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 -
Apparently, there is a viral video in Russia of a long discussion between a oppositional blogger and a pro-putin actor. I can only find a German news article on it, but I would love to see the whole interview (subtitled). However, I doubt such a video exists. For me, it is more the lack of effort by western media to gain insight into the thoughts of actual russians than the positions itself that I find astonishing and relevant to the culture war.
Both sides (pro-neutrality right and pro-ukraine left) have no interest whatsover to shed a light on the internal discussions in Russia.
Edit: The video exists on youtube, linked in a comment below. I feel dumb and incompetent now.
https://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/medien/russland-gespraech-zwischen-putinisten-und-regierungskritiker-18626426.html
"The West is waging war against us"
Is it actually productive to try and understand Russian motivations? Regardless of their motivations, they're trying to use force to conquer an independent nation, one that was attempting to align itself with the West. The fact that they might see this as part of a broader conflict with the West isn't news, and it doesn't change matters on the ground.
In addition, it seems like most people in Western countries, including many people here, come at the issue of trying to understand Russia from the perspective of trying to justify war - the Russians are inherently authoritarian/imperialistic/belligerent/orcish, and therefore must be destroyed. I don't think this attitude is helpful or should be encouraged.
Incredibly so. Understanding your opponent is insanely useful in defeating them, generally by allowing you to predict them better. For example, an actor in a war of resources behaves much different than an actor in a war of national honor. The former may be more likely to move troops into sparsely populated and natural resource rich areas, while the latter would be more likely to strike at a capital or some other area of symbolic importance.
Or, to quote Sun Tzu:
More options
Context Copy link
You could say the same about Americans. And Americans literally do say the same about other Americans, they're just divided into two groups who are each accusing each other of being authoritarian/imperialistic/belligerent/orcish while they themselves are the only sane and rational people in the world. And you could say the same about pretty much any population ever if they happen to be stirred up into a frenzy at the moment. Look at how blindly most people (on all sides of the political spectrum) believe whatever their thought leaders tell them to. Look how violent people become when they declare a group to be their enemy. You are literally advocating the genocide of 143 million people because you believe them to be evil, not because you've met all 143 million of them, or probably even a dozen, but because of the government and military of their country is doing bad things and there is some amount of support among their populace. Do 90% of Russians support their military? Do 50%? Do 10%? Maybe it's only a tiny but vocal minority who don't face opposition because the 90% of sane Russians know better than to stick their necks out in an authoritarian country that's oppressing them. Or maybe it legitimately is 90%, but you have no idea and you advocate genocide anyway, because you decided that they are the enemy and thus deserve no mercy.
That sounds pretty authoritarian/imperialistic/belligerent/orcish to me. If Ukraine had done something you don't like to incite this war, or if you had been born in Russia and had feelings of nationalist loyalty to them, or if the U.S. government had been allied with Russia and fed anti Ukraine propaganda (have you heard that they're literal Nazis?), I expect you'd be advocating their genocide instead. Because you're not any better than the Russian citizens. And you're not any worse. People have a tendency to get carried away, especially when fed propaganda, and it's important to understand them so you can deconvert them, demoralize them, and end wars without genociding the enemy whenever possible, because at the end of the day they're still human beings and they still matter even when they do bad things.
It is not my perspective the the Russians are orcish - I'm saying, that it seems to be a common conclusion among Expert Russia Understanders.
I'm literally not.
That was part of my point:
Your "Expert Russia Understanders" claim a thing and you believe them. The point isn't whether they're right or wrong on the object level, my point is that you trust them because they said a thing and you consider them to be an authority. If Russia's "Expert Ukraine Understanders" tell them that Ukraine is literally Nazis and evil and must be destroyed, and it is good that they be destroyed, a lot of the Russian citizens will believe them for the exact same reason.
Did you not mean genocide? Are you advocating we destroy their government and then back off with no further intervention to prevent them from doing it again? Or are you advocating that we destroy their government and then imperialistically foist a new government with our ideals upon them? How do you destroy them without being authoritarian/imperialistic/belligerent/orcish? How do you destroy them without doing to them literally what they're trying to do to Ukraine, for literally the same perceived reasons?
I'm not a moral relativist, I don't claim that all sides are actually equally justified and therefore stopping them from doing bad things would make us equally bad. Russia is actually in the wrong here. But, at least for the common citizens, they seem to be wrong because, on average, they're just as gullible as everyone else everywhere else in the world, and the main difference I see is that the government they blindly follow is worse than ours.
No, I don't believe them. I don't believe that Expert Russia Understanders understand anything, and I believe their 'understanding' is just a way to justify their preferred conclusion - Russia delenda est.
No, no. For the second time, I am not saying that Russians are orcish. Maybe you should write less and read more.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Then I think it is productive for you to correct these people as they can be saved from thinking with their brainstem. The site states it's mission is to provide a "place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases". It would be rather disheartening to think that not even here could wartime propaganda lose.
Though I will admit, it does get a bit boring over and over again.
I am not sure what you are trying to say in that first sentence but as for the broader conflict with the West, it puts them in a different perspective for me, and I bet especially for those Russians and Volunteers on the ground fighting and dying for those beliefs.
More options
Context Copy link
Even if only from a strategic perspective, the answer is yes. Knowing Russian motivations allows western nations to better counteract them politically and militarily. I don't know what the specific goals of Putin are (or the Russian security state) or why he chose February 2022 to be the time to achieve them, but presumably the CIA has a decent idea and this is forming part of their strategy to undermine the Russian state capacity to wage war.
Ukraine (and the west) of course might not be in this position if we had better understood Russian motivations, either because an acceptable peaceful compromise was reached, or because Ukraine was better prepared.
Maybe for the purposes of military planners. Is it useful for you and I to try and understand the mind of the lowly Russian serf? Are we going to learn Russia, throw ourselves into 500 years of complicated history, move to Russia and explore the nature of its people? Unlikely. We're going to read a bunch of articles on Wikipedia, maybe a thinkpiece (they all have titles like "How the EU is playing right into Putin's hands"). Is this kind of half-baked understanding going to reflect anything but our own biases, whether for peace or for war?
Insofar as one is curious, of course!
It’s better than nothing! I struggle with your intellectual defeatism and know-nothing approach. Tug at small threads for long enough and eventually you will have the entire sweater! (in a pile of spaghetti on the floor)
I don't really agree - I think it's better not to form an opinion at all than to form a really bad one, and I think it's better to stick conservatively to what is known for sure rather than speculate wildly on what's going on in someone's head. This doesn't mean we can't know anything, but what we can know has to have a rock solid base. For example, I think it's reasonable to say that one motivation behind the Russian invasion is that they thought it would be easy. This is so common-sense and obvious that I rarely see people discuss it. It's obvious for many reasons - firstly, it's why we go to war as well. Secondly, we ourselves perceived Ukraine as being vulnerable to invasion in the run-up to 2022. None of this requires us to try and get inside Putin's head, or to develop any understanding of the Russians - in fact, to try and develop an understanding of the Russians assumes there is something to understand, that they differ from us in some fundamental way.
And more broadly, I think that being excessively curious presents it's own danger. Humans are absolutely capable of overthinking, overinterpreting and overfitting, generating patterns and order out of chaos, going back to the astrologers who tried to match events on earth to the movement of the heavens.
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