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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31013 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 16, 2023

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A poster here recommended a book to us all called “Introduction to Christianity”, by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (who would go on to become Pope Benedict XVI) a few weeks ago. I recently got a copy of it.

I wanted to share with you all the first few paragraphs from the book, because I found them very interesting:

Anyone who tries today to talk about the question of Christian faith in the presence of people who are not thoroughly at home with ecclesiastical language and thought (whether by vocation or by convention) soon comes to sense the alien -and alienating- nature of such an enterprise. He will probably soon have the feeling that his position is only too well summed up in Kierkegaard's famous story of the clown and the burning village, an allegory taken up again recently by Harvey Cox in his book The Secular City. According to this story, a traveling circus in Denmark caught fire. The manager thereupon sent the clown, who was already dressed and made up for the performance, into the neighboring village to fetch help, especially as there was a danger that the fire would spread across the fields of dry stubble and engulf the village itself. The clown hurried into the village and requested the inhabitants to come as quickly as possible to the blazing circus and help to put the fire out. But the villagers took the clown's shouts simply for an excellent piece of advertising, meant to attract as many people as possible to the performance; they applauded the clown and laughed till they cried.

The clown felt more like weeping than laughing; he tried in vain to get people to be serious, to make it clear to them that this was no stunt, that he was not pretending but was in bitter earnest, that there really was a fire. His supplications only increased the laughter; people thought he was playing his part splendidly--until finally the fire did engulf the village; it was too late for help, and both circus and village were burned to the ground.

I’m sure we’ve all felt like that clown at some point or another. Especially with regards to ideas like “just kids on college campuses”.

Here’s a quote, this one from Saint Anthony The Great, one of The Desert Fathers (Early Christian precursors to Christian monks who lived in Egypt in about 300AD).

“A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him, saying, ‘You are mad; you are not like us.’”

Anyway I think the relevance to the culture war is obvious here, and could be taken any of many directions. I just read this today and wanted to share. To pull on one culture war thread (perhaps one of the oldest culture war) it is profoundly depressing to me that these parts of our history, especially the history of The Catholic Church, seem to be suppressed or at the very least ignore in modern western society.

“If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you.”

John 15:18-19

The Christian faith has been couched in persecution since its earliest days. I don’t Pope Benedict’s reiteration of that sentiment particularly surprising.

seem to be suppressed

Ah, there’s your problem. What makes you think that Catholic history is “suppressed?” Perhaps it has something to do with those ephemeral “kids on college campuses” who are allegedly watching your circus burn?

Speak plainly. If you see immorality or distasteful behavior, point to specific examples instead of asserting that “we’ve all felt like that clown.”

The first analogy doesn't really work, the fire is entirely separate from the clown's job or attire. Whereas to a modern atheist, the christian faith (among others) is the circus, and there's no fire. Or, if the fire is some modern moral failing, any theological arguments on preventing it are like the clown, instead of breaking character and pleading for help, hoping that if he's just funny enough the people will do what he says. Whether or not you also dress up in millennia of navel gazing is secondary to that base disagreement.

I took the analogy to be an attempt to explain the experience of a Christian trying to argue for their beliefs with people who are not experts in the things you learn to be a priest, monk, nun etc.

I get that. I'm saying that the analogy doesn't work because their beliefs and theology are directly linked, unlike the fire and the circus in the analogy. Not relating to the specific theological trappings isn't the fundamental cause of not being taken seriously by nonbelievers. They might be if the analogy is to converting non-catholic christians (back) to catholicism, though.

Ah, I see.

Not relating to the specific theological trappings isn't the fundamental cause of not being taken seriously by nonbelievers.

Not sure what you mean by "fundamental cause". I suspect that being very familiar with theology etc. is helpful for conversion in some cases (avoiding some misunderstandings of transubstantiation) and unhelpful in other cases (the Trinity is one of those doctrines where lay misunderstandings like "Ok, Jesus is God's son, so they're two completely different people, and also God can manifest as a spirit" are a lot more plausible for most people than the sophisticated attempts to make sense of it).

A Catholic is warning you that the society is collapsing. You don’t take them seriously or listen to any of their reasoning because you see them as a clown and ignore anything beyond the clown.

A mottizan is warning you that you this stuff is not going to remain as just a few kooky kids on college campuses. You ignore the them because you see them as a clown, and ignore the substance of what they are saying because you don’t see anything behind the clown.

I don't see how this follows. I'm a mottizan - why do I think the mottizan is a clown unless he is making bad arguments and saying stuff that isn't true?

Similarly, there are plenty of Catholics who I take quite seriously. The ones I don't take seriously are the ones who are acting like clowns.

I’m sorry I wasn’t clear. I mean a mottizan may have the experience of the clown when talking to non mottizans. I didn’t mean you literally. (I’m away from my computer so typing on my phone. Sorry about that).

Thanks for sharing it – I'd probably never have bothered to check it myself, due to my (low )prior for value for such literature. This is of course ironic.

The generally applicable logic of his parable, I take it, is that the target of one's proselytism can have arbitrarily strong resistance to your message, either because it relies on extra elements absent in the target's knowledge, or because (more problematically) s/he has received inoculation, to the point of becoming cognitively closed to the message, elements required to parse it, or both.

When inoculated, the target's prior for messengers of your kind, or messages of this type, or both, is such that critical bits (in the clown's case, the truth value of fire, perhaps its early signs) will not be inspected with the scrutiny they deserve, and the rest (desperate gestures, repeating the same thing over and over, enumerating reasons not to doubt a clown, prophesying increasingly extreme costs of disbelief) will be shoehorned into a pattern that allows to react as usual – as if it's a clown show.

I believe the Pope was being too charitable to his side, but certainly I know that feel. There's nuance, of course. Believers complain they aren't taken seriously, because atheists are very sure of being above the clown's game. In the case of hot button topics in the realm of purely secular politics, one can encounter the exact opposite. Perhaps the most frustrating pattern, and one that seems monopolized by the Left, is to assume that the opponent is a rhetorical superintelligence. Sometimes it's phrased the way @2rafa does with regard to Holocaust revisionists, with the focus on experience and cherrypicked trivia (to be clear: sometimes this pattern is valid, which gives it plausibility in the general case, and I think it is valid on this issue; although this still wouldn't justify having strong opinions without object-level knowledge).

