site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   31180 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 23, 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
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

the argument is less "this content is sinful", and more "this content is demonstrably poisoning the relations and sexual health of our children".

What did you think 'sinful' meant? Vibes? Papers? Essays?

Sin is definitionally injurious to individuals and societies.

All that's changed is that instead of warning people (and getting called crazy), we now get to say "I told you so" (and still mostly be ignored).

If "sinful" just means "harmful" then say harmful.

It doesn't 'just' mean harmful, but it's always harmful.

If it's always harmful then you can always explain how it's harmful, rather than relying on "the Bible explains what actions are sinful" and "sin is what God said is wrong" to do the work for you.

That doesn't follow whatsoever. It presupposes that we're always capable of evaluating deep consequences, which is plainly not the case. It also presupposes a ton of wisdom on the part of the person being persuaded.

Suppose the damage only becomes clear generations later? I'm thinking here of the sexual revolution e.g.

Inability to convince someone that an act is damaging has no bearing on whether it is.

That doesn't follow whatsoever. It presupposes that we're always capable of evaluating deep consequences, which is plainly not the case. It also presupposes a ton of wisdom on the part of the person being persuaded.

Yes, progressives say "it's not my job to educate you" as well. (Traditionalists are just the progressives of 50 years ago, after all.)

If the only difference between you and them is that they have the social power to enforce it and you don't [because your thing is Totally 100% True Trust Me Gaise] then you're worthless and offensive as a movement, and people are right to reject you.

People generally don't like being tricked or called stupid; when you do that I'd argue it costs you a bit of your saltiness.

Yes, progressives say "it's not my job to educate you" as well.

"neither of us are capable of rigorously evaluating deep consequences" is a true and relevant statement, though it may not be dispositive. "I don't have time for your stupid questions, go look up the answer in the textbook" is two lies for the price of one: first, the person does in fact generally have time to answer questions, they just don't want to, and second, the textbook doesn't have the answers either. The equivalence you are drawing is non-existent.

Traditionalists are just the progressives of 50 years ago, after all.

No, they aren't. Fifty years ago Progressives and Traditionalists were in direct conflict with each other, on roughly similar terms as we see now. The main difference was that fifty years ago they were arguing what the results would be, and now we're arguing over what the results have been.

If the only difference between you and them is that they have the social power to enforce it and you don't

It isn't. We build, they destroy. We have a track record of producing positive-sum, complex societies that function long-term. They have a track record of producing negative-sum parasitic structures that extract value and burn it for no positive outcome, often based on establishing a social consensus based on lies.

"I don't have time for your stupid questions, go look up the answer in the textbook" is two lies for the price of one: first, the person does in fact generally have time to answer questions, they just don't want to, and second, the textbook doesn't have the answers either. The equivalence you are drawing is non-existent.

Well - if I understand "we're not always capable of evaluating deep connections" correctly, the Christian answer is not even "I don't have time for your stupid questions", it's "I don't know how all of this works myself, but I trust the textbook and you should too".

Well - if I understand "we're not always capable of evaluating deep connections" correctly, the Christian answer is not even "I don't have time for your stupid questions", it's "I don't know how all of this works myself, but I trust the textbook and you should too".

...With the attendant evidence that trusting the textbook has a long history of delivering net-positive results, sure. Compare that to novel theories with no track record at best, emerging from "science" that is in fact negative-sum social status tournaments with minimal connection to concrete reality.

The ability to admit uncertainty is greatly preferable to false certainty. It's what you know that just ain't so.

Agreed, that is what Christians should have been doing. Shaming people indiscriminately and without explanation in the name of sin is not showing the love of Christ, imo.

What did you think 'sinful' meant? Vibes? Papers? Essays?

Yes, and trivially. The problem with 'sinful' is the same problem 'misogynistic' or 'hateful' has in that it's thought-terminating and usually invoked as "fuck you, stop doing what I don't like".

I am happy that the traditionalists have figured out they actually have to make the argument without the short-circuit. Which should be easy, because they're unimpeachably correct, which is why they were right to pick up the thought-terminating argument from aesthetics in the first place and it didn't take them 60 years to come up with a workable counterargument.

Yes, and trivially. The problem with 'sinful' is the same problem 'misogynistic' or 'hateful' has in that it's thought-terminating and usually invoked as "fuck you, stop doing what I don't like".

This reminds me of the guy I met who couldn't believe that I described something as heretical. "'Heresy' is, like, something fundamentalists scream while losing their minds!" His only experience with the concept was from media hostile to Christianity. Had no idea that within the tradition we use the word matter of factly; dispassionately.

Sin has only ever meant one thing and at least in my experience it's been used consistently. Via (hostile) media portrayals I have a vague caricature in my head of an ignorant Southern woman throwing the word around to suit her biases, but all such types I've met in real life have instead been progressives.

