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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   4860 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 28, 2025

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Yesterday, I was out for a late morning run, coming up my city's main commercial and restaurant street towards the capitol square. As I approached a stoplight and took a little break in the sweltering heat, a man across the street was blaring music on Bluetooth speakers; mildly annoying, but common enough in the public square. What startled me was another man on the other side of the road who began rapping (for lack of a better description, since it was basically just yelling with a slight match to the cadence) a stream of invective - he was going to kick people's asses, motherfucker this, n-bomb that, people better not fuck with him, and so on.

Reflecting a bit, this made me think of the recent discourse on asylums and what to do, and it occurs to me that I think many people are still missing the actual point. The man I described above didn't show outward signs of any particular mental illness, I have no idea if he uses drugs, and while he did look like a vagrant, I don't know whether he sleeps rough or not. Do any of those things actually matter to me? In some sense, it would matter if there was a serious and treatable mental illness (e.g. schizophrenia), but I don't actually care whether he has diagnosable narcissistic personality disorder or is merely what we would colloquially describe as an asshole. What's to be done if there is no such diagnosis and no drug-induced psychosis, but merely an asshole yelling at people about how he's going to kick their ass? My answer is basically that I want police officers to exercise their discretion to inform him that his options are that he can knock it off, do it elsewhere, or they'll arrest him for disorderly conduct. We don't need to escalate to immediate criminalization, starting with "move along sir" is fine, but no, you don't get to keep yelling at people all day.

So much of the discourse about bums persons experiencing houselessness seems like we're just talking past each other. At the end of the day, I genuinely don't care what the state does with these people, I just want them removed from my neighborhood. This attitude is derided as not solving the problem, but that claim merely highlights that we don't agree on what the problem is. For the people that insist on handling root causes, that part will be up to them, I'm perfectly satisfied with literally any solution that removes the people that throw chicken bones and vodka bottles on the ground in the park. I'm not actually very interested in whether they're addicts, mentally ill, or simply terrible people. The answer from the BeKind crowd seems to be that everyone has the right to behave the way they want to and that I'm a very bad person for wanting these guys removed; this seems like an unsolvable impasse in preferences for how to live.

I'm a very bad person for wanting these guys removed

This doesn't make you a bad person, but

I genuinely don't care what the state does with these people

certainly doesn't make you a good one.

I also live in an area rife with these problems and I sympathize, and think that the state needs to do better at dealing with it. At the same time I wouldn't be fine with "literally any solution", there's got to be red lines about their treatment somewhere. I'm curious where exactly you'd draw the line, and how much you'd want the state to spend on it.

I meant what I said. I have trouble imagining any plausible solution that any modern state has taken to this problem that I would object to as long as it resulted in people not camping in the park, throwing trash on the ground, and yelling obscenities at passersby in the public square. I might have preferences about solutions, but it's hard to imagine proposals that I would consider worse than the status quo on this front. Singaporean harshness would be fine by me. Softhearted liberal utopian visions would also be fine by me. Huge public spending would be fine by me if it actually removes the problem. As long as the problem is solved, I am not that concerned with the exact solution.

I meant what I said.

There should be no surprise about why people would think you're a "bad person" then. Explicit lack of caring about others is kind of what makes one a "bad person".

I am also not okay with the status quo either, but I think there is some minimum level of support that must be provided (or possible to achieve) before you violate people's autonomy willy-nilly.

(my preferred solution is low-quality, cheap housing, that doesn't have to be right in the most expensive locations for some freaking reason. If you make that available that justifies a lot more force when removing people from public, as they actually have somewhere to go.)

Again, I am not surprised by that view.

To focus on the substance though, I think this is exactly where the whole impasse is coming from:

Explicit lack of caring about others is kind of what makes one a "bad person".

I don't agree with that at all. The extent of care that an individual deserves is contingent on their behavior, it isn't just automatically owed to everyone. Related but probably tangential here is that I also don't think I owe care to all humans around the globe and my level of care is higher or lower based on relative levels of closeness to me. For my wife, infinite care. For the guy yelling obscenities at people on the street, very little care. For the terrorist or brutal murderer, anti-care and explicit wishes for the state to terminate their existence.

On a personal level prioritization of care is right and good. What kind of world would be be in if it was morally wrong to care more about your wife!

Buying jewellery for your wife instead giving change to the crackheads on the street! Sure perfectly fine! I never give change out, I too prioritize myself and very much dislike the incentives that giving change creates.

Shooting the yelling crazy guy on sight because your children heard him say the F-word? Obviously obviously wrong. You'd call the cops on someone who did that.

There's a bar between those two extremes somewhere, if you set it low enough, even for the street crazies, that makes you a bad person. It would actually help if you specified where exactly you'd put it.

(I also think my argument here is giving the impression that my bar is very high, but it's absolutely not. I think the tolerance level is currently too high, and should be lowered, but you just can't drop it to the floor).

I’m curious, if you were to estimate the level of care you owe to the following people on a scale of 10 (as a brother) to -10 (omnicidal maniac), what would it be? (assuming you’re a white American)

  1. Another white American

  2. A white European living in Europe

  3. A Hispanic mestizo legally living in the US

  4. A Hispanic mestizo living in Mexico

  5. An Ethiopian Christian

  6. A Saudi Muslim

  7. A black American who has been convicted of two counts of petty vandalism and one count of shoplifting

  8. A white American who has been convicted of three counts of felony assault and one count of attempted murder

  9. A Simbari tribesman who practices traditional pederasty rites

  10. A black American pedophile with a preference for young white boys

A Simbari tribesman who practices traditional pederasty rites

TIL. Also, WTF.

Though from what I can gather it's not strictly pederasty because the initiations rituals and the rites of passage don't involve an adult male. It's older boys abusing and raping younger boys.

Assuming that these are all generic representations of people that I have not met personally and have no additional ties to:

  1. 3
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 2
  5. 1
  6. 1
  7. -3
  8. -7
  9. -7
  10. -8

The reason for the low valuations on the generic "these are all fine" groups at the top is that I just don't think I owe very much to distant countryman in general. My high levels of care are reserved for people that I have much closer ties to. I wish no ill on the Ethiopian Christian or Saudi Muslim, it's just not my problem how things work out for them in their faraway land.

The negative rankings are somewhat challenging owing to the fact that whatever anti-care is owed diminishes with distance, so some of these numbers reflect distaste rather than a willingness to do anything.

I don't put any meaningful emphasis on race as an element of care. Individual behavior exceeds racial preferences for me in effectively all cases.

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