Sometimes, the alleged rhetorical superiority of a right-winger is explained by him just being unscrupulous plus very skillful. Therefore, him being persuasive and dissecting your every counterpoint is no more evidence for him being correct than a grizzly bear's ability to rip your head off is evidence of bears being morally above humans; no more than the fact of evil AI being good at pleading to let it out of the box is a cause to oblige.

Oh, speaking of Contrapoints. Here's something from December 2019:

First stop – an interview where Wynn explains her tactics:

...to see her smiling and nodding at Richard Spencer I kind of went crazy on Twitter, saying, What are you doing? This is unconscionable to give him this kind of platform ... In general, I do think having a debate is good. But when you have very disingenuous opponents and when they are rhetorically skilled, to show up to that debate is potentially to lose a debate to a Nazi, which is very bad, so it’s something I’m afraid of....

«If Cockbane debated Fritz nothing productive would happen but at least she wouldn't be bullied. She'd interrupt, accuse, get real ugly. ... So if there's a "lesson" I guess it's that we have to work on not being Saul. Maybe that means walking out of rooms like that. Or maybe it means developing anti-Fritz rhetorical strategies. But I honestly don't yet know what those are. I can't say I've ever seen someone in debate with a Pepe-grinning fascist come out on top. But if it could be done it'd be worth doing.»

.. Second, you'll never pin them down on the issues, but you can try to get them off their game... If they make a mistake point it out don't let it go. Derail the conversation and keep them on the defensive. Finally, interrupt and filibuster. Whenever they pause, interject. Talk as much as possible. The less they say, the less effective they are.

It's a closed memetic surface.

Digging through «The Motte postmortem», I've found a good example of its topology on TheSchism:

... Among leftists, there are many patterns of behavior that have been observed repeatedly in alt-right spaces - mostly used because they, on some level, work. Things like controlling the conversation or never playing defense. When lefty folks tend to see something that they pattern-match onto that, alarm bells start ringing.

One such commonly-noted pattern is this: "never, ever, ever let a claim go unchallenged, no matter how trivial or generally agreed upon".

[...] Hey, maybe you don't know why people would see this as kinda suspicious. Well, here's the thing: this is exactly the pitch that cryptofascists make. It should be discussed. Debated. There's no harm in hearing an argument out, right? Never mind that, for the most part, these are ideas that were consigned to the dustbin of history quite rightfully for being badly wrong and extremely dangerous. Never mind that "debate" is a format that favors flair over fact much of the time.

I am not interested in racist arguments for the same reason I am not interested in patent submissions for perpetual motion machines or the weekly Flat Earth Society newsletter - there's nothing there. It's always been a long list of horrific made-up justifications for cruelty and exploitation, and it's always been downright awful science. [...] Look, pal, there may be a gray area on "is X racist", but when someone disingenuously argues that statistics showing the average IQ of an entire country as 70 or lower, we're several miles on the wrong side of that line.

And of course our dearly departed Impassionata:

You haven't seen me wrangle with fact-based argument because fact-based argument only works when people actually want to hear what you have to say. HBD fuckers only wanted to spread HBD because the argument is the point.

Playing with facts is easy mode: it's high school essays and if you write a good fact-based essay you get a good grade and people like you and you are Obviously GoodRight.

[...] TheMotte is truly an evaporative cooling rocket that has placed it in true lunacy: a bunch of people have convinced themselves that what they say is discourse when in fact it is outright madness.

I mean look at what this Ilforte has to say.

Can you see the ridiculous self delusion!? 'It's not our fault if a great historian decides we aren't worth the time! It's _his_fault!'

Playing with facts is easy mode so it doesn't matter if you get rekt; appeal to authority is hard and disagreeing with it is the sign of madness.

(So I guess that's what Sartre meant about Anti-Semites assuming the privilege to «play with discourse» while the polite folk are restricted to serious facts and are thus at a disadvantage. Can't say I'm convinced, but then again, they're trying to convince «the audience», and if it's inoculated enough, that'll work. By the way. 895158 also has attributed his condemnation of The Motte to activities of yours truly. Sorry guys for ruining your community.)

A well-formed conflict theory absorbs unlimited epistemic and moral double standard, because there's no standard sans power. It develops scholarship on how the other side allegedly does attack of some type A, to delegitimize arguments that can be shoehorned into A, and check A if it actually takes place, and it teaches on how to do A yourself, and it separately teaches the subtle art of denying friendly As. It's pretty much the same thing as normal military theory.

The question is what is left to the losing side, except surrender.

... Among leftists, there are many patterns of behavior that have been observed repeatedly in alt-right spaces - mostly used because they, on some level, work. Things like controlling the conversation or never playing defense. When lefty folks tend to see something that they pattern-match onto that, alarm bells start ringing.

Has anyone actually seen any examples of what is being talked about? I keep hearing about fascist infiltration or alt-right infiltration into spaces, including themotte, but no one seems to actually be showing examples. I doubt I'll get too many example here, but someone must surely have been shown or heard about these infiltrations.

The closest I think I've heard is the story of mlpol, a 4chan board that combined MLP and /pol into one, which may have converted some MLP fans into /pol-style bigots.

Sure. Were you around the last time our Jolly Benefactor made a play? He would drop a top-level monologue in the CW thread, then either ignore responses or performatively call them out as close-minded. A lot of people made cogent, careful arguments, but he never, ever, gave any ground. Repeat until the latest alt drew a ban.

For a more explicitly right-wing approach, I remember a post about British debt to India. See my responses for why I think it was poorly executed. The OP dropped this steaming turd of an article, loaded with anti-“woke” boo lights, copied the full text into a comment, then wandered off. Perhaps he was just shilling a blog? Or perhaps an account named after a notorious British-on-Indian massacre had ulterior motives?

Coming to this site, there’s definitely a couple users who just showed up to complain about Jews rather than actually engage. It’s pretty hard to get a ban for that, so the mod log may or may not help. But I think it’s a matter of “knowing it when you see it.”

Sure. Were you around the last time our Jolly Benefactor made a play?

Not sure who you're referring to, sorry.

For a more explicitly right-wing approach, I remember a post about British debt to India.

