site banner
PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   32431 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 21, 2025

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.

3
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Personally speaking, I do martial arts, and I would consider pulling a knife on someone who wants to throw hands a reasonable, proportionate act. There are far too many ways to get permanently injured or killed from blunt trauma. I would not consider it reasonable to then attack them with that knife if they backed off-- but maybe the football player saw the knife, assumed there was going to be some stabbing, grabbed for it-- and as a consequence, got Rittenhouse'd. Is that what happened? I don't know. But I'm content to say, "stabbing people is bad" and let the rest sort itself out through the legal system.

What? What martial arts do you do where it's acceptable or proportionate to pull a knife? Kali?

Martial arts are sports and he's obviously not pulling a real life in a sparring match.

He'd talking about pulling a knife in a real fight, one in which you have no guarantee that the attacker will stop kicking once you're unconscious - and in that case pulling a knife or a firearm is obviously completely proportional. The defender has no moral obligation to risk his life to increase the safety of the attacker. If you don't want to get stabbed, don't attack people. Simple as.

It's absolutely shocking to me how effeminate our culture has become, that anyone can consider use of a knife or gun to be proportional self defense to an offer of fisticuffs.

I wouldn't call it effeminate when most women seem to be absolutely averse to carrying a gun/knife, let alone ready to stab a motherfucker.

The statement: he threatened to punch me and I was scared for my life is effeminate.

I suppose "I didn't care to fight this guy and I didn't see anything wrong with killing him if he insisted" wouldn't go over so well with the jury.

I'd imagine that in those manlier days, such a person would experience some mix of:

-- Complete loss of honor and social standing if a gentleman

-- Possibly being lynched as a miscreant if not

I'd imagine that in those manlier days anyone who challenged you to an impromptu fisticuffs duel and wasn't a gentleman like yourself was liable to get whacked with a handy and fashionable cane you carried without any loss of social standing to yourself. Granted, my knowledge of manlier days mostly comes from Fallen London.

I think we've lost the plot, bro.

Except when the culture was more masculine they solved the problem by simply allowing the use of both.

...Sorry but what the fuck are you talking about? Your link described a gunfight that turned into a knife fight. No one is mentioned as punching anyone!

Bowie would have never drawn his knife to "protect" himself from a shove.

Bowie would have never drawn his knife to "protect" himself from a shove.

The Bowie knife was a dueling knife intended to settle such disputes, yes. What are you talking about? If you are referring only to a self defense situation, pulling a knife or gun is a reasonable response. You aren't obligated to stop a knife attack only with another knife, nor are you obligated to stop an unarmed attack only with your fists.

A "dueling" knife, intended to be used against someone else similarly armed. In a duel.

Not to be used to murder an unarmed foe.

It is effeminate to be so frightened of a fistfight that one immediately resorts to murdering one's opponent to "end the threat."

One is absolutely obligated by masculine honor to be willing to defend oneself in a physical fight.

In a traditionally masculine society, it is solely the responsibility of the foe to acquire sufficient social standing so that he can start a fight while unarmed and expect his opponent to match him. What kind of a man calls out "judge??? judge???????" as he's stabbed for picking a fight with someone he shouldn't have?

An attack where one party has not agreed is considered a self defense situation and there is no culture that has existed that I'm aware of where escalation on the part of the defender is considered unmasculine.

Your example of a shove can either be

  1. A challenge, in which case pulling a knife as a prelude to a mutual dual is a reasonable response (in earlier more masculine cultures), and an example of the sort of situation the Bowie knife was invented for
  2. The opening attack of an aggressor seeking bodily harm against an unwilling victim, in which case attacking them with a knife in order to force them to stop would be a reasonable response pretty much anywhere throughout history, excepting case of great physical disparity such as a small woman attacking a large man.

Right, but every country stopped allowing duels because loads of healthy young men died.

I think there's a difference between 'I would pull a knife in order to deter an attacker' which is excessive in the vast majority of interactions but may be the quickest way to defuse something and 'I would actively stab an attacker who's shown no overtures towards violence beyond wanting to remove me from a tent'.

