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 -
What's policy starvation?
One of the observable mechanisms of social decay.
Long ago, I promised to write an effort post about this, but then I kinda lost the ability to write effort-posts. Here's the short version:
People want a thing. People clamor for the thing they want. Lots of different would-be leaders step forward offering to help organize the getting of the thing. These would-be leaders each have a different plan for how they'll get the thing. The plans tend to differ a lot their projections of how much effort and extremity will be required to get the thing.
As a rule, people don't want effort or extremity, so they tend to go with the plans that promise the easiest solutions first. When those don't work, they grudgingly accept the plans involving a little more pain and effort, and so on. Ideally, they reach a plan that gets them at least an approximation of what they want without too much pain and hardship. The people get what they want, the successful leaders are lauded for their excellent work, and everyone goes home happy.
But suppose people decide they want something that can't actually be gotten? The process above is carried out, starting with the easy plans, then the moderate plans, then the serious, hard-nosed plans. One by one, these plans are attempted, fail, and are discarded, but the people are still unsatisfied. Failed plans might be tweaked, but after a number of attempts grow discredited, and people stop backing them. If the thing people want isn't achievable by the means available, and people won't stop wanting it, you get policy starvation: people gravitate to to solutions and the leaders proposing them that under better circumstances would never be given the time of day, but now amass credibility as the only people offering solutions that haven't already obviously failed, if only because they haven't been tried yet. In the same way that physical starvation drives people to the extremity of eating spoiled food, and ultimately grass, shoe-leather or human flesh in an attempt to satiate their physical need for sustenance, starvation of policy drives people to extreme political acts: insurrection, revolution, civil war, democide.
Look around you, and you'll see it everywhere, on both sides. In this case, troll or no, Liberalism's promise was that once we adopted its norms, everyone would just sorta chill out, everything would work out, reason would carry the day, mumble mumble you get the Federation from Star Trek. It hasn't worked out like that. His generation did not, in fact, get it right, and they were, in fact, making promises, promises they were powerless to fulfill. And so they gifted us a world where people have lost confidence in the moderate Skokie solutions, and turn to Zunger's extremist zealotry instead.
What did liberalism promise that it hasn’t fulfilled though? You say people haven’t chilled out but then again we haven’t had a major war or civil unrest for decades.
Also we have done a decently good job of living together in a diverse society. It’s not perfect, but I doubt it ever was. Dissidents were just silenced in the past or didn’t make it into the history books. Now we’re letting that frustration out, which is on balance a good thing if we can figure out how to address it.
Don't mistake eloquence and verbosity for truth and just roll over and abandon your point because people posted 15 links to their extensive post histories from the last three years. There's a steelman to be had for things aren't as bad as the terminally online make them out to be, that liberalism has been remarkably successful and is worth fighting for, and that this is still the best time and place to be alive bar none.
It's easy to paint a grim picture of liberalism and the West when it's failures are trumpeted to the heavens while it's successes are the water we swim in.
You have a very warped view of what "trumpeted from the heavens" means if you believe this.
Last night, I turned on NPR in the car and listened to some guy expound about how the last 20 years of Ukrainian history are entirely the West's fault as we supported neo-nazis and genocide in the Donbas. Depending on the political party in power, half the country and media ecosystem is in hysterics about FEMA death camps/alt-right neonazis/excessive taxation/insufficient taxation/so on and so forth.
This morning, I open up globaltimes.cn and read about how Actually, China's COVID response has been entirely rational, orderly and planned this way from the beginning by our hyper-competent, divinely ordained leadership.
Criticism is good, criticism and awareness of our failures is important to (try and) hold politicians accountable and identify problems to be solved. We've blown way past that to screaming from the rooftops and rending our clothes about Trump lowering the corporate tax rate/Obamacare/children in cages/whatever outrage you want to pick that we promptly forgot as the news cycle churned over. Nobody bothers to defend the West anymore; it's imperialistic, misogynistic, anti-white, anti-black, antipathic to the middle and lower classes, exploitative of labor, sclerotic, bureaucratic, autocratic, whatever you want it to be man. Someone's gotta pick up the standard - we may not be improving lives as much as we were a half-century ago, but as far as I can tell, nobody else is doing better and this is still the system to emulate for innovation and human progress.
To your other post:
Someday, I'm sure humanity will come up with something better. I'm not going to buy into the hubris of the End of History and claim that we've solved the problem guys, it's liberal democracies all the way down and all we need to care about is execution. But like I said, I don't see anything better in the marketplace of ideas at the moment.