Ah, I remember that post. I hadn't really thought of it that way, but you're right, there's something very culture-warry at the least when you do that sort of thing, though I wonder if that poster was British - it seems like they'd be more likely to defend colonization compared to American fascists or alt-righters. But I could be wrong about that.

Coming to this site, there’s definitely a couple users who just showed up to complain about Jews rather than actually engage.

Yeah, that's fair. But now I find myself wondering if this has happened in more progressive spaces that were open to debate. The accusation by people like the guy who made the Alt-Right Playbook seems to be that you'll have some space that has a mix of conservatives and liberals, then you get these "debaters" who are just trying to sow doubt and convert people by just arguing. That dude gave an example of someone in a fandom being a Nazi, but it feels like there's some specific example being given.

I'm not certain if I would say that about the SSC CW thread, it attracted people who were largely against social progressivism and was thus hostile to their views.

JB is referring to "Julius B ranson," or any of several other usernames for a guy with really, really strong feelings about child, uh, liberation. He showed up a few times and consistently proved unwilling to actually engage on a civil level with any of his many detractors. This included:

  • The aforementioned walls of text

  • "Just Asking Questions"

  • Sockpuppet accounts

  • Singleminded focus

  • A preference for Gish galloping

  • So, so much playing the victim

  • Blaming anyone who pointed out the above tactics for being irrational

  • Shilling how much cooler and freer his own site, Dark Rationality, was

  • Flouncing and/or suicide-by-mod

I can't overstate how much drivel this guy generated without ever so much as acknowledging counterarguments. He just baited Hlynka or Deiseach into getting annoyed so he could cry foul. Also, he thought he was a lot smarter/sneakier than he actually was.

Anyway...

But now I find myself wondering if this has happened in more progressive spaces that were open to debate.

I would guess the answer is yes, since I think countersignaling is appealing to a certain kind of user. In progressive spaces, that naturally suggests right-wing takes delivered with some subtlety. I ended up with a lot more to say about the subject here.

JB is referring to "Julius B ranson," or any of several other usernames for a guy with really, really strong feelings about child, uh, liberation. He showed up a few times and consistently proved unwilling to actually engage on a civil level with any of his many detractors.

Ah, that guy. Yeah, he never came across as that convincing overall and seemed to raise the ire of just about everyone he interacted with. Like, he would get downvoted a lot, especially on the DarkRationality account because he was arrogant as hell.

They're not sending their best, it seems.

Not sure who you're referring to, sorry.

{most famous Roman emperor} + {British transportation/record store billionaire}.

As an original /co/mlp poster, trust me, they were already there before that April Fools prank.

That right? So, what, they just kept their /pol posting to a minimum until the prank?

Since everyone is anonymous by default on 4chan and sticks to only the topics of the board they’re on, there’s no way to tell who’s “from” /pol/ or not, though the site has always been joking-not-joking edgy. I don’t know if the Aryenne The Nazi Pony threads started before or after April Fools, but an ironic “unicorns are the master race” attitude emerged by the fourth episode of season 1.

Suffice it to say there emerged two cultures, the pony fans (“ponyfags”) with a machismo “Friendship is magic, bitches!” attitude, and the stereotype of the sissy bronies with a “love and tolerate” attitude - a phrase never uttered on the show. I got a sense the the brony side that stayed on 4chan (instead of migrating to ponychan and other sites) was ironic for a couple of years, but grew genuine after that.

Trying to shoehorn some justification of the Oklahoma City bombing into the mix was pretty weak by @FCfromSSC (I wonder what he'd make of it now).

The point, succinctly, was that the taboo on political violence is both immensely valuable and quite delicate, that we will all miss it badly when it's gone, and that imagining that this taboo can be set aside on a limited basis for one side only is one of the stupidest ideas one can possibly hold. I am quite confident in this thesis and in the arguments I made to support it: it is easy to justify retributive violence, but much harder to control who gets to enact their preferred retribution, a problem exacerbated by a general lack of imagination on the forms and nature such retribution can take.

What about that seemed weak to you?

I just thought it was a cowardly response to relatively subdued ethnic unrest to claim that it retroactively made you reconsider your opposition to terrorism of the most brutal kind (which involved the slaughter, even if you cast a wide net around disliking progressive bureaucrats or whatever, of many innocent people).

In the first place, while neither is admirable, it should be recognized that hatred is not fear. Neither justice nor revenge derive their appeal from terror of the wrongdoer.

In the second place, you don't appear to have actually absorbed the context, details, nature or conclusion of the argument in question.

  • It was a response to endemic arguments justifying rioting, despite multiple innocent fatalities and untold economic and social damage, both in the Motte and in society at large.

  • It carefully copied the exact form of the arguments it opposed, and showed that by the standards of the prevailing mob, the bombing was more acceptable than the riots. The bombing avenged worse killings by the authorities on a proportionally-smaller number of victims, did less economic damage, actually made an effort to target the entity responsible for the initial killings rather than attacking random innocents, thereby inflicted a smaller proportion of collateral damage, was carried out after many more attempts to secure justice had been exhausted rather than being carried out despite justice being actively executed, and was capable of actually being punished by the state in turn, thus limiting the incentive for runaway escalation.

  • Nonetheless, it concluded that such justifying arguments were a very, very bad idea, because the taboo on lawless violence is very valuable.

...Unfortunately, none of these points seem to have actually registered with you, a result regrettably common among Blues. You skip straight to "these aren't comparable", claiming an arbitrary category difference and simply ignoring all arguments to the contrary, and then act surprised and offended that others would deign to disagree. By no means do I claim that the above argument is actually decisive, but I think it's reasonable, here at least, to expect people to recognize that an argument is being made and to at least acknowledge its general contours.

I agree that breaking the taboo on political violence is grim, but I also think that millions of people rioting in a way that caused relatively few immediate casualties (plus a notable uptick in violent crime nationwide in the following two years, but we didn’t know that in May 2020) isn’t the same tier of political violence as two guys killing 200 (or whatever it was) civilians in a terror attack.

Quoting myself, from the thread in question:

By contrast, the media are encouraging rioting that kills a lot of people, and ruins communities so thoroughly that a great many more will die from second-order effects.

