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 -
The short story is that his life since writing the Benedict Option has turned out exactly the way the BO is meant to avoid. I don't mean that he's turned away from his positions or been hypocritical or anything. (I'm not trying to calumny his character). Just that literally the trajectory of his circumstances, undermines the credibility of the book as an efficacious endeavor, rather than an intellectual LARP.
Rod is currently an expat divorcee, rootlessly gliding around Europe without any 'home' left in America, somewhat disconnected from his family. Whether begrudgingly or not, he's living an almost cartoonishly rootless cosmopolitan lifestyle, pretty much only possible in the world of liquid modernity, the BO has rejected.
Even if you want to argue that Rod didn't Ben-Op hard enough or something, it just strengthes the LARP point, when if the trope-namer himself couldn't implement it effectively.
And again, I don't know all the ins and outs of how Rod got here, or whatever, this is not a character-attack in the slightest. It is just an observation about the BO and the topic of whether it's serious or a LARP for a certain class of people.
Relatedly, I have general issue with Rod's 'research' approach, and question the kind of 'study' made up of carefully curated vignettes of the point you're pushing, rather than a more rigorous approach to forwarding such a social theory.
That's interesting. I read a lot of Rod probably eight years ago, though even then he was a bit inconsistent, and wrote way too much chaff, making it hard to find the wheat. I would go to his AC blog on my lunch break, and there would be a half dozen new posts, five of which were just blatant culture warring, but it wasn't instantly clear which ones. So I gave up reading him, especially when he moved to Substack, and I didn't care to subscribe. But I was still very much in the bubble that was interested in his work, and my church did a book study about The Benedict Option. I tried looking up what happened, but he's very vague about the whole thing, and seems to be almost entirely paywalled now.
Dreher has always struck me as the kind of guy who desperately needs to stop reading the news, but can't help himself. There's something very tragic about a guy who wrote a book about setting up islands of peace away from the mess of the world, but whose output is mostly hot takes on current events.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link