I am happy that the traditionalists have figured out they actually have to make the argument without the short-circuit. Which should be easy, because they're unimpeachably correct, which is why they were right to pick up the thought-terminating argument from aesthetics in the first place and it didn't take them 60 years to come up with a workable counterargument.

Where's that CS Lewis poaster when you need him?

There has never been a shortage of Christian intellectual tradition for those willing to engage with it. Except, I guess, in Protestant backwaters isolated from that tradition. But even they generally had access to Lewis.

As someone who came from a Protestant backwater (evangelical non-denominational, essentially) I can attest to that! We didn't have Acquinas or Augustine or Calvin (and we didn't want them either!) but we had Lewis. We adored Lewis!

Why here's a potentially appropriate bit of Lewis now, on how non-Christians often view the idea of sin:

Apart from this linguistic difficulty, the greatest barrier I have met is the almost total absence from the minds of my audience of any sense of sin. This has struck me more forcibly when I spoke to the R.A.F. than when I spoke to students: whether (as I believe) the proletariat is more self-righteous than other classes, or whether educated people are cleverer at concealing their pride, this creates for us a new situation. The early Christian preachers could assume in their hearers, whether Jews, Metuentes, or Pagans, a sense of guilt. (That this was common among Pagans is shown by the fact that both Epicureanism and the mystery religions both claimed, though in different ways, to assuage it.) Thus the Christian message was in those days unmistakably the Evangelium, the Good News. It promised healing to those who knew they were sick. We have to convince our hearers of the unwelcome diagnosis before we can expect them to welcome the news of the remedy.

The ancient man approached God (or even the gods) as the accused person approaches his judge. For the modern man the roles are reversed. He is the judge: God is in the dock. He is quite a kindly judge: if God should have a reasonable defense for being the god who permits war, poverty, and disease, he is ready to listen to it. The trial may even end in God's acquittal. But the important thing is that man is on the bench and God in the dock.

It is generally useless to try to combat this attitude, as older preachers did, by dwelling on sins like drunkenness and un-chastity. The modern proletariat is not drunken. As for fornication, contraceptives have made a profound difference. As long as this sin might socially ruin a girl by making her the mother of a bastard, most men recognized the sin against charity which it involved, and their consciences were often troubled by it. Now that it need have no such consequences, it is not, I think, generally felt to be a sin at all. My own experience suggests that if we can awake the conscience of our hearers at all, we must do so in quite different directions. We must talk of Conceit, spite, jealousy, cowardice, meanness, etc. But I am very far from believing that I have found the solution of this problem.

I suppose that hasn't been the solution, no. I do on occasion feel guilty about being spiteful, jealous, cowardly or mean. But I do not seek to fix those flaws so that I might not be judged as harshly by God. The closest thing to it is that I would not feel just in judging God, as Lewis describes, for allowing war, poverty and disease, if I myself allow it in my small ways.

There's also the entire thing about framing sin as sickness - if I am sick, I might seek remedy for my own good, but why in the world would I feel guilty about it? Least of all before God, who is often described as the one who sends sicknesses down on people to test them, humble them etc.

Maybe all that compulsive society-scale guilt tripping is good for society in the long term, but I do not see why I should willingly submit to it where my own conscientousness suffices.

As far as the judgment thing goes, Lewis had some more to say! First, the idea of sin isn't that you avoid sin because God will punish you for it, but because sin is bad in and of itself:

People often think of Christian morality as a kind of bargain in which God says, "If you keep a lot of rules I'll reward you, and if you don't I'll do the other thing." I do not think that is the best way of looking at it. I would much rather say that every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow-creatures, and with itself.

To be the one kind of creature is heaven: that is, it is joy and peace and knowledge and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other.

As for why you should feel guilty, well, do you think a bad character is something to feel proud about? I'm a coward: I have learned that about myself. I feel shame about it. I'm trying not to be one any longer! I don't think feeling guilty about our flaws is that strange a thing to feel. When we think about God as the ultimate Judge it might be better to focus less on the potential punishment for our crimes, so to speak, then for the fact that who we are will be judged, and judged perfectly. Lewis writes a bit on this as well in his essay "The World's Last Night":

We have all encountered judgments or verdicts on ourselves in this life. Every now and then we discover what our fellow creatures really think of us. I don’t of course mean what they tell us to our faces: that we usually have to discount. I am thinking of what we sometimes overhear by accident or of the opinions about us which our neighbours or employees or subordinates unknowingly reveal in their actions: and of the terrible, or lovely, judgments artlessly betrayed by children or even animals. Such discoveries can be the bitterest or sweetest experiences we have. But of course both the bitter and the sweet are limited by our doubt as to the wisdom of those who judge. We always hope that those who so clearly think us cowards or bullies are ignorant and malicious; we always fear that those who trust us or admire us are misled by partiality. I suppose the experience of the Final Judgment (which may break in upon us at any moment) will be like these little experiences, but magnified to the Nth.