Elsewhere in the thread:

Minneapolis is fucked. The blacks who live there are going to have measurably worse lives a year, two years, five years from now. And when the stats come out showing employment and income are down, murder's up, crime's up, the same people who cheered the rioting and arson are going to turn around and blame America's culture of white supremacy, and some smug fuck is going to be writing an article in the New York Times about how it's all the fault of Trump's racist rhetoric, and they will be laying the foundations for the next riot. Real people have actually died from the decisions made by blue tribe, for no benefit at all, and it seems like that's just business as usual.

That a very large number of extra murders would be committed per year for the indefinite future was obvious to myself and many others from the moment the scale of the riots and the permissive response of the authorities became evident, and that fact had considerable impact on the arguments we made at the time. In any case, I continue to disagree that the two are a different "tier of political violence". The riots were vastly destructive, and almost certainly resulted in more direct fatalities than the bombing during their active duration; the numbers I recall were 30 killed by the rioting itself, and an unknown but very large number killed in areas the riots forced the police to completely abandon. The exploding murder rate was immediately evident, not some surprise discovered years later.

In any case, "They're totally different" isn't a terribly persuasive answer to an inventory of similarities, but the larger point was that opening the door to such calculation was and remains a very, very bad idea.

It would have been nice to see that argument fail at least a little less completely, but life contains many sorrows.

plus a notable uptick in violent crime nationwide in the following two years, but we didn’t know that in May 2020

It was extremely predictable. We had been educated with the Ferguson Effect just five years earlier.

You know, it's not hard to make a link. In particular, I don't think

Once upon a time, cops killed two Red Tribe in one incident, and then seventy-six more in a second incident, culminating an extensive history of unfair treatment, killings and persecution. A few Red Tribe responded by killing 168 people. I used to think that was a fundamentally monstrous response, but now I'm reconsidering. In lives lost, that's two and a third of theirs for one of ours, a third of the rate that's now been excused by blue tribe. In dollar terms, the two aren't even comparable. It's not as though my tribe is short on grievances. Why are we playing by the rules no one actually believes in any more?

has aged nearly as poorly as you think it has, even and especially as someone that opposed this philosophy both for BLM-'adjacent' rioters and for 'WACO Avengers'.

At the very least, the math has, if anything, only become far more favorable, especially as judges and prosecutors have come up with excuses for men who literally lit black lives on a pyre for the cause.

Those quotes say nothing more than “I’m right but people won’t listen to me.” Just because something is dressed up as “The Parable of the X and the Y” or is quoting someone from 2000 years ago doesn’t really make it fundamentally different from just leaving it at “I’m right you’re wrong”

I think it points to a fundamental difference in how I see social issues and how people on the left see them. When discussing moral issues with left leaning people, they often focus on the individual and the utilitarian perspective of the individual in the situation. For example, a horny person meets someone at a bar and can choose between sex or sexual frustration. Forcing people to choose monogamy is therefore evil since it is the less beneficial outcome.

I don't really care too much about the individual enjoyment of the night, but look at the effects of family structure in society. Getting a well functioning family structure is an incomprehensibly complex problem and a balancing act which goes beyond human comprehension. Going from one man, one women to casual sex is fun can lead to all sorts of unintended consequences. People today have less sex than ever, fewer children than they desire, and we have incels and feminists who both have legitimate grievances in a dysfunctional dating market. Tampering with an entire ecosystem can have disastrous effects. If there is something we should have learned in the past centuries it is that experts who want to redesign a city, reorganize agriculture, introduce a new species that eats pests etc is that these projects tend to end in catastrophes. Disrupting a delicate balance is dangerous, and science doesn't really provide answers for it. Science experiments run for short period of time with a limited sample size and measure few variables. Traditions last millennia and have sample sizes in the billion. Following tradition is less likely to end up in a situation in which a brilliant scientist concludes DDT is safe, or in which an urban planner wrecks a city because the best science in traffic planning said urban freeways are beneficial.

Chesterton was correct in realizing that traditions were solutions to problems solved for so long that people have forgotten what the problem was.

When trying to stop people who want to engage in a behaviour that creates a small but immediate utility, it is hard to use arguments based on unintended long term societal consequences. It was easy to look like a clown when claiming that giving antibiotics to farm animals is dangerous when it clearly reduces sickness and increases yields, now we have an antibiotic resistance crisis.

Traditional religion are methods of handling large complex systems condensed in mythological format. Historically, this format has worked well. Today appealing to bible texts or the man in the sky doesn't work, yet the evidence for the unintended consequences of short term utilitarianism often appears long after the debate has ended.

Sure, we could look at the Great Leap Forward, cite Chesterton, and conclude that abandoning tradition is dangerous. But the Green Revolution also involved abandoning many traditional agricultural methods, and:

Studies show that the Green Revolution contributed to widespread reduction of poverty, averted hunger for millions, raised incomes, reduced greenhouse gas emissions, reduced land use for agriculture, and contributed to declines in infant mortality.

This is just one of many cases where radical change produced outcomes that are almost universally regarded as beneficial. We have also, for instance, reduced deaths from infectious disease by more than 90%. One doesn't have to look at too many graphs like this or this to understand why "change," as an idea, has so much political clout at the present moment.

There's always a tendency among activists to suggest things are terrible and improvement is only possible through whatever radical program they're pushing right now. In that context, it doesn't do to admit how much better things have gotten without that program.

But more broadly, had change reliably lead to ruin over the last few centuries, surviving cultures would have strong norms against permitting it. Instead we have exactly the opposite — cultures that permitted change reliably outcompeted those that didn't, so successful cultures are primed to accept it.

How does making humans more likely to survive and granting them more resources, reduce GHG emissions?

More importantly, the beneficaries of Green Revolution, "Global South" now use their superior numbers, enabled, by GR to demand more power, as that Modi speech that was the subject of a recent top level post shows. So this shows that only The Thrird World gained, any possible benefits for the First aren't demonstrated by your comment.

The comment to which I was responding seemed to be about how open human societies in general should be to allowing change. This first world vs. third world angle wasn't present. The societies that adopted these new agricultural techniques benefited substantially from doing so. It would have been a serious mistake for them to reason that abandoning their traditional methods could have unanticipated negative consequences and so they shouldn't do this.

Anyway, the first world obviously adopted the same techniques earlier, also abandoning traditional agricultural methods. To a large extent these advances are the reason there is a first world, a set of large, rich nations where most of the population is not engaged in agricultural production.

