site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022

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.

105
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I think this is inevitable result of the fact, that modern leftism from its philosophical foundation leans much more into pathos/ethos as modes of argumentation as opposed to logos. It is considered valid to accept that there are "other ways of knowing", things like "lived experience" are okay form of debate and affiriming/celebrating various identities and rewarding proclamation of excess privilege give one more social points. However this can also create a very stressful environment in case of infighting or disagreement. As much as conservatives talk about "cancel culture", the phenomenon exists even more strongly inside the movement.

This is where ethos type of persuasion comes in, being on the other side of critique for insufficient commitment can be highly damaging psychologically, compounded by potential loss of all the whole support network to boot in case you get banned/ostracized. As an example one can use latest kerfuffle around Young Turk's Anna Kasparian for her comments on violent crimes, but there are other stories of let's say detransitioners and other pariahs from the movement now living outside. The thing is, that once you are booted from the movement then you are marked as "rightist" which keeps the movement pristine and happy place at the first glance.

Also as somebody else mentioned, this behaviour exists on the right in form of religion and in case of various specific subgroups. I am sure that let's say if you waded into some MGTOW message board venting your frustrations, you will find a lot of support and positive reinforcement over there. The difference is that these spaces are mostly marked as "extremists" and pushed to the darker corners of the internet as opposed to let's say and outright misandrist radical feminists which are fully mainstream.