site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 5, 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.

7
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I think you can almost make a purely secular argument for the Crusades, to be frank, and the same is true for a number of seemingly religious conflicts. Many states are inherently expansionist, the Seljuk Turks in particular as a faction made their name and wealth off of military expansionism to start with (their jihadist ideologies were certainly there too but we can't ignore the physical and practical), and who ended up answering the majority of the obviously self-interested call for aid? Not the immediate fellow Christian neighbors, no, it was mostly bored warrior castes from farther Western Europe (and some peasants and minor nobles too at first with other reasons to leave home). Yep, people fighting for money and a share of the spoils. I don't want to overstate the case, here, religion is still all over this, but it wasn't a conflict completely unique to religion. Honestly war happens with or without religion's help, is my view, and in some cases religious commonalities also prevent war, though that kind of thing doesn't explicitly show up in history without additional scholarship.

In fact much of humanity was still religious during WWII with the exact same weaponry... but honestly the track record isn't that bad overall in the last 100 years for religion. The major ones I can think of are like, India-Pakistan conflicts, obviously everything to do with Israel (though ethnicity also factors in too), maybe a few minor civil wars and a few revolutions? But not even that many.