I don't think appeals to the individual vs appeals to society are necessarily a left-wing right-wing split.

E.g, The American Right largely opposed covid restrictions on individual grounds; "I shouldn't have to wear a mask", "I shouldn't have to get the vaccine, I'm young", etc. Whilst the American left doubled down on appealing to collective/net good. You were supposed to wear a mask for others because they don't protect you anyways, children were to take the vaccine for their grandparents, etc.

A better albeit more cynical model is... Everyone engages in motivated reasoning. What you want is predetermined, you will argue for the individual/collective or the deontology/utility or the long-term/short-term depending on which framing supports what you ultimately want.

I think the strength of the Blue/Red tribe framing is that it's implicit that policy positions are by and large aesthetic choices. To a young urban person who hangs out with other young urban persons who find hookups at bars, it's deeply "uncool" to suggest anything about hookups otherwise. Suggesting otherwise is what old people who live in the countryside do. And those countryside people are seriously so uncool, they don't even watch French movies or eat at Ethiopian restaurants.

It’s thrive/survive, not individualism/collectivism. You’ll note that when the left goes into survive mode- like with Covid- they go hard. Conversely when the right goes into thrive mode- like with Covid- they behave totally different from how they normally do.

I don't think appeals to the individual vs appeals to society are necessarily a left-wing right-wing split.

Johnathan Chait argues that the left-right split contains such contradictions because both sides are interested in being moral about different things.

It's values all the way down. Values shape what we want, what we need. They shape what we're willing to accept, and what we're willing to do about the unacceptable. The normie thesis everything runs on is that our system should be able to handle values conflict of any possible scale, because it assumes the possible differences aren't actually all that large, that everyone really wants the same things at the end of the day.

A better albeit more cynical model is... Everyone engages in motivated reasoning.

I think 'holistic' is a better term than cynical. People tend to pick arguments that support their public beliefs but also tend to extrapolate their current perspective to all scenarios. A cynical claim would be hypocrisy between public beliefs and personal habits.

The main problem is that people exist in a superstate in which we are both members of a community and individuals. Sometimes we think as individuals and sometimes we think as members of a community depending on the scenario.

Ratzinger is not attempting to persuade atheists here. This is a passage about how a theologian might feel conveying truth in “religious language” to atheists unfamiliar with how religious language works. It’s saying a lot, and should not be seen as an attempt to persuade atheists.

Cox cites this story as an analogy of the theologian’s position today and sees the theologian as the clown who cannot make people really listen to his message. In his medieval, or at any rate old-fashioned, clown’s costume he is simply not taken seriously. Whatever he says, he is ticketed and classified, so to speak, by his role. Whatever he does in his attempts to demonstrate the seriousness of the position, people always know in advance that he is in fact just — a clown. They are already familiar with what he is talking about and know that he is just giving a performance which has little or nothing to do with reality. So they can listen to him quite happily without having to worry too seriously about what he is saying. This picture indubitably contains an element of truth in it; it reflects the oppressive reality in which theology and theological discussion are imprisoned today and their frustrating inability to break through accepted patterns of thought and speech and make people recognize the subject-matter of theology as a serious aspect of human life.

Importantly, he notes the “classifying away” of religion as a category distinct from everyday life, and how this leads to the public seeing religious rituals as something performative and distinct from everyday moral and psychological concerns.

You are right about the second quote but wrong about the first one. Back then (Introduction to Christianity was published in 68) Ratzinger was a reformer: he associated with the nouvelle theologie and was one of the reformist peritus of Vatican II.

What he's saying here is that the catholic church should abandon neo-scholastic theology and all the other weird medieval trappings it accumulated throughout the century and both go back to the basics as well as reconstruct on modern philosophical foundations, because if it didn't do that it would never be appealing to modern intellectuals. This stuff was borderline heretical (probably still is, who can say) and allegedly he was even investigated by the holy office in the 50s (although I've never been able to locate a reputable source for this claim, nor any details about the investigation).

Eventually he became far more conservative, his former associate Kung went off the reservation (arianist, denied papal infallibility, promoted euthanasia) and started hating him. Later on he also became cardinal prefect of doctrina fidei (formerly holy office, formerly inqusition) where, thanks to his conservative positions, he was (informally) known as the german shepherd. Fun fact, he held this post for longer than almost anyone else, you have to go back to the 1700s to find someone that was prefect for longer.

His general ideas about theology and intellectuals didn't fundamentally change, even after he became pope (although they became more moderate): he still thought that the catholic church should appeal to intellectuals and that this would help bring back the european masses to church (see Fides et ratio and his regensburg lecture). I think he was wrong on two levels: first he completely failed to attract intellectual, second the masses don't actually give a shit about what intellectuals think. If anything Bergoglio's approach, to appeal to... "common people" has worked better, even in europe.

Take this with a grain of salt, I'm an atheist and I think it's all nonsense.

he still thought that the catholic church should appeal to intellectuals and that this would help bring back the european masses to church (see Fides et ratio and his regensburg lecture). I think he was wrong on two levels: first he completely failed to attract intellectual, second the masses don't actually give a shit about what intellectuals think.

Well, I don't think it was a kind of...business strategic decision optimizing for growth. I'm sure he hoped he would influence people to come back to the pews, but I think he thought and wrote this way because he believed that man is meant to search for the truth and must attempt to articulate to himself real, satisfying answers to his deepest questions. This is probably part of why he struggled with the job, because he was always more inclined toward theology than administration.

I'd also say that the crafting of an intellectual edifice is a lifetime of work that can only be judged from a generational, rather than immediate, perspective. When Socrates died it probably looked like he was a failure (from an external perspective - of course he succeeded in living how he thought was right), but his way of thinking about man and the soul (via its modulation in Plato and Aristotle and combination with Christian ideas) ended up ruling the Western world for a long time.

As a Catholic I hope that the slow decline of the west we are witnessing will lead to curiosity and interest in the questions that Ratzinger considered central to man's life and destiny but that modern society tends to obscure or deny. I hope it will also lead to fruitful engagement with the lifetime of work that he produced in attempting to answer those questions for himself. But even if it doesn't have any outsized downstream impact, it was worth doing anyway.

Francis’s approach isn’t working better, though. He hasn’t brought the masses back to church.

I mean to be fair that’s a hard problem to solve. But it does appear that Benedict XVI did notably better at appealing to people who are already practicing catholics, based purely on seminary enrollments(which are a reasonable proxy for engagement among young practicing Catholics). That was Benedict’s entire goal; the main thrust was to revitalize practicing catholics that were seen as lukewarm.

It’s not 100% clear what the main thrust of pope Francis’s pontificate is. But measured by what Benedict XVI was attempting to do, it’s been a dismal failure. He also hasn’t brought lots of people into practicing Catholicism that weren’t previously, which was the other obvious goal.

Thanks, I am also an atheist, but I found this a really useful bit of information.

My inclination is to think that he is right that the Catholic Church could win over some intellectuals if it wasn't so neo-scholastic. For example, I know one prominent philosopher who converted to Catholicism, and neo-scholasticism was the biggest single stumbling block. And they're Aristotelian about many things! If it's a problem for an Aristotelian, it's going to be even more of a problem for philosophers who are receptive to some sort of religious belief but who generally have deflationary or otherwise non-scholastic views on many metaphysical issues.

A neo-scholastic might argue that being a neo-scholastic makes it easier to e.g. be convinced by Aquinas's arguments and that these are the quickest way to Christianity for a smart person, but that's making the Perfect into the enemy of the Good. As I recall, my friend was mostly convinced by (a) a best explanation argument for God as the Creator, (b) a best explanation argument for Jesus as divine, and (c) a benevolent God as the best explanation of why there are moral truths. Then he reasoned to Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular as the best unifying theory of (a) to (c), and converted, having been an atheist and before that a Protestant.

I think the problem with abandoning neo-scholasticism is that aquinas is a doctor of the church and moving away from it was condemned as heretical by aeterni patris. Also scholastic concepts are used to explain both the trinity as well as transubstantiation. They might be stuck with it.

My inclination is to think that he is right that the Catholic Church could win over some intellectuals if it wasn't so neo-scholastic. For example, I know one prominent philosopher who converted to Catholicism, and neo-scholasticism was the biggest single stumbling block.

Meanwhile, for comparison, 35,000 people convert to Pentecostal Christianity every day.

Yes, this branch of Christianity with zero intellectual appeal is "the fastest growing movement in the history of religion", it grew, in little more than one century, from one small decrepit warehouse to about 1/4 of all Christians worldwide.

Maybe less intellectualizing and more speaking in tongues is the way to success?

There are lots of better ways to succeed if by succeed you just mean grow. But if by succeed you mean really satisfy man’s need to understand the world, his place in it, and his purpose and destiny, putting a primacy on the search for the truth is the only way to do it. If that means getting fewer converts than you could by being a less substantive philosophy, so be it.

(I mean, that’s the enterprise we are trying to be in. You (the reader) may or may not think we do that particularly well, but that’s the point of all of this, not just converting people to…something or other.)

I didn't mean to suggest that that should be the Catholic Church's focus!

In answer to your question, unironically "yes". If the CC had gone down the Malachi Martin route when the Exorcist was still in theatres and played up exorcisms, who knows how many they would have won over?

As it happens, I know a very Social Gospel-style Protestant minister. The one time they ever were invited into the nastiest ghetto in their local area by a family was to perform an exorcism in a "haunted" apartment. The minister didn't explicitly admit "We don't do exorcisms in my denomination," but instead provided a blessing for the apartment, which made the family extremely happy and apparently was enough to banish the ghosts.

The minister also told me that this was the first (but not last) time that they entered an apartment with no furniture - the family was penniless due to drug abuse, and they'd sold (or never bought) all the furniture. They just had sleeping bags, old matresses, and dirty pillows. It genuinely had a "haunted" feel...

If you have a thousand years of history behind you, there are going to be people on your side who say clever things.

These quotes are saying very cleverly "people just won't listen to the truth". And since they're not arguments, they're just people being clever, anyone who wants to say "people who don't think like me won't listen to the truth" can use them against anyone they want. I suspect that in context, I'd vehemently disagree with how these very clever statements are actually applied.

If you have a thousand years of history behind you,...

I'm thinking that there is a problem right there. Jesus is supposed to come back. As the Nicene Creed puts it "and he shall come again, with glory, to judge both the quick and the dead;". But it has been a long time, two thousand years. I don't think any-one expected having to wait that long.

Christianity got a big boost in its early days from the sense of urgency. Nobody knows when the second coming will happen. Don't dilly-dally about converting to Christianity, you might leave it too late! But there is a price to pay. It gives Christianity a soft expiry date. As the century tick by, it gets awkward.

Continuing to talk about the second coming sounds odd. People keep looking forward to it; and keep getting disappointed. When will they learn that it isn't going to happen?

But quietly dropping it also comes across as odd. It was a big deal. And the faith is a one-off, final revelation; you cannot drop bits that age badly.

Perhaps the problem is me. I am "not thoroughly at home with ecclesiastical language and thought". But Ratzinger sees it as a "clown costume" kind of problem, rather than an "its been too long" kind of problem. That is missing the time dimension; the problem is getting worse as the years tick by, in a way the "clown costume" problems don't.

I was raised Christian and I recall discussing the second coming with my mom sometime when I was younger. For context, I had already declared myself christian and had gone through rituals. I said that obviously I would die before any second coming. And she said "not to be so sure." At the time I didn't know the word "Bayesian" or anything like that, of course, so I didn't really press the issue.

In retrospect, what she said seems even more ridiculous to me now if I try to look at it from a lense of truth or reality. My guess is the reaction is more about applause lights vs boo lights?

The quote that the pope used from Kierkegaard is from Either/or and is actually about that entire premise. That there exists a metaphysical space beyond the comprehension of human beings that is completely out of the bounds of empirical rationality, and can also never be accepted through rational explanations. One that is ultimately the most important decision of ones life and which there is no real evidence in either direction. In many ways your comment is exactly the type of person he explains is laughing at him.

In many ways your comment is exactly the type of person he explains is laughing at him.

Which is poisoning the well.

The claim is that there’s a defective pattern of reasoning. How is it poisoning the well to say that a certain way of reacting to the claim is itself an instance of that pattern? That’s a substantive question, not a fallacious inference.