I may have phrased my posts poorly, because funnily enough I think the first part of your comment addresses my second post better than the latter.
On messages being shouted from the rooftops:
I disagree. You'll know a message is shouted from the rooftops when you can get in trouble for disagreeing with it. If you get fired, blacklisted in an industry, debanked, or arrested, or if alphabet agencies have taskforces dedicated to scrubbing or throttling your disagreement from the internet. If you are looking at spending tens of thousands of dollars a year to put your daughter into a private religious school for a religion you don't believe in, in the hopes of turning down the volume of the message, it's probably being shouted from the rooftops. But the things you pointed at are just background noise.
On upholding liberal principles:
Yes, yes, I'm sure of that too, but that's not what I meant. The point is that when we do come up with something new, it will be, well, new. Something different from the current liberal system. It will fly or fall on it's own, and thus have no claim to the successes of liberalism, even if it does turn out to surpass it. Likewise people who are arguing for violating liberal principles now in order improve society, even as they call themselves liberals from the other side of their mouth, shouldn't get to claim the successes of liberalism. To be clear, I don't think you're doing it, though I may have been poking you to find out if you will.
By the way, has your worldview changed somewhat recently? I might be misremembering your comments from the old place, but I've been doing some double takes reading you lately. I seem to be getting the vibe of just a bit more sympathy for the dissidents? Not that you agree with us, just that we're not insane for complaining.
That's a classic. "We're not perfect, but over here you're free to criticize the government" has been the staple of American propaganda since at least the end of WWII. I'll grant you that we're a little bit more subtle about it than authoritarian states, but as the past few years are showing, it's not that our rulers are allowing criticism as a matter of principle, they're not even allowing it pragmatically on the off chance that us plebs might have a good point every once in a while, and it would be unwise to shut us up. It's a calculated play, it's better to let crazy doomsday preachers rant on street corners, and have people completely ignore them as they walk by on their way to work, than to make a show of silencing them. Of course the moment the crazy preacher gains a following and so much as influences an election in an unsanctioned direction, the knives come out, and the show is over.
That's another classic. The issue here is that when you start on top, and have a long way to fall, you might be able to use "nobody else is doing better" as an excuse for a very long time, even as things are getting obviously worse. Hell, if the whole world is becoming more authoritarian, you might be able to claim you're "liberal" even after installing a dictator, simply because the other dictators are worse.
I'd agree that institutional power has swung fairly far in one direction in the past decade and can sympathize, but 1) my point is much broader than the superficial culture war topics du jour and 2) there's plenty of places in this country where the messaging is very different.
Or, it may very well build on the successes of liberalism and improve on them in a linear fashion. People may, in your view, violate liberal principles in some instances while still adhering to them more broadly - does a liberal who supports a free press, open markets and some restrictions on hate speech get to lay claim to the benefits of the liberal tradition? How about a MAGA-conservative who's a hardline free speecher, adamant supporter of freedom of religion in every instance, but agitates for tariffs and protectionism?
Dogmatic adherence to liberal principles in every instance is both impossible and likely undesirable. I recognize this facilitates an easy slide into...well, many Bad Places, but regardless, at the end of the day, we're going to have to hash it out and work together to compromise rather than dusting off the sacred texts of liberalism to answer every question. Dogmatic pursuit of Free Trade may not be optimal when some other countries are mashing defect. Unlimited free speech may not be the way to go in burning theaters.
Can you be more specific what you mean by 'us plebs might have a good point every once in a while?' Does this mean you want us to elect plebs to congress, that you want your elites to be more responsive to what you want, that elites are by and large correct but now and then the plebs know better and should be listened to? Although in the latter case, I'd also ask how you expect us to know when the plebs have the right of it.
I don't believe that we're perfect, nor do I take excessive comfort in being better than the authoritarian states. In an America where everybody was extolling the virtues of our Glorious Leaders, I would be shouting from the rooftops about corruption and overseas military adventures. Instead, I believe we live in an America where nobody, ever can suggest that our government might have done something good without turning heads. I have enough humility to recognize that on 99% of the issues put before Congress, I'm truly ignorant, and maybe, just maybe, they might know something after all their briefings and committee meetings that I don't.
But it's a fine line to tread between trusting your reps, and turning a blind eye to corruption, eh?
It's less an argument about the current state of affairs in America being peachy, and more that I don't think I've seen a superior successor ideology rapidly outstripping us in terms of outcomes that I would consider endorsing over western-flavored liberal democracy.
