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 think we must have lost each other somewhere in the abstraction because this response makes no sense whatsoever to me. The thing I'm trying to point out is that if your political system has a progressive side that wants to make periodic changes and your control structure is a conservative side that tests those changes and attempts to reject ones that could threaten the status quo as of the last ~30 years then you are vulnerable to a periodic change that happened more than 30 years ago that will never the less be ruinous. A healthy political system needs to be able to look critically at the status quo from a conservative perspective.
I take the view that we're still very much riding the wave from the French revolution and it's not quite certain we're going to get to keep this new fangled liberty thing. The population disarming themselves in the year 2000 might not actually bare its wicked fruit until the year 2050 or 2100 the next time there is a WW2 sized shock. Hell, some countries seemed on the verge of dissolving basic rights because of a pandemic, wait until there are credible accusation of spying by a real rival super power.
The one we have now but where we all recognize that changes made before we were born are legitimate targets for conservative critique. Which may just be the one we have now but I certainly don't want the proposed one where it's not considered conservative to undo changes that happened a long while ago because then if there are truly bad changes that age long enough they're impossible to undo.
I've always found the word reactionary rather useless if not actively harmful. Opposition to a proposed policy doesn't magically transmute into an entirely different faction the moment it gets passed. It's just an artifact of trying to map complex ideologies onto a spectrum. But I guess that critique applies to all the other words used as well.
Taxonomic, it is like if "progressive" only applied to the exact policies up for debate and no further and we had to use some other word to describe people who wanted more than this iteration of gun control or whatever issue. I don't really think reactionary means much of anything besides a sneer by leftists and some negligible number of people who want to be ruled by a king. And these two definitions don't even intersect.
If I say that Australia made mistake when they gave up their guns I have much in common with modern conservatives and basically nothing in common with people who want to be ruled by a king. It's just not a useful word as used. It would make more sense to call people who want to change past mistakes progressives rather than reactionaries as they want to change the status quo but that would just be even more confusing.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link