Are you familiar with a good explainer on this particular part of Kierkegaard's thought? I admit I'm always confused when this comes up. If you can't accept this concept via rational explanations, how do you even know it's the most important decision in your life? In the story from OP, the fire does eventually kill the townspeople, so in the end there actually is empirical feedback for them laughing instead of believing. Does Kierkegaard suppose similar consequences for those don't make this leap of faith?

I'll admit it's a pretty obtuse subject. It's one of those things that's difficult to understand if not coming from particular assumptions, and is built upon theologians like Augustine. Essentially he argues that one cannot really understand true metaphysics unless graced with divine spirit, and that is done seemingly arbitrarily and only after continuous searching, and maybe even never at all. If one is to get into Kierkegaard I would recommend Either/or and Sickness unto death for a good entry point. I would also recommend Michael Segrue's lecture's on him as a good introduction to his general demeanor. He's like a religious counterpart to Nietzsche.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=SMJc9UMzFSE

They didn't exactly learn from it if they died. However, I think that it is a bit silly to challenge a metaphor in detail. A metaphor clarifies something by finding something sufficiently similar, but that can be understood more easily, yet it is not equal. Challenging it for not being equal inherently rejects metaphors as a valid tool of discourse.

deleted

Wait, who recommended the book? How'd I miss this?

Hi, it's me!

https://www.themotte.org/post/253/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/48121?context=8#context

I’m on mobile, but can try to explain what I mean.

I have a lot of lefty new age, yoga instructing, Bali visiting, “I’m spiritual but not religious” saying, “Buddhism is more of a philosophy” claiming friends.

These people are hungry for something. The age and mysticism of stuff like their misunderstanding of eastern philosophy, is attractive to them because it seems to carry so much weight.

Meanwhile in almost every single town or neighborhood in America, there is a Catholic Church. The church has 2000 years of philosophy to pull on, as well as the most moving art that humanity has ever produced. People associate “meditation” with eastern philosophy, not knowing that their is an equally old tradition of meditation and mindfulness happening in that goofy building with the cross in it.

Not only is the spirituality, the history, the art, the philosophy, etc all there, but all of that philosophy and tradition is what we used to build the modern world. That Church is welcoming people to come into it ever day, or at least every Sunday, and people just…don’t. They don’t even bother to look.

I’m irritated that we have allowed Catholicism to become primarily associated with goofy people in hats, abusive priests, and ugly boring buildings. Im basically just retreading the frustration people have with Vatican 2.

The second thing is that my heart breaks for Protestants. The people attending these awful mega churches and weird youth group pastor things are being deprived of something I think is truly beautiful, and they’re essentially being taken advantage of by people who have a 500 year old hatred of the church. I think Protestants are more than happy to simply lie about Catholicism to maintain this grudge.

To be sure, many Protestants are not like this. But such language and such logic permeates the Protestant approach towards Catholicism.

Eh. It's still common in certain evangelical branches, but the Jack Chick brand of Protestantism is not really mainstream anymore.

In that sense I do not begrudge the Protestants their complaints at all. Had you posted something along the lines of SSCReader's reply originally, praising Protestantism over Catholicism,

Just to point out I am an atheist, I was more amused by the (from my point of view) lack of introspection to consider how they might criticize the Catholic church, given they were founded specifically because it was felt the Catholic Church was betraying the values of Christianity (from their point of view of course).

My own response as an atheist would be something like:

  1. Protestants are I think correct to say that the Catholic Church as is and as it was would likely be condemned by Jesus as portrayed in the bible. It seems way too interested in its own survival, power and wealth than the humble values Jesus espoused. The Pope of Christ's church should not be living in a palace (though Protestant sects are also often living in glass houses in this respect).

  2. Protestants are I think incorrect to say that belief is the only gateway to God, a plain reading of what Jesus says would I think endorse the idea that good works have to be at least part of your journey to Christ.

  3. Some sects of Protestantism founded in large part because of the financial corruption of the Catholic church reinvented said corruption (Mega-churches and the like) pretty quickly.

  4. You're (edit - as in Catholicism and Protestantism) both (from my point of view) basically arguing which version of a fairy tale is more accurate when even if the fairy tale itself should be believed, the answer appears to be, both are wrong and that Christ espouses a much more personal, humble and pure version of Christianity than either Catholicism or mainline Protestantism actually perform in practice. Maybe the Quakers are close?

  5. But also the fairy tale is not true, so the best option is simply take the moral lessons said tale can impart without actually believing in witches in gingerbread houses or talking wolves or magic mirrors.

  6. But also people are really bad at being able to do that, so it's probably fine to leave them to believe whatever supernatural bits they want since it does seem to help them live their lives whether Catholic or Protestant, simply reeling them in when they try to drag people into wars or whatever (which is to be clear in no way limited to religion, ideologies also should be reeled in at similar points, supernatural or not).

When I saw this, I was finally driven to create an account.

In response to 1 of 3

As a Protestant myself, it is certainly true that many Protestants don't think about church history, but I think it is quite the exaggeration to characterize all Protestants as "deeply ignorant," and I imagine you would object if I characterized you that way. But I recognize that this was in response to claims that Protestants are lying, though, so I'll take that as much less polemic and more charitable than I would otherwise be inclined.

Regarding faith and works, the reasoning behind the concern here is the belief that God's standards in his law are high, requiring that we follow it, not just some good enough intent. There's no "good enough" amount of works aside from actually following the whole law (and numerous scripture passages can back this up). And so, we can't be saved by being good enough by our own works, even post-conversion. That isn't to say that our works should be ignored or thought irrelevant, indeed, they ought to accompany faith, and will do so. We should do them! But they are not the thing—rather, that is Christ's works—upon which our acceptance before God rests.

I think the claim about the 100 AD church is inaccurate. Yes, things probably are not identical to modern Protestantism—the scriptures wouldn't be able to be in everybody's pockets, for one rather obvious thing—but neither would they be identical to modern Roman Catholicism. There's good reason to think, for instance, that bishops (and hence popes, as well) weren't a thing distinct from presbyters/elders (whence the word priest comes) at that point. That is not the only addition over the years, but I think that that is one that strikes fairly near the heart of the claims of papal authority and ancientness, and being the church that's like the early church. I do not think this is some odd claim; if you read the reformers, they frequently cite the church fathers as in agreement with them, though by no means was every father in agreement in every instance.

I'd be interested in whatever primary texts you find especially compelling.

In response to 2 of 3

Regarding the bible, I don't think that that's accurate. The Council of Rome was no ecumenical council. It was a regional council, and so would presumably not be part of the extraordinary magisterium, or so I understand. To get there, you would either need to wait nearly a thousand years until the Council of Florence, or maybe you could make an argument that some of the later councils (like the Second Council of Nicea, in the ninth century), would, in its accepting other non-ecumenical councils, meant to include this one in such a way that it includes the scriptural list. (There are also difficulties concerning whether the books of Esdras are referring to the same ones as in the Tridentine canon). You claimed that they compiled scripture, which, thankfully, does not go so far as claiming that they made scripture scripture, as there is some pretty clear biblical evidence that parts of the New Testament were referred to as scriptures in the works of Paul and Peter.

I cannot readily assault arguments for the beauty of or your liking the various things that you have talked about, unlike if you were arguing for the truth of them. But as something of an iconoclast, I'd just want to point out that God hasn't commanded us to make such things, indeed, if anything, he has repeatedly commanded the opposite, so let us not be wiser than God, but hold fast to what he has said to do, and rejoice in the beauty contained in the word and sacrament.

What is your objection to the protestant teaching of justification?

I agree with the third section.

Separate thoughts

I think, in some circles, Protestantism gets something of a bad rap. Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism often attract people, due to their seeming pretty and feeling old, while Protestantism has to subsist on the teachings of the scriptures. In secular circles, I think that might be true to an even greater extent, because they often will still see those features—prettiness and oldness—as appealing to some extent, and in their eyes, even if they seem antiquated, something we've grown out of, there's still something to them. They might still like the vibes. But Protestantism, where there is much less of that, there are still the (seemingly) distasteful parts—Christianity's teachings on sex, among other things, and still all those teachings that the Christians have to believe, commitments demanded, and so on, but less ritual and experiences and feelings. Protestantism doesn't have to deal with the (unfair) pedophilia reputation, though.

But the majority of you on themotte, I believe, are atheists, so I'm sure you all would have a better account of your perceptions of Christianity than I am able to give.

Our local Orthodox church has, for some time, seen a number of fervent converts (mostly, not entirely, young women) from New Age and "Eastern" (Buddhist etc.) traditions. Some of my friends have dealt with them quite a bit and, even though those friends are quite a bit more conservative than me, are finding their catechumen's fervor a bit offputting. I've heard that there have been such recent movements otherwhere (not only to Orthodox churches), either, though probably not in demographically measurable amounts.

Since Vatican II, the Church has been actively refusing to provide what those people (and many more) seek, and instead has been busy trying to appear "modern" and failing at it. No doubt most people seeking to get in touch with the transcendental don't even consider going to a church. Particularly in the US, where the building itself looks nothing like a church.

The second thing is that my heart breaks for Protestants. The people attending these awful mega churches and weird youth group pastor things are being deprived of something I think is truly beautiful, and they’re essentially being taken advantage of by people who have a 500 year old hatred of the church. I think Protestants are more than happy to simply lie about Catholicism to maintain this grudge.

Ahh, it's like being back home in Northern Ireland. Shall we skip the bombings and knee-cappings and just point out that Protestants might say something like:

The people attending these awful ostentatious churches and weird blood drinking things are being deprived of something I think is truly beautiful, and they’re essentially being taken advantage of by people who have a 500 year old hatred of the uncorrupted church. I think Catholics are more than happy to simply lie about Protestantism to maintain this grudge.

And we say the left has it bad with internal purity spirals!

"Purity spiral" means taking more and more extreme positions. I don't see how you can accuse the Catholic church of doing so, unless you are atracking them from the right.

The Protestant church formed (arguably) due to issues with indulgences and the like. It split from the Catholic church. Then they split into multiple different sects.

They are the result of a purity spiral within Catholicism. Martin Luther could not tolerate what he saw to be as the perversion of the Church.

A purity spiral is where intolerance and zealousess grow until elements of the group turn on each other. The various splits within Christianity are nearly the Ur-example i would say.

The second thing is that my heart breaks for Protestants. The people attending these awful mega churches and weird youth group pastor things are being deprived of something I think is truly beautiful, and they’re essentially being taken advantage of by people who have a 500 year old hatred of the church. I think Protestants are more than happy to simply lie about Catholicism to maintain this grudge.

I have to say that my least favourite thing about the religious is the capacity of some to be so incredibly condescending and to not even have the common decency to be aware of how insulting they're being.

I am not religious, but I do come from what was historically a very protestant culture (with its own national bent on how a religion "should" be, as is typical) and to me I must say that I see very little difference between the american corporate protestants and the catholics. Both are overly obsessed with elaborate ceremony, pomp and spectacle, with the greatest difference between the two being that one is simply crass and the other is vulgarly ostentatious. I could also say that both are essentially scams designed to extract money and influence from large bodies of people eager to find meaning and a greater understanding of what it's all about.

I generally do not voice these opinions unprompted in the same way that I am not given to walking up to people in the street and slapping them in the face without provocation. I assume that most people have reasons for making the decisions they do and are operating off of different information than I am.

The people attending these awful mega churches and weird youth group pastor things

Are probably attending for the same reasons you would attend whatever weird things catholics do, because they're presumably getting something out of it.

I think Protestants are more than happy to simply lie about Catholicism to maintain this grudge.

This sentence alone is so incredibly arrogant that it makes my head hurt just processing it. The idea that protestants must collectively deceive each other about how totally awesome and right catholicism is just because they're bitter about.... something? I have to say that in my experience, there is no collective grudge among protestants against catholics, if anything it is entirely the other way around. I've lived in countries with large protestant communities my whole life, never spent any serious amount of time in catholic countries or communities and the only place I've ever heard anyone talk about the split between catholics and protestants was from catholics. Hell, I've heard significantly more about protestants from catholics than I have from protestants.

I have to say that in my experience, there is no collective grudge among protestants against catholics, if anything it is entirely the other way around. I've lived in countries with large protestant communities my whole life

Not that there is any significant collective grudge in any case, but if you had lived in a Catholic majority country you would have met protestants with quite an obsession against the Catholic Church. So it's probably the resentment of being the minority in both cases.

Heh, you know when I read the OP I figured it must've been you who recommended the book. Now I'm also curious who it was.

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