For it will be infallible judgment. If it is favorable we shall have no fear, if unfavorable, no hope, that it is wrong. We shall not only believe, we shall know, know beyond doubt in every fibre of our appalled or delighted being, that as the Judge has said, so we are: neither more nor less nor other. We shall perhaps even realise that in some dim fashion we could have known it all along. We shall know and all creation will know too: our ancestors, our parents, our wives or husbands, our children. The unanswerable and (by then) self-evident truth about each will be known to all.

First, the idea of sin isn't that you avoid sin because God will punish you for it, but because sin is bad in and of itself:

Well - yes, that's mostly what I said. I avoid [bad thing], because [bad thing] is bad in and of itself, when you dig down to the root of it. And I understand that in the Christian tradition, doing good things and not doing bad things is also thought to bring man closer to the state of Heaven.

The issues begin when people's intuition of what is good [joyful, peaceful, knowledgeable and powerful] starts coming in conflict with what the Good Book tells us is good [mostly focusing on what God said is good], and somewhere in the middle the church muddles things further. I as an atheist do not grok "sin" because "sin" to me is specifically something that a Higher Power has ontologically, fundamentally deemed to be Bad and which is separate from what a human might deem bad for their own purposes and with their own frame of seeing things. Because I do not believe into a Higher Power, or that even if a small-h higher power exists it does not hold fundamental authority over morals, I am not moved by condemnations of sin. As I said elsewhere, if a thing is harmful you don't need the S word to justify its harmfulness.

@FlyingLionWithABook

Speak my name, and after a week or so I'll probably appear!

Where's that CS Lewis guy when you need him?

never been a shortage of Christian intellectual tradition

You're making my point for me: there has been a serious lack of meaningful addition to Christian intellectual tradition over the last 60 years, and that tradition ran into a sort of... replication crisis of its social science (from the standpoint of those on the ground at that time).

I'm a bit confused as to your thesis. My intent here was to demonstrate that the argument was made over 60 years ago and hasn't required updating. And even Lewis was only riffing on much older material that also still stands to this day.

To be sure in that time period people have massively fallen away from God and lost fluency with the language in which the arguments are made. I think the disconnect you're talking about has more to do with ignorant moderns needing lots of extra hand holding to be able to understand what we're even talking about, after generations of educational bankruptcy and training by hostile media.

But re: the rest, your words do not match my experience. The Western tradition has been very active in that time (though mostly in the wrong direction imo) and the Eastern tradition has been exploding in both vigor and popularity. Surely Solzhenitsyn made a mark? And a lot else has been going on. Only, few are listening.

This sort of thing would seem to be cyclical for mankind. People honor God, prosper, become prideful, turn away, suffer terribly, and only once the same old lessons have been relearned the hard way do the survivors pick up the pieces and start the process again.

Usually, the word "sinful" is taken to mean an appeal to abstract, unfalsifiable moral commandments dependent on faith in some religious nonsense for even the slightest form of coherency, not "here is the solid statistical evidence that consumption of this media will make your life objectively worse by your own values."

It seems to me that the population is moving from seeing porn consumption less like saying "fuck" and more like smoking cigarettes, and that this is because porn consumption is in fact more like smoking cigarettes than it is like swearing. There are significant observable costs to consumption and the industry that supports it, even from within the Materialist frame.

It seems to me that the population is moving from seeing porn consumption less like saying "fuck" and more like smoking cigarettes, and that this is because porn consumption is in fact more like smoking cigarettes than it is like swearing.

Any polling data showing this?

Then bring those porn studies that are comparable to tobacco harm studies. Are you going to die early because of porn? Has science re-discovered that it does indeed make you blind?

The institutions of science are held by the other side, so you're not going to see that. The base knows this and thus doesn't require that.

Race and IQ is far more suppressed than anti-porn, and yet the studies keep getting published.

Maybe the anti-porn side can't find it because it isn't there.

Anti-porn feminists have been looking for evidence of harm from the inside for ages.

Conservatives have plenty of studies they use to support their other arguments, it just happens anti-porn is among the least empirically supported of all their positions.

Yes - porn is a cross-cutting issue. The anti-porn faction consists of Blue sex-negative feminists and Red religious conservatives. The pro-porn faction consists of Red libertarians and Blue sex-positive feminists (and the pornographers). Both sex-negative and sex-positive feminists can get published in so-called peer-reviewed journalists, although the sex-positive feminists are currently winning the intra-left political battle.

Usually, the word "sinful" is taken to mean an appeal to abstract, unfalsifiable moral commandments dependent on faith in some religious nonsense for even the slightest form of coherency

I think you have been well trained by enemies of Christianity.

not "here is the solid statistical evidence that consumption of this media will make your life objectively worse by your own values."

