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 rights are more than just tools we use to protect higher values. They're the values we aspire to themselves because we're happier living in societies that carve out spaces for different human activities. I think depending on where you are in society you're going to have a different view on what kind of society you live in. In my own case I can agree with what people like Jaron Lanier says and I think many people in country's across the world would say the same thing for themselves, even without an explicit commitment to free speech. If you're a black teenager that inherits the circumstances and conditions of having to grow up in inner city Detroit, you still may not say you live in a tyranny, but you live in a dog-eat-dog world in a 1st world shithole society that doesn't care about you, from some of their perspectives. And it's hard to disagree with that when it's baked into your life experiences. Those communities would greatly enjoy a little more security and a little less freedom if you offered it to them on a plate. There are compromises to reach on civil liberties which include free speech. I used to get criticized all the time for "not understanding" how important freedom of speech is. I can assure people I absolutely understand it's importance. But it's important to understand there are different sociopolitical planes and axes that people live under. And freedom of speech isn't a one-size fits all solution. Countries do what they believe makes sense in their circumstance and history.
This is why I'm a conservative and think it's ultimately the proper fit for society. It's hard for mere mortals to know what will work at a first glance. Even a John von Neumann or Einstein can't hold a candle to the thousands of years of human trial and error. The world's complicated and individuals have only seen so much of it, which is why you have to live life with a useful rule of thumb. Just like in evolutionary biology, we learn that adaptions are 'good' inasmuch as they promote survival, what's old and lasts through time as tradition is also adaptive becauase traditions are evolutionary adaptions for societies. We want something so secure that we can't even remember a time when it wasn't around. The longer something has been around, the more likely it's weathered every imaginable storm, under every condition, on every subject and at every point. When people come around and say "times have changed," that isn't a serious argument when you have 300 million years to wade through in order to make that statement. Anyone would laugh a remark like that off the debate stage. At the very least tradition works and it's dues need to be paid because it's a way of being pragmatic.
No civilization out there better grasped that than the Romans. The highest authority to them in their society wasn't science, it was the "mos maiorum," or what we translate as "the way of the ancestors," (i.e. 'tradition'). And to question or put it in doubt, was literally to question the experts. Incidentally no other society was as anti-Utopian as the Romans were by the same principle. Tradition in this sense is ideologically agnostic. The content of the belief itself doesn't matter, which is why different societies have different traditions. All it has to be is useful, stabilizing, adaptive or productive and the best way to know that is how long it's been around. How else can you forecast what's rational? Only by repetitive, brute and often 'very painful' experience and by what 'works'. This is why contra an earlier statement by someone here who claimed conservatives want to tear down liberal institutions, no conservative I’ve ever met has said that. Conservatives are drawing some very important lessons on the utility and follies of liberalism on their 21st century Jupyter notebooks. Even Einstein conceded that:
"As a human being, one has been endowed with just enough intelligence to be able to see clearly how utterly inadequate that intelligence is when confronted with what exists."
I have had trouble answering this, because I think we're essentially in agreement about rights, you're just focused on the immediate future while I'm focused on the distant future. Because yeah it does come down to trade offs, and it's hard to support the idea that the first (or the second) amendment is what some poor kid in Detroit or Chiraq needs more of. So it's a bit selfish of me to insist on them just because my own community is in the position where the greatest assaults are on our freedom by pencil pushing bureaucrats making up rules to justify their pay cheques. But that is the position I believe I am in.
But having said that, that Detroit kid also isn't benefiting from getting fired from his job at Wendy's for posting a video laughing at the death of some white guy whom the media claims says black people were happier as slaves. And I do worry that part of the problem is that modern society sees rights too much as values and not enough as tools. Like we've sacralised the idea of the human right, and now everything from the internet to hormone treatment is a human right that people are willing to burn down society over. And maybe I'm pattern matching too aggressively, but I can't help but see a through line from the increasing abrogation of the first amendment under Obama and subsequent administrations and the rise in chaos online and off. It's obviously not the incitement, but I think it definitely plays a part.
Sorry this isn't more coherent, it's a challenging subject to deal with. You nailed it with your second paragraph though.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link