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 grew up in an actually socially conservative bubble, in the hardcore twenty percent or so of Americans(so this would be the hardcore 10-15 percent or so of working age native whites, even in the Bush era). Going to church every Sunday was the right thing to do; Mohammedans and atheists were inherently untrustworthy. The blacks are racist too, and responsible for the problems in their community(I was of course warned not to repeat this in public). Fornication is bad, actually, but it happens and needs to be dealt with- and if an eligible man was known to be sexually active with a woman he had to marry her, even if she wasn't his preference or he had other plans. Homosexuals are (mental and sexually transmitted)disease ridden perverts. Gender roles and real and not optional. Women shouldn't be in the military. Marijuana is an evil drug, much worse than alcohol. The 'liberal elite' pushes bad values on purpose; I remember much bellyaching about how they had recently succeeded in making bikinis the overwhelming default, and when I was a bit older about themes in Harry Potter and Twilight. Better be spanked as a child than hanged as an adult(and few, if any, of the people around me had sympathy for criminals). A woman's father had the right- and in many cases, the responsibility- to veto a marriage, and maybe even a dating relationship. Ideally the woman should stay home with her kids, unless she was a teacher, but in either case the man was responsible for the bills. Society was going to collapse because the government uses our tax dollars to push bad morals which make people unproductive; that's why people are dumber, less virtuous, and grow up slower than in the fifties. You can't get a divorce just for falling out of love- the man has to be violent or not holding down a job, or the woman has to be an awful mental case, or somebody has to be addicted to drugs, or something.
I don't say these things so the motte can litigate them. I say them to point to the sine qua non which made the worldview work- different people have different roles in society, mostly due to their membership in various classes(age, gender, social class, maybe sometimes race). As a male youth it was my duty to protect my sister if we went to a social event together, and it was more important that my schooling focus on getting me into a good job which would one day pay the bills for a family. My sister had more household chores(well, in the conventional sense- I had to mow the lawn etc but lots of people don't count yardwork as housework) because it was important that she learn how to do ironing and baking and stuff that I wouldn't need. I was told in no uncertain terms that if I got a girl pregnant or lived with her I would have to marry her, even if I was in love with someone else or had other plans(and my male cousins have pretty much all followed this rule when they took concubines)- although the ideal was obviously a white wedding. And of course being that we were basically middle class I would have to provide a basically middle class standard of living- homeownership and stable employment and going places in cars and the like. My parents threatened to kick me out when I expressed my desire not to go to university, and only relented when I found an HVAC apprenticeship- because it was my job as a middle-class man to have a career, not just a job. These are of course an illustration.
I don't see this mentality from, shall we say, 'converts' to social conservatism. I see a lot of bemoaning about how someone else used to do better from e-trads. And I think this is a lynchpin that's missing which makes a bunch of it 'larping' or 'cargoculting' or whatever; the motte likes to talk about it from time to time. But y'know, social conservatism works off of 'who you are makes x,y,z your job and not doing it even when you don't want to makes you a bad person'. Lots of people like to talk about this- positively or negatively- about women's domestic or familial expectations. I don't think focusing on 'a man's role' or whatever is the missing piece I think you just... can't talk about it without talking about it intersectionally. 'How does everyone fit into society' is a question that needs to be answered and if you've already decided personal characteristics are the way to go about it, well...
I feel like this discussion is the missing ingredient to lots of the topics du jour. Let's take the leftward drift of young women- well social conservatism today seems to have, uh, not discussed what other people owe to them, only what they owe to other people. Is it any wonder that the victimhood narrative from runaway woke is more appealing? Or the disagreements over immigration; we no longer have a class of people whose obligation is to do manual agricultural labor(and most of the historical people who did this did it as an obligation, not a job; serfdom and the corvee is the historical norm). The modern American right seems to simply lack the actual difference between itself and progressivism; it differs only in accidentals(I'm pretty open about voting republican because they protect my right to be socially conservative, and not because they'll push social conservatism). I don't think this mentality can come back from the government, but only from intermediating institutions that democrats would like to punish for doing their job and pushing this. But this is the key difference; most adults have probably worked it out for themselves but nobody ever says it out loud.
I grew up in what I would consider a sane, earnest, evangelical church. Conservative-ish, but clearly more progressive than what you describe here.
We were taught about duties and obligations, but without the racism or sexism or inherent birthright class that you cannot escape from. Your role is determined by your talents. You should serve others in the best way you can based on what you're good at, because God designed each person to be unique and made them good at different things, therefore they naturally slot into different roles. The Parable of Talents was frequently taught, and metaphors were made to parts of the body, which each serve a different function but all collectively contribute to the whole. Another version of this was "Godly Gifts". Some people have the "gift of giving" which means they have a talent which allows them earn lots of money and donate to others in need (the church/missionaries, general charity, or just people who they meet who are struggling and need help). Some people have the "gift of leadership" which means they have social skills and can organize events or manage tasks. Some people have the "gift of service" meaning they are good at and/or enjoy doing tasks that help people like volunteering at soup kitchens or picking up litter or helping an old lady repair her house. Some people having "gift of caring" which usually means childcare, helping at a nursery or donating free babysitting. It's not your role as a man or a woman to do all of the things that society coded to be appropriate for your gender, it's your role as a Christian to love your neighbor as yourself, and to demonstrate that love in the best way you could based on your knowledge of yourself what the best way for you to effectively help people. If men and women statistically happen to have different talents most of the time, then most of the time the roles they filled would be largely gendered. But if you happen to be an outlier and be good at a role more typical of the other gender then that is something to be celebrated, not punished. I remember going with my Dad to help repair a fence and every single person on the repair team was male. One time we went to paint a house and everyone was male except one woman who came with her husband. 90% of the people on nursery duty during church were female, but ~10% were male, because that's the proportion of people who volunteered. When we were old enough my brothers and I were encouraged by our parents to volunteer in the nursery at least once so we could try it out and see if we liked it. We didn't, so didn't go back, but that's entirely the point. Your gender is correlated with your talent, but your talent and choice determines your role.