Was Karmelo Anthony under any realistic lethal peril beyond 'yaddayadda he trips whilst being defenestrated from the tent and has a massive coronary heart attack'? Like if this was just 'a bouncer put his hand on a patron who then pulled a knife and then stabbed the bouncer to death' it would be the most open-shut murder case possible. Even trying to defend Karmelo is tiresome. It's essentially impossible to do in good faith.

I think I could beat up the "average" person (inclusive of women, I'm not good enough that I can confidently claim I would beat up the average guy.) But if I got into a heated argument with someone weaker than me, it would be ridiculous to expect them to just concede to my physical prowess. Therefore, I would consider it a proportional act for them to pull a knife on me. Similarly, if I'm in a reversed situation, where I'm facing a black belt or prizefighter in their prime, I would rather pull a knife than let them give me brain damage. In full space of hypotheticals, I think the fight would de-escalate from there the vast majority of the time-- few martial artists are stupid enough to actually fight someone who'd afraid and has a knife, including myself, but I can't strictly exclude the chance of conflict.

I do not know of any place on Earth where a woman or a weaker guy pulling a knife in response to someone bigger "unconsciously clenching their fists" would be seen as anything but an unstable psycho as opposed to "acting proportionally". It is not in fact ridiculous to expect people to prefer being slightly intimidated rather than go for mortal threats.

It would be a context-dependent response, and I'm not convinced that it was the right context in this exact case, even if the defendant's claims of bullying were true. But it's really not that hard to imagine scenarios were even motivationally innocent behavior from a physically threatening individual can be reasonably perceived as a threat.

Human imagination is a wellspring that flows eternal. Can you point to actual cases of knife use against bullies, even non-fatally, where the knife-wielder was considered in the right?

https://dcwitness.org/jury-acquits-fatal-stabbing-defendant-claiming-self-defense/

Luckily there's a fuller article of what actually happened

https://dcwitness.org/prosecutors-call-defendant-a-clever-story-teller-in-homicide-trial/

'“I’m thinking I’m about to be shot…I know this man to be this type of person,” recounted Ruffin. Ruffin testified he punched Lee and then stabbed him with his pocket knife. '

The entire case here was that he was being intimidated by the stabbed party, believed that the stabbed party was armed with a firearm based on a series of previous encounters where the stabbed party had a gun on him.

'During closing arguments, Irving argued that Ruffin’s testimony only added additional details, not differences in his story. Irving asserted that Lee’s hand behind his back was a deadly threat of violence, and even if appearances were false, it was still self-defense because Ruffin believed Lee had a gun. “It doesn’t matter how many times he stabbed him, he did what he had to do to keep that gun from coming out,” said Irving.

The prosecution argued in closing that Ruffin did not act in self-defense because he was the initial aggressor. They added that there is no evidence that Lee had a gun and it is pure speculation by the defense. '

The only reason it was even somewhat possible to claim self defense in this situation was the presumption of a gun being involved. That was what the entire defense rested on, the tenet that the knife wielder was matching lethal force instead of massively escalating stakes for no reason.

If it was one-on-one in a dark alleyway and prime Mike Tyson is coming at me, I may pull a knife to attempt to de-escalate. But Karmelo Anthony was the one trespassing to begin with, with no real threat of any meaningful physical harm beyond his removal from the premises, and he chose to massively escalate the situation by pulling a knife and then to actually use the knife.

GBRK is saying that based on his martial arts experience, he's aware it would be all too easy to get killed or gravely injured in no-holds-barred hand-to-hand combat. Not that pulling out a knife in a formal martial-arts fight where both fighters follow the rules and no one is going in for a kill would ever be appropriate.

Well what he actually says is he does martial arts and if someone started shit he would consider pulling a knife proportionate. Either he does Kali or he is waiting for the bus on the way to school. Those are the only times anyone should say that and not expect to be ridiculed, because it is ridiculous. Knives are a shit ton more dangerous than any body part or fighting technique. That's their purpose.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats