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.
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.
It's 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