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 -
So we just had an emergency lab meeting about the Charlie Kirk situation. Someone screenshotted an instagram story from one of my fellow lab members and sent in anonymous email to my PI (professor/supervisor). The instagram story said basically that Charlie Kirk's death was a good thing, actually. PI didn't name names, and it was also unclear what exactly the anonymous emailer wanted, but did caution us that this is a dangerous environment to be posting this kind of thing. EDIT: He also said that he STRONGLY disagrees with this position, but he's very in favor of free speech and would defend unnamed individual from the university/public if push came to shove, despite disagreeing with their politics.
I have a couple thoughts about this. Firstly, it's legitimately pretty scary that internet posting is now important enough to warrant an emergency lab meeting. It feels like we rapidly are descending into an authoritarian anti-free speech environment (not that universities were bastions of this to begin with). My own social media and blog are extremely clean, but it's trivially easy to link this account with my real name, and I've posted some not kosher things here before.
Secondly, universities/leftists have kind of done this to themselves. This is the old Cory Doctrow/ Freddie DeBoer stick. Trigger warnings, anti-racism and cancel culture have all led to this kind of environment where speech can be policed in this way by the state and doesn't look hypocritical.
Thirdly, and I hate to say this, but whichever one of my colleagues posted this is a fucking idiot, along with most of the left in my generation. I still think of myself as a socialist, perhaps less so recently, and I want to shake this person and ask what good this kind of statement actually does for our cause. Do you want more vigilante killings? The right is going to come up on top with that one, as most lefties in this country are strangely anti-gun. Do you want to win elections? Advocating for murder isn't very popular with most of the electorate. Do you want continued science funding so you can have a job and accomplish the things that you think are so important you dedicated 8-12 hours of your day to, every day? Then stop tarnishing the reputation of universities and science in general with your crazy politics: our stipends come from taxpayer money. As I've written on earlier, scientists are woefully naive about politics. This is not how you win political victories, which makes me think that the goal isn't actually political victory, but some kind of LARP/ in-group signaling game.
Despite my dislike of the man, I am staunch enough in my opposition to death in general and murder in particular that Kirk's death brings me no joy. A human being has died, and that's never a joyful thing, even when it's necessary to save more lives - and here I don't think there's a plausible argument that it was. Never mind the question of his family, who have all my condolences.
But with that said, I have significantly more sympathy for people who celebrate his death than seems to be common among people who don't share that celebratory mood. It doesn't feel outrageous to me that people are enjoying this. Imagine that someone you really hated was randomly struck down by a freak bolt of lightning. Wouldn't you be pretty giddy? And if someone tried to argue that this made you just as bad as if you were advocating for that guy's murder, wouldn't that seem pretty unfair? Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead from The Wizard of Oz is the canonical anthem for celebrating this sort of "such-and-such celebrity you hate has randomly died" breaking news, and you'd have to have a pretty warped view of the plot to think that the Munchkins were signaling their support of random vigilante killings. Whether out of cowardice or morality, none of them would have been willing to drop a house on the Wicked Witch - that's why it took a freak tornado before they were freed from her tyranny. It just happened. But once it does happen, celebrating this happy turn of events is perfectly wholesome.
I contend that for the average left-wing rando, "some nutjob has shot Charlie Kirk" has about the same valence as "Charlie Kirk has been struck by lightning". It's completely outside their control, it doesn't scan as something they or their tribe did. They don't own a gun, no one they know owns a gun - gun ownership itself is an outgroup marker. The killer may as well have been a storm cloud or a Kansas farmhouse. "Charlie Kirk has randomly died" is a Thing That Just Happened, and they're celebrating it as a turn of events, and they're genuinely caught off-guard when the Right perceives this as them supporting assassinations in a proactive sense.
There's a huge difference between preposterous happenstance and enemy action, and that difference cannot simply be excluded from this situation like you've done.
Because she wasn't assassinated, she somehow died in a freak accident. Furthermore, the Wicked Witch is EVIL, which Charlie Kirk wasn't. Finally, The Wizard of Oz is fiction, not reality. It's obvious, but always bears repeating. Fiction is not reality. It never will be.
This is their fault for lacking the theory of mind of their opponents and awareness of the terrain. Of course it was something their tribe did, that's blatantly obvious to everyone who's not delusional, and I feel no need to nurture those delusions when vicious people express glee over the assassination of their enemies.
Trying to rationalize the assassination of your enemies as some sort of freak accident is the problem as it demonstrates your delusions. There can be no accident here, and there's a direct line from "punch a nazi" to "fascist, catch."
Your explanation, if true, has somehow lowered my respect for the people you're trying to defend.
Well, that's rather the crux of the issue. I am obviously talking about the perspective of people who believe that Kirk was, at the very least, aiding and abetting evil, and most probably significantly evil himself. Granted that someone believes Kirk was evil - as is their right - then is it acceptable for them to publicly display relief that he's dead, without thereby coming across as supporting assassinations? I don't think this is a trivial question. I think people who fall afoul of it are at least sympathetic.
I mean, allocating group responsibility within huge, poorly-coordinated populations is a tough problem, and one with potentially different answers depending on whether you're talking about it as an ethics problem of a game theory problem. I don't think anything about it is "blatantly obvious". It seems as understandable for normie non-murderous Dems to say "we aren't responsible for the Kirk assassination" as it is fair for Second Amendment activists to disclaim any responsibility for the latest school shooting. Certainly it's pretty dumb of them not to anticipate that the Red Tribe would blame them, but it doesn't follow that the Red Tribe is trivially right to do so.
Yes, people mistake fiction for reality, they think that Kirk is evil like the characters from their books and movies, and open their minds and pour their brains out on the ground in response.
Yeah, but I'm not going to be a stooge and claim that Anders Brevik was really a leftist, because that's absurd. We know what these people want by watching what they work to accomplish, and those ends serve one side or the other.
Nobody is inciting school shootings the way that Democrats are inciting violence on their political opponents. Your comparisons continue to miss the point by a mile.
Are you arguing that there's no such thing as evil people in real life? "Evil" is obviously a tough thing to define rigorously, certainly I doubt there's anyone who's monomaniacally wicked in the way cartoon witches are "evil" without a single trace of benevolence anywhere in their hearts. But for sanity's sake, understand it here as meaning the semi-tautological "sharing whatever qualities the Wicked Witch has that make celebrating her death acceptable" for the purposes of this question. ie, are you arguing that there's no one in real life close enough to the archetypal fictional depictions of "evil" that a Ding Dong The Witch is Dead parade would be an understandable and unconcerning emotional response upon their demise? Genuine question; I initially understood you as simply saying that a normie family man with conservative opinions was "obviously" not an example of that class, not as decrying the very concept as unrealistic/incoherent.
"It's an understandable emotional response" isn't an excuse. You need to be acting and reasoning in good faith, and I don't believe that the people celebrating Charlie Kirk's death are. I'm not demanding that they be correct; good faith doesn't require correctness. But there comes a point where people are so blinded by hatred and so careless about their reasoning that good faith is no longer present.
If anything, when you're trying to decide if someone needs to die, that's when you need to take the greatest care, not the least.
More options
Context Copy link
Good and Evil aren't really useful concepts to me. They are fiction, and belong in fictional stories. For my part, "deserves to die," and, "doesn't deserve to die," pretty much covers it, and the former is reserved for people who victimize others through violence. Especially those who victimize strangers. It's one thing if you have beef with someone and therefore there is violence between you. It's completely different if you are minding your own business and then someone visits violence on you, or steals your property.
Men are not hanged for stealing horses, but that horses may not be stolen.
I agree, but again I see a great deal of difference between "deserves to be killed" and "fair dos if other people are relieved when they happen to die". For a trivial analogy, if someone buys the lot opposite mine, and builds a huge concrete eyesore that ruins the view from my patio, then my neighbor in no real sense deserves to have their home destroyed, but it would be perfectly fine for me to drink a toast the day the house collapses by happenstance. Those are very different things in my book.
Does the analogy still hold if it’s your son who dynamites the house because he is seeking your approval?
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