General duties and proscribed behaviors were similarly fair and general. Women should dress modestly and avoid tempting men into sin because everyone is supposed to dress modestly and avoid tempting others into sin, and everyone is supposed to resist that temptation as well. It happens to be the case that men are more prone to temptation and modern society normalizes women dressing less modestly to take advantage of this, but it is a shared duty and a man dressing immodestly is considered equally bad even if in practice the issue rarely came up. When the Christian summer camp I went to had issues with complaints about the teen girls wearing bikinis being immodest, and their attempts at mandating more modest female swimwear didn't quite work, they implemented a rule that everyone had to wear a T-shirt in the pool, because they didn't want to make an unfair rule that only affected the girls.
This is what social conservativism is supposed to look like. It's stupid and wasteful to force people into a mold that they don't fit. To take a man who loves taking care of children and tell them "you were born in the wrong body, you have to work instead" and take a woman who is intelligent, ambitious, and has dreams of becoming a lawyer and tell her "Careers are for men, go raise children." Just take both of them and suggest that they marry each other. They can collectively fulfill the role of creating a happy healthy family and contributing to society. The team is healthy. Why does it matter which genitals are held by the person doing each subtasks as long as the job gets done? As long as people consider themselves part of an organization (The body of Christ, or just society in general), are aware that their general role is to help that organization effectively, and make sure that they are contributing to those needs to the best of their ability, then the jobs will get done. Someone will grow the food because some people are born with the talent and/or desire to work on farms. Someone will clean the house and prepare food for the family because some people actually like those things, and some people just dislike it less than their partner. And usually that will be the wife because usually women like those things more, but if a husband and wife agree to do it differently then by all means do it differently. And if nobody genuinely wants to do it then one of you has to step up and do it anyway because it needs to get done and, if you both genuinely love each other and are being good Christians then you'll want to serve the other person.
I agree with you that conservative converts lack this. But it's not the gendered or class based norms that are missing, it's the authentic (and/or socially expected/pressured) love for others and your community. The team mentality. It's hard to devote your life to just take care of kids and not earn money if nobody else is giving you money, you'll starve. It's hard to work a bunch and leave your kids in daycare if the daycare is some faceless organization with 30 rotating and misbehaving kids rather than the local mom you know and trust from church with four kids of her own who your kids grow up with and become best friends with. It's hard to help the homeless man get back on your feet by letting him sleep on your couch for two months if he's a drug-addicted kleptomaniac who might shit under your sofa and rob you blind rather than the guy you know and trust from church who everyone vouches is hardworking but lost his job due to the economy. And then ten years later when you fall on hard times he hands you a check for $10,000 because he worked hard and got a job and is doing fine now and remembers how you helped him recover. You can't do that if everyone is always out for themselves and only interfaces through official, bureaucratic, profit-maximizing corporations. You have to have love.
This was the philosophy of the church I grew up in as well.
It was full of conscientious middle class families, and the working class ones were the sort who owned a small landscaping company or something.
Even among people sort of average in conscientiousness but a bit odd, it didn't completely work. The talent my father brought to the chili cookout was... reading T S Elliot poems in a corner. He had previously worked in a restaurant, as the person in charge of soups. So I'm not sure why we didn't bring any chili, now that I think of it. Maybe he doesn't like chili. I did enjoy the TS Elliot more than the chili, but we were the only ones.
We are the sort of mildly chaotic people who need a monthly Clean the House Day, where everyone stays home and cleans the house, otherwise it will just become increasingly filthy forever.
hydroacetylene's community sounds even less conscientious than my family. Some people will decide drinking beer and playing video games are their vocation unless firmly directed otherwise. Even the ones who think it's their vocation to keep taking college classes as long as the government will keep lending them money, with no plans for using the knowledge productively, sometimes need to be told that it's a bad idea.
Well, this can still be corrected without resorting to biological birthrights. That is, the community can encourage and educate (or pressure and threaten, if we're not mincing words) people who seem to be slacking off and not contributing in good faith. You're supposed to, of your own volition, do the best you can. But if you aren't doing that people can notice and call you out for it. And this can be done in a nice way "hey, I notice you are really good at cooking and whenever you make soup everyone loves it, why don't you do that more?" or in a mean way "You don't seem to respect others or want to contribute, because you keep ignoring the previous ten conversations we've had about this. This is not Godly behavior and you need to re-evaluate your priorities if you want to remain a member in good standing."
And sometimes this leads to conflict and drama and politics. Our one pastor ended up getting kicked out by the Elders for reasons that aren't quite clear to me because they didn't publicize all the drama, and I don't think was anything particularly scandalous in non-church terms, I think it was some combination of them not liking his preaching style and him getting worked up and yelling at people when he got angry or something (This was told to me second hand by my parents, so it's not like he was going off on people in public, but apparently it was bad enough to contribute to his removal). But my point is that there are still all the normal corrective measures of a community. When someone does wrong other people can push back. Everyone should fulfill a role to the best of their ability, and should be pressured if they're not fulfilling a useful role, and none of that requires the role be based on their gender, race, or perceived social class except indirectly as those influence their abilities and preferences. Your role is a combination of your abilities, desires, AND the needs of the community. The problem was not that it was a women or someone else's role to read poems in a corner instead of bringing chili and your father falsely slotted himself into that role in place of them, the problem was that this was not a useful role that anybody needed to fulfill.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Is it possible this is what Hylynka (sp?) had in mind when he implied that (oversimplifying) basically everyone here was really a progressive? He never made much sense to me when he was in that particular mode, but it seems to me you're arguing for something that could be stated that way.
And my extension to that is that everyone here is a traditionalist, and the only real difference between traditionalists and progressives (in terms of moral foundations and what otherwise motivates them to hold those views) to someone who is neither of those things is "about 50 years". Yes, progressives seem iconoclastic and style themselves on hatred of traditionalists, but in reality they converge on the same solutions via different ideological lenses.
(For example, traditionalists would have seduction punished because it devalues the father's property, progressives would have seduction punished because it devalues the mother [and her ability to attract men]- both see this as bad, both have the same motivations, it's just that one couches it through androsupremacy and the other through gynosupremacy).
The death of the word 'liberal' as a meaningful term had consequences.
More options
Context Copy link
Maybe, but I think it’s more likely that he meant what he said about the leviathan and woke.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Well this explains a lot about your stated positions.
