site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   28648 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 26, 2022

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.

11
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

A human being was killed, and you're more outraged at the destruction of a tiny little portrait?

Well except this is the same "you value property above people?" arguments made in the riots from antifa to BLM, and who has to clean up the mess after the glass-smashing? The ordinary people that the glass-smashers claim to be representing.

I can understand wanting revenge for the death of her sister, but the way it was set up was that all of them joined in the glass-smashing, and it really was only, in the end, destruction for the sake of destruction. They had all been too afraid, for various reasons, to stand up before, and the only thing they could do was be aimlessly, pointlessly, destructive.

Have you ever read the Ray Bradbury story, The Smile? That's what the idea of destroying the Mona Lisa came off as to me; destroying something that is the common heritage of all humanity just for an easy own of the Bad Guy. And making the Bad Guy sympathetic in that moment, because this is something that has meaning to him. Were it just "I'm so rich I can have the real Mona Lisa hanging on my wall", then he'd be no better than any of the rich assholes who buy great art and stick it in a vault because it's an investment that will appreciate over time until they can sell it on for a higher price than they paid for it. If it were some piece of trashy modern art (like something by Jeff Koons) that Bad Guy only bought because his investment manager advised him to do so, then go right ahead.

But this is something that apparently is meaningful to Bad Guy, something that he appreciates for its beauty and inspiration. So by destroying it, Helen has impoverished the world. And she has acted in the same spiteful, hairless ape way the Bad Guy did: one primate kills another in order to hold on to the things it has gathered together, its status in the pack. Then a bunch of rival primates turn on the former alpha and take him down, in a display of shit-flinging destructiveness. Helen is motivated by the same basic, instinctual drives that caused Bad Guy to do what he did, and nobody comes out of this looking like the better person.

Johnson's choice of the Mona Lisa is interesting, too; he could have picked some trashy modern art (if Helen wanted to burn a Basquiat, I'd have handed her the accelerant myself) but he didn't. I don't want to be reading too much into it, but I do think that there is something there about the choice of "old master art that the privileged white guy cherishes being destroyed by the Strong Empowered Black Woman".

To conclude with a quote from the Bradbury story:

‘Why’re we all here in line?’ asked Tom, at last. ‘Why’re we all here to spit?’

Grigsby did not glance down at him, but judged the sun. ‘Well, Tom, there’s lots of reasons.’ He reached absently for a pocket that was long gone, for a cigarette that wasn’t there. Tom had seen the gesture a million times. ‘Tom, it has to do with hate. Hate for everything in the Past. I ask you, Tom, how did we get in such a state, cities all junk, roads like jigsaws from bombs and half the cornfields glowing with radio-activity at night? Ain’t that a lousy stew, I ask you?’

‘Yes,sir, I guess so.’

‘It’s this way, Tom. You hate whatever it was that got you all knocked down and ruined. That’s human nature. Unthinking, maybe, but human nature anyway.’

‘There’s hardly nobody or nothing we don’t hate,’ said Tom.

…Tom stood before the painting and looked at it for a it for a long time.

‘Tom, spit!’

His mouth was dry.

‘Get on, Tom! Move!’

‘But,’ said Tom, slowly, ‘she’s beautiful.’

‘Here, I’ll spit for you!’ Grigsby spat and the missile flew in the sunlight. The woman in the portrait smiled serenely, secretly, at Tom, and he looked back at her, his heart beating, a kind of music in his ears. ‘She’s beautiful,’ he said.

…Only Tom stood apart, silent in the moving square. He looked down at his hand. It clutched the piece of canvas close his chest, hidden.

…The moon rose very high and the little square of light crept slowly over Tom’s body. Then, and only then, did his hand relax. Slowly, carefully, listening to those who slept about him, Tom drew his hand forth. He hesitated, sucked in his breath, and then, waiting, opened his hand and uncrumpled the fragment of painted canvas.

All the world was asleep in the moonlight.

And there on his hand was the Smile.

He looked at it in the white illumination from the midnight sky. And he thought over to himself, quietly, the Smile, the lovely Smile.

An hour later he could still see it, even after he had folded it carefully and hidden it. He shut his eyes and the Smile was there in the darkness. And it was still there, warm and gentle, when he went to sleep and the world was silent and the moon sailed up and then down the cold sky towards morning.

Ray Bradbury, God rest the man, was a genius talent. Rian Johnson is a currently popular Hollywood hack.

