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 -
I want to follow up on the earlier discussion about anti-natalism and natalism. I find it interesting that some people see anti-natalism as being a leftist phenomenon. I feel that this is true if you limit your understanding of leftism to stereotypical Redditors. However, historically speaking, philosophical pessimism, deep skepticism about the value of life, and doubt about the value of reproduction as anything other than an animal instinct are, I think, far from left-oriented. If you think about some of the most famous people who have held such views, such as Arthur Schopenhauer, H.P. Lovecraft, Thomas Ligotti, Michel Houellebecq... well, these are certainly not leftists by any common definition of leftist. And then there is Nietzsche who, even though in his writings he constantly insisted on the value of healthy virile life, did not leave any offspring even though, despite his various health problems, he probably would not have found it that hard to get married and have kids if he had really wanted to.
I do not think that being dubious of natalism is a right-wing phenomenon, but I also certainly do not think that it is inherently a left-wing phenomenon.
Ok but skepticism about the natural course of reproduction is almost the sine qua non of progressivism(and there are no non-progressive leftists today, or very few). Progressivism was all about eugenics, originally- and it continues to be about birth control and transhumanism.
This seems to tie into a deeper division in the west, that of a telos, whereby creatures(defined broadly as 'part of the material universe') have their purpose not set by themselves. The right in the west basically believes in this; continuing itself is a telos of human life. The left in the west broadly doesn't; the purpose of human life is to do whatever it wants. There's a theistic/nontheistic division but which comes first? My philosophical commitment to the idea of a telos comes from my theism but there are many whose theism was derived from their belief in telos. In turn this ties into the commitments to stability and continuity vs individualism and self growth.
Under a 'your purpose is to do what you want' framework obviously that can't be wrong, because it's subjective. Yes, most leftists would be skeptical of a young woman claiming she wants to take care of babies and bake, but that's what false consciousness is about- it's not wrong to want that, she's just wrong about what she wants. It's an epicycle, not a real course correction. Contrast a framework which believes in telos- if what you want is to 'advocate' then you are wrong for writing off just being normal. You 'make a difference in the world' by fulfilling your appointed task, which probably isn't something particularly notable.
There's far less charitable ways to phrase these things, obviously. But the core of conservatism is this idea that, yeah, you kinda just have to, circumstances beyond your control have spoken. See the trans debate- the core of the conservative objection is 'drop your pants in front of a mirror- you see a penis? Yeah, it means you have to be male. It doesn't matter if you're sure you'd rather be a girl. Sometimes you have to do the things you have to do.'. It's why normiecons don't get conspicuously upset about child support laws even when they suck for individual men 'supporting their kids is what dads do. Suck it up, it's your job.' or think that unwanted pregnancies don't justify an abortion 'yeah, moms put their child's needs before their own wants. Get over it, that's what you are now.'.
I support the dictatorship of the universe. No good comes from defying it. Progressives simply think it's unfair that being male means being male- after all, you didn't get to pick. That's why they're so obsessed with consent all the time.
I’ve always seen the left as very much about hedonistic urges. The idea being that freedom means freedom to do whatever you want, and that anyone or anything that restricts your ability to live out whatever hedonistic urges a person has.
Anti-natalist ideas fit perfectly well, as having a child introduces obligations, personal, financial, and emotional. A parent is simply not as free to act on hedonistic desires because the child needs things. You can’t just travel on a whim, as you need to arrange for how exactly you accommodate the little child. You can’t spend your last dime on yourself, you need to buy formula.
This is still a telos. It’s just not your telos.
The conservative telos tends to be duty. It’s told in lots of different ways I suppose, but the general idea is that you might have a technical right to do as you please, but it’s not always good to do so unless you deal with all the duties you have. If you don’t keep up your end things fall apart fairly quickly.
I see classical liberalism, or libertarianism, as being very much about better everything. It creates more wealth, allows you to live you to live a hedonistic lifestyle, and also creates the strongest families and communities, because voluntary association is the key to building those things. When you use force to compel people into situations they don't want to be in, that's what produces the low-trust, every-man-for-himself world that these communitarians say they're fighting. Rent control leads to hatred between landlords and tenants. Classrooms become chaotic when you force kids who don't want to be there to attend.* I saw the culmination of this on DSL recently, with someone arguing that once we get artificial wombs we should force women who want abortions to transfer the fetuses into them and bill them and father for the cost, the same way the state goes after men for child support:
https://www.datasecretslox.com/index.php/topic,13608.msg668940.html#msg668940
Just think about how low-trust and low-class that is. So when you hear things like "the conservative telos tends to be duty," it's all well and good when it's people voluntarily adopting a socially conservative lifestyle. When you force that on people you get this low-class low-trust Jerry Springer paternity lawsuit world. It is not going any place that you want to be.
*I understand there's a reason mandatory schooling exists, but we should acknowledge the downside.
It is true that forced duty can backfire and create resentment. In fact, I think my own repudiation of the progressive left's control of our institutions made me doubt all structure for a time due to me seeing how structure was weaponized against me. However, as my intuitions and experiences evolve, so does the realization that structure is necessary, and that to always err on the side of freedom over any structure removes all durability from society.
A "culture" that prizes individualism above all else will eventually treat its own moral frameworks and shared norms as arbitrary and/or oppressive. The meaning of words, morals, etc. are challenged and end up being replaced or evolve at a rate that doesn't allow the members within this "culture" to adapt to or internalize. The obvious strength of liberalism is the freedom it allows and pushes for, but the not-so-obvious weakness is that it offers no internal mechanism to preserve that freedom or the culture that allowed to exist in the first place. Over time, this pursuit of individuality erodes the foundations that made "free" expression possible, which results in the ultimate irony of Liberalism unintentionally serving as the driving force behind a new structured (and sometimes more oppressive) system replacing the old one.
I'm no advocate for a hyper-structured or authoritarian society. That being said, a society with no sense of shared purpose, no accepted moral vocabulary, no uniting telos, is one that drifts toward decadence. Liberalism, in its purest form, ends in fragmentation. Fragmented societies typically don't do well.
It's unclear to me whether this is true. Leftists have long used "diversity" to mean "underclass blacks" leading many to think "diversity" is obviously bad. But is it really? If diversity erodes state capacity, is that a bad thing? Maybe it's a good thing if the government is less able to rile Americans up to fight a pointless foreign war.
Even if you accept that fragmentation is bad, that it would be better if we were all Ned Flanders types, the fragmented society is here. Trying to get people to convert to Christianity is not a new idea. They've been trying it for decades and (on the macro level) failing. Hitching your wagon to that is not a good idea.
We don't disagree that diversity has been used manipulatively and that it has become a loaded term. The deeper point here though is about the loss of a shared version of reality, and our liberal framework's helplessness when it comes to stopping it. Diversity of opinion and thought is great, but not at the expense of an epistemic unraveling that was built over countless generations. State capacity can be quite a burden if it's no longer representative of its people, and in a society that can't decide what it represents, state involvement is obviously becoming more and more in the way. The problem with the liberalist notion is that the absence of a state or central authority results in a vacuum that will inevitably be filled whether you'd like it or not. To that, I would say the state isn't created and maintained out of desire. It's created and maintained out of necessity.
I can't tell if you're addressing me personally, or the idea of people in general pushing Christianity, but if you're presenting that as the only alternative then, yes, I would support that change in direction, at least temporarily. I see a world where people crave meaning, and while the response doesn't need to be some 1950s style cultural Christianity, my intuition and experience tells me there probably should be some type of fundamental moral architecture that can't be uprooted so easily.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link