Makes me realize that I probably turned out as weird as I did because I kind of had a one-foot-in-one-foot out upbringing, where half my family was churchgoing patriotic traditionalists and the other was more... bohemian? And both sides seemed pretty happy with their lives and had things mostly held together.
We've talked about basic life scripts before, and in general I think that demolishing those scripts has made life harder, scarier, more uncertain, less fulfilling for most people. Becoming an adult is difficult enough when there IS a direct example to follow. Now you have to do it while explicitly being told there is no one 'right way' to go about it.
When every single day, month, year of your life feels like you're having to hack through uncharted wilderness, and determine your location via a hand-drawn map and dead-reckoning, then yeah you're going to keep second-guessing a lot of decisions and live in constant fear of bear attacks, vs. staying on a well-beaten, marked, and lit pathway. (I overstate the analogy just to make a point).
And as you note, people who LARP Conservativism don't really push a RETVRN to such life scripts, or have a plan for bringing those scripts back. Because telling your viewers "go to church, follow the bible, and accept your given place and role in life without much complaint" is so utterly uncool and, for an influencer, self-defeating. If the audience does that they will start listening to their pastor more than you, right?
In fact, now I think about it: the term "Conservative Influencer" is almost a contradiction.
Agreed. But both the right and the left seem to have converged on the idea that the government ought to be the single wellspring from which all morality and practical guidance comes. What to eat, what to wear, how to arrange your affairs.
Again, overstating the case. I have spent a good portion of my adult life groping around for SOME institution, group, maybe even (ugh) ideology that would give me a provably reliable path towards a better life. But very explicitly not wanting to fall into a cult.
The only one that hasn't let me down in some egregious way, and has remained a steadying force in life is, no shit, my martial arts gym.
The gym I teach at provides the following:
I'd guess this checks a lot of the boxes for people who want to be able to follow instructions and see improvement in their life circumstances and be rewarded for the progress. There was a period of time where I think Corporations tried to sort of provide that to employees to make them more productive, but the underlying loyalty that requires has dissipated.
Church is still there, but good luck picking one that isn't compromised by political activism or that isn't mostly full of LARPers.
That seems to leave most people with joining up with political activism or getting into politics. Which tends to make everything worse.
At the same time, the tenders of the pathway need to consider when it needs to be widened or new destinations added to it.
In fact, there's a kind of weirdly mirrored thing: those demolishing narratives of life shirked their duty to change the pathways just as much as those whose rigidity shirked their duty to do so.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Did you ever go back to university? I used to assume from your username (and that you live in Texas IIRC) that you were a chemical engineer or something like that.
No. I’m familiar with oxygen-acetylene reactions in the context of welding and thought the portmanteau with hydroxychloroquine sounded cool.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
A big change happens in the social environment when you achieve a critical mass of family, friends, and neighbors who will hold you to what you and they believe to be right.
If you are a social conservative in a progressive setting, you can expect that a majority of your friends are more liberal than you, even if they are very conservative by local standards; a majority of their friends are more liberal than they, and so on along the gradient until you hit the local norm. Difficult sacrifices are always difficult; but they get a lot harder when your friends don’t respect them, instead encouraging you to do the easier thing that they sincerely believe would be good for you.
An example:
A couple of my college friends got married. They weren’t a great match in terms of temperament, but they genuinely loved each other and could have made it work. They were on the socially conservative end of their church. They were gender egalitarian, but that’s true of almost their whole denomination, and it’s one of the rare churches where for historical reasons this is not a predictor of broader liberalism. The wedding was consciously traditional in a way that expressed the joy and solemnity of the occasion and acknowledged the givenness of the institution.
They had a kid. ADHD, and later a stroke, made it difficult for him to hold down a job. Eventually he found a crummy job that he kept for a long time. If you knew him, you would know that this reflected heroic effort on his part out of deep love for his wife and child, but most people just saw him being less flaky. It wasn’t enough to provide a middle class lifestyle on a single income as your family and I might prefer, but she didn’t expect it to be. She is very type A, and she made more money than he did in a customer service job, later landing a manager role until stress caused her to step down.
They fought. She obviously felt for years that he wasn’t doing enough for the family, but it’s not clear to me how much of that was fair and how much was his failing to carry out her orders; I suspect some of both. Eventually she left him and got a tattoo symbolizing it as a rebirth. She told him (as I found out later) that the divorce would be good for the kid. To her credit, she tried to follow through with good-faith co-parenting. Without his family, he lost his job and his living situation made joint custody impractical; child support has not made things easier. Now she is planning to remarry.
Now, I don’t know what concrete advice she got from her friends. Knowing some of them and knowing her actions, I suspect it was often, “You don’t have to suffer like this.” But I have to wonder: what if they’d had friends and a church that were more conservative than they were?
Maybe someone could have explained that the relationship dynamics that were cute when they were dating would keep them from communicating love and respect once they were married. (I wanted to beat this into them so badly for years, but I wasn’t close enough to either one that a bachelor’s unsolicited marriage advice would be listened to.) Maybe somebody could have convinced them of the goodness in headship and submission and shown how to apply it in a way that recognized her gifts while encouraging him to take a more active role in leading the family. Maybe a friend good with family finances could have run the numbers to see if she could work part time and invest the rest in ways they could live more frugally. Maybe a sympathetic business owner could have found work that suited his abilities and let him provide better. Maybe she’d have heard, “Divorce is not good for your child!” until she either listened or went deaf.
So, a couple of thoughts:
I don’t know how things are in your community. It sounds like they are by and large better off, and I am grateful for that. In mine, the friend gradient toward the norm makes this kind of thing sadly familiar. I hope to figure out what I can do to make the situation better.
Social conservative “converts” are usually in an even more difficult place than my friends when it comes to support. They don’t have the social encouragement to do the hard, countercultural thing; they don’t have someone to help them fit the pieces together in practice; and there is no one to explain the next step in muddling through. I suppose the exceptions are those literal converts lucky enough to find themselves in churches that can provide these things to get them reoriented while it is all fresh and new.
In some cases the possibility of child support can keep men from just cutting and running or give them some skin in the game. But in my friends’ case its function is to make it easier for a woman to leave her husband because she thinks he’s a drag on her, while still demanding some of the (modest but heroic) financial support he provided as her husband. I doubt that the availability of child support caused this divorce, but it has made things worse, and it’s patently unjust. I wonder what socially conservative child support reform would look like.
Just to clarify, is this because she met someone new, or is that her vague expectation on how she'll proceed?
The money goes into an account handled by a third party who is in charge of ensuring the money is spent on the child's needs.
None of it goes into an account the mother controls. When the child turns 18, we can either give the child full control of the account or (here's a thought!) refund it back to the father.
She's engaged to be married, but whether they have set a date I do not know.
Contributes to my general perception that women are largely able to avoid the worst consequences of their behavior.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I had a vague post in mind that sort of overlapped with this one, which was just... The general lack of a sense of "duty". There's just a lot of talk about rights, or privileges, it feels like. Or of being taken advantage of (eg paying for children). Not "obviously if it's my child I have the responsibility to pay for them, what possible use for my money is more important than giving them as much support as I can".
I think the most basic component of a (successful) traditional marriage would be shared duty, both to the marriage itself, AND to something higher than the marriage itself. It's very different from marriage as a romantic fulfilment. Which you can still have, which is still even treated as something you can want, but when the marriage isn't romantically fulfilling but everyone is still doing their duties that's still considered a successful marriage, whereas in more modern culture I think it's considered a failure. (Fwiw I think the modern view has seeped into more traditional circles as well, but there's a clear generational shift I can see, because older couples are much more likely to think as I described)
I usually wonder about this kind of thing in a different sense, because men in spheres bemoaning lack of trad values often mention virginity but I'm never clear on if they're offering the same virginity themselves. And also if they're offering to respect their (prospective) girlfriend's desire for virginity until marriage and would indeed marry her without having sex.
You aren't clear because it is not relevant. Nobody cares if the groom is not a virgin, least of all the bride. Look up mate choice copying (or, as PUAs call it, pre-selection).
It's like worrying about how the groom will look in a dress.
The Catholic church cares and a bunch of traditional Christian churches and systems of morality care. A lot of Churches forbid masturbation and have shame circles where men confess to masturbating and try not to do it. I don't think the Catholics go that far but masturbation is still considered a sin.
Also while in traditional cultures the bride might not care if the groom is a virgin. She will care if he's a known womanizer because she wants him to be faithful to her after the wedding.
More options
Context Copy link
But as @Clementine points out, in older systems the duty wasn't grounded in the preferences of the relationship partner. If you start with "your bodies doesn't belong to you as fun toys to fuck around with, and your lives doesn't belong to you as a fun game to score as much worldly status as you can; both of you are given this for a higher purpose," then you get rather easily to all the natural-law thinking about the high status of sexual continence and faithful marriage and self-sacrifice and family formation, for both men and women.
I don't think you can get there from quid-pro-quo negotiations between two rational actors with no common commitment to a higher moral purpose, because prisoner's-dilemma thinking kicks in immediately, as in fact you can see in responses below. Yeah, but what if s/he defects and I get exploited? Sure, I'll [maybe]cooperate eventually, but s/he needs to go first.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Probably(even if rather unhappily so). But the crux of what makes white weddings work is ‘the man who makes it clear you aren’t a virgin has to marry you’, not ‘men dont get premarital sex’- even if the latter is still discouraged(rightly).
I did have a ‘duty’ frame in mind, but what I was really trying to get at in my post was- different people have different duties. Sometimes this looks unfair, but it’s because people are different.
Part of the problem is that underneath those surface differences, those varied daily duties were (and were explicitly claimed to be) the exact same set of primary duties: work as hard as you can, deny yourself, give up your life for those weaker than you, obey those set by God in authority over you. People forget that this cosmic hierarchy used to entail quite a lot of frictional social-class-based and age-based role rigidity, as well, so everybody had the daily experience of both authority and submission. In European trad systems, for example, the working man needs to obey both his lady and his lord and doff his cap to his betters of both sexes, everybody needs to obey the priest, who in turn needs to obey the bishop who needs to obey the Pope, etc. Sons and daughters need to obey both their mothers and their fathers, even as they reach uppity young adulthood. Of course, few humans are good at either authority or submission, so there are endless quarrels about boundaries for all this. But it's really clear how all of the role systems are upheld by the same explicitly analogical thinking and grounded in presumptions of not just difference but also similarity across stations.
The interesting corollary to this is that the dismantling of various family roles flows directly from the (economically-driven) political movement to dismantle class, legal and religious hierarchies, and is driven by exactly the same appeals to natural self-ownership, liberty of conscience and inborn equality before God. Although the US does pass through a couple of decades where class/political/religious hierarchy is gone but some limited gender hierarchy still holds, I don't think it's a stable equilibrium. For the middling sort, the system inevitably gets torn apart by the inherent contradictions in believing strongly in class mobility and spiritual self-determination but not in gender mobility or family self-determination.
Once you're committed to a class ethos of "you are not born to any fixed (economic) station, you can be anything you want to be! You should use your talents to try to rise in the world, in accord with your individual desires," then it's pretty hard to maintain the exact opposite line as regards genitalia. Even for yourself, I wonder if you'd get behind a system where a wife's natural duty to [whatever] implied that you also had a natural duty to obey your parents and go to college as they wished?
I did do as my parents wished- they agreed to HVAC. There were job plans they vetoed. I presented an alternative plan to their preference for me to go to college and they accepted it.
Fair, but that delicate interaction happened in a deeply individualistic society where you had the leverage of both parties knowing it was your right to choose. Tilt the conventional balance back toward hierarchy, connection, fixed roles and knowing your place, and now the peremptory or even tyrannical father comes back into the Overton window - the sort of father who is empowered to command rather than negotiate, who can refuse consent to a minor child's marriage or force an apprenticeship and back that up with physical discipline, and who has the right to make those decisions as he pleases without necessarily consulting his son.
Also back in the Overton window would be the full weight of social and political censure against rebellious subjects, disobedient sons, disorderly commoners, runaway 'prentices, religious heretics (I hope you're not Protestant?), innovators and entrepreneurs, misers and profiteers, and various other social groups who our present-day society lauds to the skies precisely for not accepting their customary role and place in the order of things.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The thing is, you have to offer the rights/privileges if you’re going to ask for the duty. Duty without reciprocation is just exploitation.
What I’ve found is that due to inertia a lot of people expect traditional duties from men: chivalry, serving women first at meals, paying for and organising dates, being the breadwinner when necessary, child support, a certain level of strength and stoicism and respect.
But they aren’t willing to put up the traditional privileges: obedience and respect from the wife and the children.
For marriage, I don’t everyone understands and agrees on what they’re supposed to get out of it. People are constantly negotiating their wants and expectations and they don’t feel comfortable with the idea of just doing their duty because they aren’t sure what they’re going to get back from it all.
No, that's precisely the kind of rights-based mindset that I'm describing as not being duty-based.
Duty without reciprocation isn't exploitation, it's virtue. That's the entire point of duty-based thinking. That you might not get jack shit in return and you do it anyway, because it's your duty. The entire concept is of having things you do simply because you are supposed to, not for other incentives.
It is, admittedly, a very traditional mindset. But it's a fundamental lynchpin to how the whole thing holds together.
If he owes the duty to other people, his mindset isn't the only one--there's also the other people's mindset to consider. And they may think that they are owed, but that they don't owe. It's exploitation by them.
Which is the ultimate failure of communitarianism and social contract theory: this is inevitable, and there's never any opportunity for redress when (not if) this occurs.
Liberalism attempts/attempted to solve this by placing hard legal limits on what that community is and is not allowed to require- that is why 'Congress shall make no law', and it's why your neighbors aren't allowed to disarm you, and it's why the community can't quarter its army in your house, and it's why the courts must presume innocence and not hold you indefinitely, and it's why you get the benefit of the doubt in questions of search and seizure.
That is why places that are a lot more ossified and conservative- who prefer their communities to be more exploitative because they hate their neighbors' ability to do things that are new and scary (like European and other New World nations) until it's profitable [and now those communities want their cut for "providing the environment in which it can exist" or some nonsense like that]- have pretend constitutions that protect nothing.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
If you ignore a few millennia of cultural understanding of duty-as-virtue ethics, perhaps.
Duty-based ethics, aka deontological ethics, are highly reciprocal. This is especially true in the western tradition, due to the derivation of why there is a duty and to who. Namely- because God. Hence why deontological ethics and religious ethics are so intertwined across history, since the fundamental question of any duty-based ethical system leads to 'according to who?' whenever a secular authority demands dutiful obedience.
A god isn't required to be that 'who,' but it is the moral authority higher than any king to make those demands for obedience something more than arbitrary human with thugs and clubs. In turn, religious deontologies are incredibly reciprocal- you do your duty unto God, which can entail more worldly obediences as well, and you go to heaven. Defy your duties, and you are separated from God / go to Hell / bad karma happens. God's love may be unconditional, but the state of grace of being close to god is not. Your reciprocal gain for doing the right thing is that your soul will go the right place, no matter the worldly harm you may suffer. This isn't exactly unique to Christianity either, as a brief review of any karmic system metastructure can show.
But the element of God isn't required for reciprocity either. One of the most successful non-theistic deontological ethic systems about duty, Confucianism, is explicitly reciprocal. It appeals to a 'natural' relationship rather than a deific basis, namely the relationship of fathers to sons, but this duty system is obligations on both parties, the failure of which on either part can justify action by the other. A son who lacks filial piety may be disciplined. A king who lacks virtue loses the mandate of heaven and may be replaced.
The non-abrahamic reciprocal duty also goes back from east to west to the foundational civilizing force of western antiquity, Rome. In Rome, the patron-client relationship wasn't a brief transactional relationship of bribes or business, but a fundamental social institution. Patrons provided support and benefits to their clients, from nepotistic favors to representing them in court or assisting in arranging marriages, and in turn the clients owed loyalty, respect, and support... so long as the Patron provided. But if the Patron didn't, then another, more worthy, Patron could be shifted too. This was a bedrock arrangement of not only rome itself, but everywhere Rome dominated, as this was the relationship deliberately pursued between Rome and its clients/allies/conquests/etc. And it was part of a broader mindset that didn't limit this to the secular, but the religious practices as well, where Roman polytheism was part of a reciprocal 'if we don't show piety we will be punished' leading to 'show piety for divine favor' paradigm.
All of these duty traditions far, far, far predate any contemporary notion of 'rights-based mindset.' The Jews were in covenant long before millennia before any enlightenment philosophers were quibling over human rights. The enlightenment built from the corpse of the Roman reciprocity. The Confusicians and the Hindus and more didn't need their example to figure out their own thing.
Duty-based ethic systems are highly reciprocal.
I agree that often duty based ethics is framed in terms of mutual duty. But @Clementine is still correct with the assertion that duty without reciprocity is virtue, not exploitation. You may not be required to discharge your duty towards someone who doesn't discharge theirs to you, but it's still praiseworthy to do so. For example, Judaism and Christianity both depict how God continuously acts benevolent towards humanity despite them not deserving it. This isn't framed as "God is a sucker", but rather as God being the exemplar of virtue whom we should strive to imitate. Not all religions frame things that way, of course, but when you have some 3000 years of one religious tradition which does, it seems fair to call that just as established as the reciprocal duty that you outlined.
edit: forgot to mention that your explanation of Christianity is very much not how it works, and is in fact a heresy! Salvation is explicitly not something that God owes us because we upheld his law, but rather is a freely given gift. Thus our only choice is to say "yes, I accept" (out of which comes trying to uphold God's laws, again not out of obligation but out of love for him), or to reject his gift (because we would rather do our own thing). Salvation as a gift rather than earned by our conduct is a core tenet of Christianity.
This misses the argument previously made.
Religiously-derived deontological ethics aren't a duty towards the person you are doing the virtue towards, but the duty to the god who sets the paradigm of right and wrong action. Other people don't need to reciprocate your execution of virtue because the duty relationship isn't to them, but to god. The execution isn't praiseworthy because the recipients or human observers praise it, but because the worthiness is set by god regardless of the beneficiary.
In turn, the sucker being raised is the deontologist if god does not exist, not god if the deontologist fails. Being the root of deontological legitimacy challenges any premise of obligation to god by those without deontology-setting power, but people who do something on the grounds that derive from god are being suckers if that belief was always wrong, regardless of how socially commendable their niceness may be.
Reciprocal relationships are not the same as obligation relationships, much as they are not synonymous with transactional relationships. The duty (deontological obligations) to god for freely given grace is still a reciprocal relationship, even though it is not a transactional relationship nor does is obligate god in return.
It seems like a lot of your argument hinges on this distinction. Can you elaborate? Because I confess that I can't see the difference you're trying to point to.
This is fundamentally a categorization boundary difference. This is the sort of thing where we may simply have different categorization hierarchies/boundaries.
What you quoted is / was intended to be a reminder against the fallacy of composition without calling it such, since overtly calling on a fallacy can come off as an attack / belittlement. Which was not the intent, but lost some clarity, particularly on the categorization hierarchy.
The fallacy of composition is the error in which what true for a part of a whole is assumed to be true for the whole. It is a common categorization error when sub-sets are conflated with broader overarching categories. What is true for a subset (all dogs are mammals, A = B) does not necessarily apply to the over set (all mammals are not dogs, B =/= A). (Part of the error is that it's not actual the same category in both sets, as 'mammals' and 'all mammals' are not the exact same group- that is, they are not both 'B'.)
Reciprocal relationships are a category of relationships, distinct from other, non-reciprocal relationships. It itself is a subcategory of [relationships]. Reciprocal relationships as a (sub-)category can in turn be broken down into further sub-categories.
Obligation-based and transactional relationships are subcategories of reciprocal relationships. There are additional subcategories as well, types of reciprocity that are also not obligatory or transactional. Mutual love and mutual hatred are both reciprocated relationships that have no intrinsic obligatory or transactional element. More can be found.
The fallacy of composition limits the application of any of them to characterizing the others- what is true for a part (a specific subcategory) is not true for the whole (other subcategories / the broader category). What is true for one subcategory (god's relationship with man is not a specific type of reciprocal relationship, i.e. not a transactional relationship) does not disprove another subcategory, or the overarching category.
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
"Reciprocation" doesn't mean you, personally, get something out of it, it means the person has duties of their own.
More options
Context Copy link
No, I mean I used to have a duty-based mindset and I pulled myself partially out of it by noticing that people who are very interested in my duties towards them (personally or in a wider sphere) are often uninterested in any duties they might have to me, or regard their traditional duties as historical oppression now thankfully abandoned.
One must have both. Otherwise it’s just playing cooperate with defect-bot.
Don’t get me wrong, I know what you’re getting at. I’m just saying that, long-term, people have to feel that their duties broadly even out. It doesn’t have to be literal ‘I will give you X if you perform Y duty’ but ultimately you have to persuade people, generation by generation anew, that your conception of duty and virtue is a valid one they should follow.
I would say that a big part of the decline in duty you mention is both sexes observing, in different times and at different ways, that they seemed to be being taken advantage of. You can’t sustain such systems long term.
Lots of duty based systems eg confucianism lasted long term. I'm not sure how well adapted they are to modern day life, where a lot of the scaffolding¹ that helps maintain the systems is crumbling. But these systems usually specifically have moral parables about people behaving virtuously — dutifully — even when they're reciprocated not just with nothing but with active ingratitude and disrespect.
¹ things like belief in a god who will reward you for virtuous behavior if you're not rewarded by the beneficiary here, stronger community bonds, staying in the same place for decades or centuries so that having a good reputation meant more than it does today, etc.
Confucianism is an explicitly reciprocal duty-based system. It was often explicitly modeled both in terms of father-son relationships, where the son's obedience to the father is contingent on the father being a virtuous enough patriarch to be worth respecting, and between subject and sovereign, where a sovereign's failure to maintain virtue is the basis for losing the mandate of heaven and being replaced by someone else who will appriopriately fill the duties required.
Confucianism and deontological religions have a commonality in that the duty-based system is based on relationships that are reciprocal. Religious deontology works from the premise of virtue's relationship, and thus duty to, one's own god. Doing so brings you closer to your god / earns good karma / etc. from your metaphysical duty-obligator. More secular Confucianism works from the premise of the duty to natural relationship of [child] and [parent]. Doing so brings you more harmonious relationships with the other part of the relationships.
No major deontology system has ever worked from a premise of a duty towards an action outside of the context of the relationship. Even when the Christians preach charity to one's enemies, it is based from the premise of the relationship of the charitable practioner to their god. When the virtue-ethicists like Aristotle talk about balancing bravery between cowardliness and foolhardiness, it is in the context of its effects on, and the relationship of the practitioner to, others.
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
I am reminded of a pastor who praised a groom during his wedding for bringing his bride to the altar a virgin. The pastor’s homily was kind of tacky, and his exegesis wasn’t great, but I think his heart was absolutely in the right place.
I mean that’s kind of weird?
Yes, of course; that's why I mentioned it. It's a funny story, and in some ways the pastor made nerdy, clumsy me feel like a paragon of social grace by comparison. It's not an example to imitate.
And yet... I don't know. The whole service was so incredibly earnest in a way most weddings, even Christian weddings, are not. It wasn't a show. It wasn't just a party. It wasn't a chance for the bride and groom to show off. Great is Thy Faithfulness may never have been sung more sincerely.
The liturgy would not have impressed Cranmer. The preaching would not have impressed Edwards or Baucham. But God was glorified anyway.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
...gotta say my reaction to that is a firm "ew". Delicacy, modesty, discretion, not saying everything out loud in public are all virtues.
I mean, I agree. It was weird. But looking back on it, it’s kind of adorable nonetheless.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I think modern right-wing converts are very different from people who actually grew up in socially conservative communities because they’re fundamentally not conservatives at all. They’re people who grew up in a liberal environment who want to rebel against it (often for valid reasons), by adopting the values the liberals themselves previously fought against. Paradoxically, to be a socially conservative convert, you need to be a non-conformist who’s not afraid of questioning the worldview they were brought up in.
If you were a conformist who respected and followed societal expectations, the behaviour that from your description is encouraged in conservative communities, you wouldn’t have converted at all.
