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 -
American Compass has a new article complaining about the decline of the Summer job:
The article notes one reason why:
This might lead you to wonder if maybe you should learn something from the wealthiest racial group in America. But no, the author doesn't suggest that. Send your kid to work at McDonald's, good for them, builds character. Who cares if Asians take 25% of Ivy League seats and conservatives find themselves increasingly locked out of the American elite?
This is the same kind of error Leftists make when they see that kids whose parents took them to art museums have higher incomes than kids whose parents didn't and conclude that it means we need to subsidize art museums. In both cases, genetic confounding is ignored. But while the left fetishizes education and high-class culture, the right fetishizes hauling boxes and cleaning pools.
None of this is to say that summer jobs are necessarily bad. If your teen is rotting his brain with electronics 16 hours a day, kicking him out and telling him to get a McJob is probably gonna be good for him. But if he's well adjusted, does well in school, and has lots of friends, there's no reason to make him work manual labor because someone conservative writer who attended a third-rate university told you it's an "American folkway." It isn't, by the way. John Adams said, "I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain." It wasn't "I must study politics and way so my sons can work a cash register and be in touch with the working-class."
I’m sort of torn here because some of the things you learn on a job are things that will very helpful once you pass through all the testing and actually get to college. Things like showing up to work on time, doing tasks as instructed, going to work even though your friends have something more fun in mind, time management. Now what happens with a lot of kids is that the6 got used to the handholding that happens in high school where the teachers basically walk everyone through that big paper or assignment with every step checked off and multiple reminders about when the thing is due. And the6 start college where the midterm paper is in the syllabus but never mentioned, or maybe mentioned once or twice in passing— until the TA is collecting them. A kid who never learned to do the work will probably forget until the last minute.
I don’t think that con only happen at work. Sports teams can do the same. Maybe math camps? I never went to one.
This. If you're an average normie chump just out of college looking for entry-level work, your potential employer cannot really tell if you'll turn out to be a reliable wage slave or not. If, however, you've probably done various summer jobs without getting fired/arrested, you're much less of a risk in that regard. On the other hand, if you belong to a PMC family, doing unpaid internships for state institutions or NGOs and other front organizations of the Deep State is a more efficient use of your summer breaks.
It’s not just looking good for an employer. The main benefit is that while study-maximizing might help you get into a better school, it’s not very good if the lack of work-ethic, time management, prioritization, or working with other people to solve a problem mean that you end up failing or underperforming because you lack the skills to capitalize on the opportunity given to go to the elite school. It’s the difference between optimization to get the first date and optimization to get a fiancé. You can absolutely find advice about how to get through the dating app grind — and it is important to do so. But that advice doesn’t necessarily work when the game changes and now you want to keep the relationship. Getting into Yale is a skillset unrelated to staying in Yale. If you spend all your time training to get in, but none learning the skills that allow you to thrive in an environment where no one is around to give you the step by step instructions on how to do everything and stay around to see that you actually did it.
And actually this is the thing that I’m seeing lots of high school and college educators complain about with the younger generation. They don’t have the skill of doing things without being told, they don’t have the ability to work ahead on projects. And a lot of them don’t know how to problem solve when there are no explicit instructions on how to do that. As I said above,im not convinced that only a stint as a fast food drone will teach those kinds of soft skills. In fact sports and volunteer work can do so as well. But unless kids learn those skills to do things without the adults walking them through every step, they cannot possibly do well in college and probably even after college.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link