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 -
Oh so what you're saying is that the Dems should go nuclear next election and cut funding for all conservatives unless they go woke and we should go into an arms war of being the Serious Threat each time one group is in power?
Or are only conservatives morally justified in destroying science for culture war issues?
You seem to think that there is a tit for tat MAD argument to be made for restraint. Uh, no, there isn't. A politician promising to punish the hicks for having the audacity to touch the academy is less a political platform and more the hysterical overreaction of a crazy person. There's a popular thread of argument that goes 'but imagine if it was happening to you'. In this case, I don't have to imagine: conservatives have been driven out of everything from literature to knitting to table-top RPG games. Your consequences have already happened. Deterrence doesn't work if the opposing side uses the imagined bad end as a frequently-executed goal that often succeeds.
So yes, we are justified. Oderint dum metuant.
This really does seem to be the basic "it's ok when I do it, crazy when the enemy does it" statement. Not uncommon, but as a principled person who has fought against censorship from all directions I disagree with it.
No, I want to go further then that. I fully hated it when it was done to me: and no amount of principled pleading ever got them to stop. What is happening right now is wrong and you know what? I'm not going to lose any sleep over it.
Certainly, my enemies never did.
So I abandoned the principles. "If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?" Having principled people like you on my side amounted to jack and squat in the past two decades. So why should I care?
I don't want to make peace with them. I don't want to return to 'neutrality', whatever that means. I want to make peace with the dust and the ash, with the sand of the desert: with desolation and ruin. I am Hulegu sacking Baghdad: let the rivers run black with the knowledge I am destroying. Better my rules enforced unfairly, because the ideal neutral is impossible.
This is the compromise you are seeing, a game of defunding and well-written lawfare. What I actually want is the books burned and the scholars that wrote them alongside. Anyone who even knows who Foucault is should have their frontal lobes lobotomized. But I can take what I can get. If my intellectual enemies live in fear and deprivation that is good enough.
Your attempts to appeal to liberal sensibilities fall on deaf ears because I don't have them. Not anymore.
Because there are such things as moral imperatives which you should follow even if they do not bring you material benefits; indeed, even if following them costs you dear. Having been persecuted does not give you a license to persecute in turn, any more than having been raped give you a license to rape your rapist. It's not about what it gets you - it's about right and wrong.
If you are in fact devoid of moral principles (on this topic), then so it goes. No arguing with demons. But don't say that you used to have principles, and now you don't have them "anymore" because they got you nothing tangible. If your moral principles were conditional on beneficial outcomes for you, then you never had any in the first place.
By this standard no one except dead martyrs have moral principles.
No, that doesn't follow. You can still exercise good faith, ie trust that people's stated moral principles as real unless proven otherwise, no martyrdom necessary.
To put it another way, it's fine to hold moral principles that do bring you material benefits as a bonus. It's just that if the benefits dry up, and you give up on the principles, then we can state pretty confidently that you never held them for moral reasons in the first place.
I overstated, then. I think your definition of moral principle requires a willingness to be martyred, literally or metaphorically (say, career, social life, tolerating being the acceptable target of hatred, etc), and exceedingly few people hold any principle that strongly.
There's a significant gap between benefits drying up and 'costing you dear,' though.
Let's take two moral principles that I think we might agree the average "normie liberal" of 2008 could have been said to hold: free speech is good, and racism is bad. As it turns out, both of these were quite ideologically constrained for most people- only some free speech is good, and only some racism is bad.
On one hand, I still think both are good principles to have. On the other, holding them in the social climate of the last 15 years makes one into something of a punching bag. If saying "free speech is good" plays a role in making it so academics and journalists have no repercussions for calling people that look like me cancerous goblins that made deals with the devil, my willingness to think free speech is good dwindles rapidly.
Does this mean that my thought of "free speech is good" is not a true moral principle? So be it, it's not a moral principle. I think it is good in theory but the tradeoff cost can and has been reached.
I think many people intellectually hold principles that strongly. Perhaps, under duress, they would break. But they would recognize themselves to be acting in an immoral manner. They would feel guilty. They would continue to believe that it would have been more ethical of them to stick to their guns, even if they made excuses for why it wasn't that bad of them to have fallen short of that ideal. All of which I find to be very different from openly saying "holding this belief became inconvenient for me, so I gave it up". The former is flawed human nature failing to live up to its genuinely-held moral principles; the latter is giving up on the idea of having moral principles at all.
I can imagine scenarios where I could be coerced into taking actions that clash against my moral principle that e.g. torture is wrong; but I cannot imagine any scenario where the pressure would result in me surrendering my belief that torture is wrong at the abstract level. I would still consider my actions to have been wrong, and someone who had resisted the pressure to be morally superior to me.
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