By being a right-wing convert in a liberal environment, you’re joining a counterculture, you’re adopting certain views because they’re cool, edgy, based, provocative, you want to tear down the system… you’re obviously going to have a very different attitude to life than people born in a socially conservative bubble.
I've thought about this a decent amount. I rebelled against the norms around me in highschool and became a libertarian, but I often wondered if I was just an accidental encounter away from going the other direction and becoming communist or something.
Its easy to notice that many young men rebel against the norms around them, and it seems to drive their political, social, and cultural views. But this "rebellion narrative" has a glaring set of problems: it assigns little or no agency to the individuals involved, it ignores the power of ideas, and thus it lacks any explanatory power for why people rebel into a particular set of ideas.
Instead I think it is just that failures that are happening in the here and now are easier to notice than all of the successes happening, or the bad things that aren't happening. A political entity that is clearly in charge gets blamed for all those problems. People go looking for answers. Since we are in a two party system they often just go to the other side. But not always! The two party system isn't a rule of reality, just a quirk of how our system is arranged so people can and do find their ways elsewhere.
It seems notable that libertarians and communists are very different kinds of people- I don't think this is entirely assimilatory in nature, I think this is more selection effects. EG you see very few female libertarians.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Indeed. I'm always reminded of the evergreen Fukuyama quote:
I think this is probably an underexplored dimension of political belief: there are people that want a struggle and there are those that want to grill.
It’s also the case that once the just cause has triumphed for a couple of generations it will look a lot less just.
After a while, the people in charge aren’t just any more, they’re incurious conformists upholding a system whose virtues they no longer understand. Social parasites get in at the cracks. The various downstream issues the just cause creates at scale are papered over to prevent exposure.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
What brought you to the Motte?
It was recommended on SSC, which I read for the deep dives, eg 'X: much more than you wanted to know'.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Yep. There was a commenter here who said women lacked "accountability" because they want to be able to f*** without risking being pregnant for nine months. I'm going to hazard a guess that that message won't be a particularly popular one among young women, as like with most voters they prefer politicians who will make their lives easier rather than harder.
That said, one should be wary of parts of the gender-divide narrative. Trump's performance among white men was actually worse in 2024 than in 2016, while his performance among white women improved. CNN exit polls confirm the same phenomenon.
That was me, and as we discussed at the time that's a horrendously inaccurate and uncharitable take on what I was saying.
This is entirely typical of you. In my opinion you don't belong here and I for one will be much happier when you inevitably wear out the mods' welcome.
(And no; I won't be litigating this or anything else with you again, nor should others.)
Anyone can click through and see what you said.
Likewise. You'll note that I was happy to volunteer those links.
And rightly so. Please keep that link and reminder on hand. It is certainly a good example of AlexanderTurok's bad faith characterizations of past arguments.
Here's what TitaniumButterfly said:
I've reported his comment and yours for mischaracterization and strawmanning.
You have taken him out of context. If you look a few posts down, you see that he also says that people already understand that men need to be held accountable. You've distorted his claim that women should be accountable just like everyone else to imply that he says that only women need to be held accountable.
No I didn't.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
We're not going to take sides in a situation like this. People accuse other posters of misrepresenting and strawmanning them all the time. Sometimes people are misrepresenting and strawmanning other posters, but y'all need to work this out yourselves-civilly!-or let it go.
When we do intervene is when threads become pointless back and forth exchanges of "Did not!" "Did too!" Which is what this is becoming.
We also dislike people declaring they have reported someone. "I'm telling on you!" is not any more effective or impressive here than it was in kindergarten. What is that supposed to accomplish? Put extra pressure on the mods? We can see your report. Submit your report and move on.
Apologies then, I will not do this in the future.
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
Despite the constant pissing and moaning on here about how much women love criminals, in reality they weren’t very enthusiastic about the “constantly import foreign rapists” plan.
Nor the ‘shove mentally ill sex offenders in segregated spaces’ plan.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I think this is spot on, which I why I’ve always had a lot of respect for the social philosophy of Confucius. He’s pretty explicit that every person in society not only is owed by his inferiors, but owes to his betters. Other systems in the past did the same, and even in the case of no formal system, traditional systems tend to informally promote tge idea of reciprocal relationships where I owe you and you owe me. I’m not even convinced that the specifics of the things owed actually matter; it seems to work fairly well as long as the duties and benefits are fairly equally distributed to everyone.
More options
Context Copy link
Yes on both counts.
More options
Context Copy link
Eh, I see this discussion a lot. One common line is that what other people (specifically, men, specifically, husbands) owed them -- mostly financial support and physical protection -- is something that they can now either provide for themselves or will be provided by the state, so they no longer need to offer anything.
But in general social conservatism is hierarchical, not reciprocal. Duties are owed to those higher up; parents, church, community. Even those things owed to another person of similar rank or lower down are not owed to them per se, but owed to them because it is ones duty to society to provide it. This is one of the reasons social conservatism is so stifling, especially to the young (who are low in the hierarchy).
Hmm, an obvious failure mode to social conservatism sounds like it would be a state weighed down by elder care, which is not too far off from describing most of the world's advanced economies, and the problem is very much getting worse.
Elsewhere, someone else talked about a marriage needing to be in service of something greater than the marriage. To many social conservatives, it seems like the answer to this is a deity. To me, it seems like you should just be able to make the marriage in service of the children. On an overall societal level, I would criticize both liberals and conservatives as failing to prioritize the future, progeny, etc, and wish there was a way to get this to happen.
The fact this doesn’t strongly happen is more to with how social conservatism in the US picked up an emphasis on the nuclear family, which sort of intrinsically shuts out grandparents in a way other conservatives don’t.
More options
Context Copy link
Children are not "greater than the marriage", so they do not provide an answer to that, if one is needed.
If you want progeny, though, you have to have the conditions for it. Social conservative communities provided those conditions, but I don't think they can do so any more. Modernity, however, seems to be failing more and more. I have no answers, but I'm fairly sure "more of the same" won't work.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I see lots of complaining about child support payments and the like, even by those generally skeptical of girlboss women's lib.
That’s because of it’s perverse incentives towards divorce and pre martial sex
More options
Context Copy link
Child support payments are part of modernity, not social conservatism. Anyway, if people are discussing them they are discussing obligations owed to (in practice) women; the usual complaint here seems to be the obligation is one sided. (Which it is; the child support payments are owed even if the money is not used for the child or if visitation and/or joint custody rights are denied)
Those two are not antonyms. Contemporary American Social conservatism perceives itself as being "timeless" "common sense morality," but it's very modern. Imagine trying to convince your 1800s great great grandmother that a fertilized egg that's barely visible to the naked eye is a "baby" or "person." It's something social conservatives believe they've logicked themselves into, much like leftists believe they've logicked themselves into "trans women are women!" I'm skeptical either "really" believes it, deep down.
I remain impressed by how you manage to drag abortion in to any discussion whatsoever. Nobody was talking about 19th century attitudes to the personhood of the foetus, but there you went!
While I agree that Turok is a one trick pony, attitudes towards abortion are germane to the topic. I did grow up with the attitude that a woman seeking an abortion was not just a murderer but also a shirker(just like a boyfriend who didn't marry her when he found her with child). I don't think fetal personhood is, though.
I talk about other subjects too like white nationalism and conservatism coding as low class.
I think maybe a good smell test would be: am I discussing the culture war, or waging it? No one is ever not guilty of breaking this from time to time but the ratio of “waging” posts to “discussing” posts is outta whack
More options
Context Copy link
You are not exactly talking about the class valence of the attitudes in my post(c'mon, 'shotgun weddings are trashy' is the lowest hanging fruit ever) or interrogating the implied racial attitudes.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Social conservatives in America decided to make that the centerpiece of their political project and then get mad when I bring it up in response to a thread about social conservatism in America.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The majority decision in Dobbs pretty well lays out the development of abortion law in the U.S., and it got stricter across the nineteenth century as the quickening standard was left behind. I don’t think it would have been as hard to make that case as you say.
More options
Context Copy link
Imagine trying to convince my 1800s great great grandmother that my great grandmother, who just kicked her from the inside, was not a baby.
Not to re-litigate a worn out topic, but "kicked from the inside" -- aka quickening was historically (as in Colonial America) the point after which abortion was a crime.
Your great great grandmother probably had the same intuition embedded in Common Law.
More options
Context Copy link
Would be difficult. Fortunately nobody not made of straw would need to. All pro-choicers say is that if she wants an abortion she can get one.
A lot of pro choicers also call it a “clump of cells,” not a baby.
If you want to bite the bullet and say that abortion is ending the life of a baby, go ahead, otherwise this is false on the face of it.
A "clump of cells" can't kick its mother.
Then give me an example of a pro-choicer telling a woman the late-term baby she wants to give birth to is a clump of cells, not a baby. Shouldn't be difficult if this is something they really say.
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
The flip side is that the higher in the hierarchy you go, the higher the demands. A king has far, far more virtues to live up to and a far heavier burden to carry than a peasant. Being a priest puts far higher demands and far higher responsibilities on a person than being a layman.
And yet people regularly murder each other to become king and rarely murder each other to become a peasant.
Yeah, that's the burden part.
Most monarchs still don't/haven't chosen the peasant life instead, suggesting being a monarch is preferable.
More options
Context Copy link
In the same way that when I buy a Costco box of cookies I've burdened myself with eating them.
I'm being serious, what part of having to be constantly looking over your shoulder and being unable to trust even your closest relatives sound appealing to you.
Power is a curse, all those who actually tasted it will tell you. It eats at all of your life until nothing is left, and for what? In the end you only can make the decisions that allow you to maintain your station.
History is full of men who wanted nothing to do with it. And rightfully so.
Its only redeeming quality is that in the hands of your enemies, it is even more terrible than in yours.
But what has humanity ever hoped for if not for someone else to deal with anarchy? Entire societies built just so we don't have to do this dirty work ourselves. Whole religions spent on dreaming someone is doing it for us when we are too weak.
Wars of succession are rarely fought to get the other guy to take on the, ah, "curse." There never seems to be a shortage of men ready and willing to take the top job.
These people have "enemies" because they wish to gain power and subjugate their rivals. If they didn't want to do those things, nobody would give a shit about them.
The vision of the reluctant ruler is a very romantic fantasy for the armchair philosopher, or for those with zero power in their personal life, but has very little, if anything, to do with reality.
This just isn't true. History is full of people who refused to take power despite a solid claim and were killed by those who did. As I said, the only thing worse that holding power is your enemy holding it. Being benign works sometimes, but not all the time.
See, that's not my experience at all, and I've actually had the burden or luxury of doing some leadership in both political and economic spheres in my own modest degree. While most people love to complain about what people do with power, they are quite averse to seizing it or attempting to hold it themselves, the sort of ruthless upstart people want to talk about here is common in politics but an aberration in the absolute.
Anyone who's actually held leadership will tell you this: what people love most is to criticize from the sidelines and to reap consequence free rewards.
Few enjoy or seek the actual work of making difficult decisions and making oneself the enemy of all.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Does this describe Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, or Donald Trump? I don't think so. Vladimir Putin... LOL.
A very Hobbesian view, but there are clearly many men (and a smaller but not insignificant number of women) who love power much.
Oh it certainly does. Obama's not shy about his frustration at being unable to change things because he had to spend his time greasing the wheel. Trump's entire first term was one compromise after another. Clinton is famous for doing a 180 on his economic policy after getting a stern talking to. And Putin's basically "look what you made me do": the foreign policy.
That's just how power is, read Dictator's Handbook for an explanation as to why: you can't rule alone, so you have to balance the needs and wants of your keys to power, and once you've managed that, you get to enjoy a little bit of vanity, as a treat.
Consequential rulers manage to be so because they hold solid well aligned coalitions of easy to satify people, and are competent enough to maintain them. People who rule by whim or principle never do so for long. Ask Liz Truss.
Undeniable, you certainly mentioned some. But these are not most men.
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
Yeah, in theory.
But, in practice, how often is there actual accountability? And a good way to fire them?
More options
Context Copy link
So they claim. But the king is unlikely to be willing to trade places with the peasant, so it seems this is an uneven bargain.
That’s because virtues are illegible and subjective but the benefits of leaderships are not
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