Were it just "I'm so rich I can have the real Mona Lisa hanging on my wall", then he'd be no better than any of the rich assholes who buy great art and stick it in a vault because it's an investment that will appreciate over time until they can sell it on for a higher price than they paid for it.

While I agree that Miles Bron did value the Mona Lisa for sympathetic reasons, the ultimate reason it is destroyed is because of his own selfishness. He created the back-door to the Mona Lisa's security system just so he could look at it without glass, he put the Mona Lisa into a giant compound that was one accident away from going up in flames. What if he had the Glass Onion in normal operation mode with 50 people, and he decided to look at the Mona Lisa without glass just as a cook starts an oil fire in the kitchen? He put the Mona Lisa into an inherently risky situation in the first place, and it blew up in his face (literally) because of that.

While I do think there is something a bit dubious in destroying an important cultural artifact as an act of revenge against an otherwise untouchable murderer, I think the fact that the destruction is only possible because of said murderer's own selfishness and hubris is an important point.

he put the Mona Lisa into a giant compound that was one accident away from going up in flames.

For the plot purposes, it needed to be "one accident away from going up in flames" to prove that the wonderfuel was as dangerous and bad as deceased sister said it was. On the other hand, having his exotic habitat fueled by the dangerous bad wonderfuel means that he did believe it was safer than alleged; in this instance, he did put his money where his mouth was and had skin in the game. If he had sold his wonderfuel as safe, clean and green but secretly had his house powered by something else, then he could be accused of knowing it was dangerous and/or being a hypocrite.

So Johnson undercuts his own plot because he needs Things To Happen in order to make it all work out in the end. And I still think "person who deliberately commits arson" is the one with the ultimate blame. Or if I burned down your house, is it really your fault for not making sure it was as perfectly fire-proof as physically possible, even to the extent of withstanding an arsonist?

Well except this is the same "you value property above people?" arguments made in the riots from antifa to BLM, and who has to clean up the mess after the glass-smashing? The ordinary people that the glass-smashers claim to be representing.

Fair... except that destroying the Mona Lisa isn't directly demolishing the livelihoods of your fellow citizen.

Likewise, the glass-smashers weren't acting out in a response to a harm that was inflicted on THEM PERSONALLY. So there's a much tighter justification available to Helen.

Helen is motivated by the same basic, instinctual drives that caused Bad Guy to do what he did, and nobody comes out of this looking like the better person.

Right, but in the circumstances that Johnson managed to contrive, her position was basically "let the villain not just get away with murder, but thrive for his complete theft of wealth that was properly Andi's... and that he committed murder to maintain... or force him into a position that he can't readily wiggle out of."

Indeed, there's perhaps an argument that if Andi was the true genius behind Alpha's success, and thus the Billions of dollars in wealth at issue would have, by law, passed to Andi's only surviving heir Helen, that her actions at the end were her own attempted reclamation of wealth that she would have received anyway had it not been for the thief's actions.

If we accept the premise that Helen would have been rightfully entitled to everything Andi rightfully owned after Andi wrongfully died, then her act of destruction at the end was really only destroying things that were hers by right anyway. A way of preventing the thief from keeping the benefit of his ill-gotten gains, which historically has been an oft-used tactic ("If I can't have it then you can't either"), and destroying the Mona Lisa was her way of making it stick.

What was her other option? Go for a long-shot legal solution (that had already failed Andi) and then accept the eventual loss and ignore that her family's entire legacy was stolen out from under her?

Likewise, the glass-smashers weren't acting out in a response to a harm that was inflicted on THEM PERSONALLY.

Exactly. It's hairless apes turning on the fallen alpha and they all of them are not any better than he is, in the end. And Helen gets some excuse for wanting vengeance for her sister, but is it really worth burning the world down for that?

then her act of destruction at the end was really only destroying things that were hers by right anyway

Nope. Destroying things that don't belong to you (and if I'm correct, the Mona Lisa was on loan, not permanently owned by Bad Guy) is not justified in this case, because it makes Helen as greedy as the rest of them: this should have been my sister's and so it should have been mine!

She put herself in the wrong, because in reality all Bad Guy has to do is call his private security, or the local cops, about "Hi, there's this crazy woman smashing things up in my house, yes thanks please come quickly". Even afterwards - she burned his house down, that's attempted murder on her part (if his lawyers are anyway competent) as well as "Your Honour, would my client have his own home powered by this new energy source if he really knew or believed it was dangerous?"

Well, it's a silly movie that is meant to be a piece of stylised fun, not anything deeper. But I don't think smashing shit up is goign to achieve anything, except leave you all walking with splinters in your feet.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats