinks which Enlightenment rationalists haven’t yet been able to solve.
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