Solid statistical evidence is a pretty recent invention, and its accessibility to the public even more recent. The ability of the public to competently evaluate such evidence we can, heh, call a work in progress. In the meantime humans live human lives and require human guidance.

It seems to me that the population is moving from seeing porn consumption less like saying "fuck" and more like smoking cigarettes, and that this is because porn consumption is in fact more like smoking cigarettes than it is like swearing. There are significant observable costs to consumption and the industry that supports it, even from within the Materialist frame.

I was raised evangelical and converted to Orthodoxy and have never heard it suggested that swearing is somehow implicitly sinful. An argument sure can be made that it is in most particular instances, but that would be according to logic that would, as you'd have it, be coherent to materialists.

Apart from failing to cultivate a relationship with Christ I'm unable to think of any behavior typically described as sinful that doesn't have observable material costs. And even that one is arguable given mental health and life outcomes. The question is how aware one is of those costs, and how seriously one takes them, not whether they exist.

I think you have been well trained by enemies of Christianity.

I was, yes.

Solid statistical evidence is a pretty recent invention, and its accessibility to the public even more recent. In the meantime humans live human lives and require human guidance.

Succeed in providing that guidance, and you may remove the proof needed to demonstrate why the guidance should be tolerated.

I was raised evangelical and converted to Orthodoxy and have never heard it suggested that swearing is somehow implicitly sinful.

Raised Church of Christ and returned to it, here. We were taught to avoid both blasphemy and obscenity as sinful. "Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouth..."

Apart from failing to cultivate a relationship with Christ I'm unable to think of any behavior typically described as sinful that doesn't have observable material costs.

I think you might well be correct, but it's very easy to lie to oneself about this.

Hey another Motte Orthodox convert! There are a bunch of us here. We should start a club or something.

Are cradle Orthodox accepted? Count me in if so.

Nope converts only ;P heh. Just kidding of course.

Solid statistical evidence is a pretty recent invention, and its accessibility to the public even more recent. In the meantime humans live human lives and require human guidance.

People have been asking about my political ideology and this pretty much sums it up: the first-world is better than the third-world. It's a good thing that we're not burning witches anymore. But you all are so concerned with "third-world immigrants" you can't see the third-worlding occurring right in front of your faces.

People have been asking about my political ideology and this pretty much sums it up: the first-world is better than the third-world. It's a good thing that we're not burning witches anymore. But you all are so concerned with "third-world immigrants" you can't see the third-worlding occurring right in front of your faces.

I never understood how you could be so good at caricaturing this obnoxious persona until I saw the page where you explicitly catalogue your history of trolling people on reddit.

This is tiresome and it'll be a nice day when the mods finally get around to banning you.

I was raised evangelical and converted to Orthodoxy and have never heard it suggested that swearing is somehow implicitly sinful.

Wikipedia cites Exodus 20:7 and Deuteronomy 5:11:

Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.

A much better set of citations is Colossians 3:8:

But now put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and foul talk from your mouth.

And Ephesians 4:29:

Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.

Yeah, sorry, on my phone so I can't really give this the nuance it deserves.

We should distinguish between three different items here:

  • Taking God's name in vain
  • Swearing oaths
  • Using impolite language ('swear words')

The first and second require way more foundation than I can lay right now. The third I just answered elsewhere in this thread, probably pretty close to this post.

I was raised evangelical and converted to Orthodoxy and have never heard it suggested that swearing is somehow implicitly sinful. An argument sure can be made that it is in most particular instances, but that would be according to logic that would, as you'd have it, be coherent to materialists.

I was taught that swearing with words or phrases that invoke God are implicitly sinful (eg, all variants of "damn"), while others are merely signs of bad character (eg, "shit", "fuck").

Hm, I’m wondering if this is highly regional, or maybe generational. The Christians I know take offense at swear words and would be likely to describe them as minor sins. In my household, you got a stern talking to if you said “shit.”

I have also never met anyone who has said a racial slur of any kind unironically in my presence. I think I’m from the region and social class that is least likely to use profanity.

Since when is ('merely') signaling bad character harmless?

Propriety is a useful concept, as is reverence. Every minor decision we make, and word we use, directionally warps our character. It changes our own conception of ourselves. Offhand I can point to TracingWoodgrains as an atheist who recognizes the pattern and so refrains from foul language. (Though of course use-mention distinction applies to all of this.)

It is not good to regard ourselves as oppositional to order, propriety, or reverence. Instances where disruptiveness, impropriety, or irreverence are correct are exceptional and should always be engaged with deliberately. Never mind the value of cultivating verbal continence; of regarding oneself as holding to a standard other than the vulgar.

These arguments touch on Christian understanding but don't rely upon it. And they are only inward-facing. There's a whole additional side when it comes to the impressions we make upon others and how that can harm them and us.

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