I'd be lying (not to mention ashamed) to say that my views haven't changed over the last several years, but I believe my overall shtick has been the same. I've always had sympathy for conservatives angry at the system in the same way I've had sympathy for Blacks. I aim to balance arguing for what I believe in with further alienating left and right. I don't enjoy social media or writing long forum screeds and I lurked in various forums for twenty odd years before finally participating here out of a sense of civic duty (although I admit sometimes I make myself laugh), which undoubtedly is part of why many find me insufferable.
So no, I don't think and have never thought that you're insane. I think we have common ground in disapproving of small children hanging out with strippers and many other areas, and believe that we can have mutually respectful dialogue where we disagree.
It might be a sign of how bad things got, or of me going off the deep end, but I don't know if I even believe in these "directions" and things swinging in them anymore.
Just a heads up you might be talking to a certified loony, I guess.
So is mine! It might not be obvious because I think I'm something of a through-the-looking-glass version of yourself. If I understand you correctly, you seem to believe that all this culture war is a distraction from all the important stuff like tax policy, healthcare, foreign policy, some aspects of education, etc. - things that determine how a country is actually run. I say, to hell with all that! If it's that important to you, you can have it! I want the cultural madness to stop, and by that I'm not talking about topics du jour and fights between the woke and the unwoke, these are just aesthetics. One day we'll talk about the importance of deconstructing whiteness in math, and how important it is to promote other ways of knowing, another day we'll be strapping electrodes to your brain because that's what The Science says. With all the talk of AI, I'm half expecting the latter aesthetic to make a comeback, what a glorious show that would be! All the true believer wokies suddenly getting the TERF treatment and finding themselves on the margins of society, and half of the dissidents suddenly deciding that maybe the regime isn't so bad after all, now that it's whispering sweet nothings into their ears.
I don't know if I have a way to distill what I'm frantically gesturing at into a single principle, but if I had to, I'd call it something like preventing the 1984-ification and drowification of our society. Rat-racing, backstabbing, and maybe even memory-holing have always existed to some extent, but it got way out of hand in the past decade.
Well then, we're right back to the End of History, aren't we? It's just Liberalism with a tweak or two.
Sure. I recognize that anything outside the world of pure mathematics will have fuzzy borders, and will bring you a world of pain in categorizing it, if you want to be too strict and literal. But this is where we come back to the point of promises being made. If you openly promise free press, open markets and some restriction on hate speech, and people support that, that's well and good. If after that a newspaper publishes an article you don't like, and you start dicking around with their ability to reach an audience, you don't get to use the fuzziness of the concept to pretend you're still upholding your promise.
It's mostly the latter, but I'm approaching it a bit differently. Electing the plebs, and having the elites be more responsive falls into the "principled support for free speech". That's how our democracy is supposed to work ideally - we can elect someone from among ourselves, and put pressure on the government to carry out the will of the people, to that end we need free speech so we can organize, tell the rulers what we want, etc.
"Us plebs might have a good point every once in a while", is a more cynical take, where the will of the people doesn't really enter the picture. The elites do mostly what they want, not what the people who they represent want. Even then there's a pragmatic case for keeping free speech, as a sort of 4-chanesque idea generator. You'll mostly get garbage, but every once in a while it'll spit out a mathematical proof for a previously unsolved problem, the coordinates of an ISIS training camp, or figure out there's something fishy going on in Wuhan, when all the epidemiologists are swearing everything is fine. Now how you tell the good bits from the garbage is another story, but that's not the point. The point is that they let the free speech machine run and churn out content, and the ideas are there for the elites to take or leave.
My point is that even this cynical version of our democracy, where the plebs' ability to steer the government is mostly a sham, is not what we're doing anymore. According to our elites the free speech machine is dangerous, and has to be shackled like ChatGPT to only spit out goodthink.
You're right that America doesn't openly get a lot of praise, but there's a bizarre dynamic about it. All the right-thinking Euros agree "America bad", but anyone suggesting that we don't have to copy-paste all their crazy ideas to Europe will be met with massive amount of derision.
Also beyond America there's the "international liberal rules-based order" all the important people seem to agree exists, and deserves open praise.
Sure, I don't even want to change anyone's ideology (again, I sort of think they're mostly aesthetics). I just want an acknowledgement that there are promises that are not being kept, and that something should be done about it. It doesn't even have to be solved now, or anytime soon. I'll settle for "You have a point, we might need to get around to that some day", and "don't worry, I won't call you a Nazi".
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
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link