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 -
This is such a bizarre argument, particularly for one I've seen repeated again and again in different variations with negligible pushback. When they say "This movie may contain scenes of violence", they aren't talking about a parliamentary committee crafting legislation. When the FBI gathers events for inclusion in their "violent crime" statistics, they don't count voter fraud. People with a commitment to "nonviolence" have no problem voting, and they aren't regarded as hypocrites for doing so.
People have no problem with recognizing violence (or the lack of it) when they see it, but this novel expansive definition of violence keeps popping up.
A facade, and a wall, and armor plating, and a maze beyond that. Stalin had a facade of nonviolence as he was genociding Ukrainians, but we (practically) have the real thing. People don't think about the "facade" because there are genuine, strong social barriers to using (normally-defined) violence.
One man’s modus ponens is another man’s modus tollens.
It gets negligible pushback in places like The Motte because beyond a certain level of political-philosophical acumen, it becomes ubiquitously understood as true. Even doing a study, declaring National Northern Hemispheric Penguin Day, ordering lunch, done on taxpayer time with taxpayer-funded resources. And taxes are backed by threat of violence. Normies push back on this understanding because they attach normative baggage to violence. Virtually no one is a pacifist; we're all cool with violence. The actual debate is not around whether political action is backed by violence, it's when the violence is legitimate.
While you’re welcome to argue that you think something is obvious, please refrain from consensus-building.
More options
Context Copy link
This is libertarian nonsense. Words have meaning, and declaring Penguin Day is not violence. This is akin to redefining White Supremacy to include punctuality. Just because anyone with sufficient intellect can play 7 degrees of [violence/White supremacy/Kevin Bacon] doesn’t make it so.
This is very similar in form to the “everything is political” crowd. Often on reddit, if someone complains about politics in X, some oh-so-smart objector will point out that everything is political, even a painting of a flower is political (perhaps it is conservative because it upholds traditional notions of beauty or the status quo or is silent on leftist social issues, perhaps it is environmentalist because it presents nature as beautiful). And in some abstract sense I accept that a clever person can extract a political meaning from any text/object/artwork by sufficient mental gymnastics. But all this really does is deprive us of a word. If we are to say that everything is political, then what word do we have to distinguish between a straight up campaign ad for Trump and a painting of a flower. Even if sufficient efforts can divine a political meaning in both there is surely some real meaningful difference in the strength, obviousness, legibility or centrality of that political message, and we could use a word to express that.
Similarly here there is surely a useful difference in violence between punching a guy in the face and Penguin Day that is useful to talk about, and twisting the word violence into contortions just replaces a useful definition of the word with a useless definition of the word. This is only popular with Libertarians because they are the only people for whom the new definition is useful. They want to import the bad scary evilconnotation of violence to new territory by a bit of trickery. They think if they can redefine scary bad feeling word to encompass any government action no matter how benign it will trick people into applying this old emotional association (scary, bad, evil) onto the new definition (any govt action). Woke people redefining White Supremacy are trying the exact same trick
In general a good rule of thumb is this: if someone appears to be using a very nonstandard definition of a word they are almost certainly trying to manipulate you dishonestly.
Are you saying no taxpayer funding is involved in declaring National Penguin Day, or are you claiming that taxes aren't collected by threat of violence? Also if you wouldn't mind providing your definition of violence. I'm using the first one in Merriam-Webster
I believe he's claiming that "Penguin Day">"paid government bureaucrats">"taxes">"violence" is too many degrees removed to meaningfully equate one end of the chain with the other - the sense in which Penguin Day 'involves' implicit violence is so abstract as to be meaningless in any everyday sense of the wod 'violence'. Compare "Starbucks">"cheap imported coffee beans">"Western economic supremacy">"legacy of colonization" as supposed proof that having coffee makes someone complicit in the evils of 18th century colonialism.
Part of the original point is that we aren't discussing common conceptions of these concepts. The chain is not abstract, it is very direct. Violence is the foundation of political action. Political action is forcing others who disagree with you to take part in your ends. At best forcing them to fund your desires. This is the defining difference between political action and non-political action.
Are you saying that is not the chain of events? Without the threat of violence that chain still exists?
I'm perfectly comfortable saying I'd be able to buy coffee today without colonialism.
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
I think this is a different argument from the typical "words are violence". This seems to come from the libertarian view that "government is [a monopoly on] violence", and ultimately that all laws the legislators craft are enforced at the threat of violence. You do something that sounds banal like banning the sale of "loosie" individual cigarettes to enforce tax laws and maybe wave hands about "public health", and ultimately if some of the populace resists this seemingly-nonviolent policy, your enforcers will end up killing them. I doubt there's a single law of the state for which sufficiently determined noncompliance won't end with physical violence.
That said, while I think the libertarians have a mostly-self-coherent ethical view (which is more than many can say), I think some level of civilization is worth the trade off in terms of absolute freedoms.
Do people consider Max Weber to be a libertarian? But yes I'm coming at it from the libertarian traditions. Hence the tag...
In "defense" of my less radical brethren, the vast majority of libertarians agree. Ancaps are - or were - over represented in parts of the internet. There are far more minarchists and those are greatly eclipsed by just self-described libertarians who make all sorts of tradeoffs.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
A parliametary committee crafting legislation isn't violence any more than a crime boss saying "And anyone but us starts dealing drugs north of Third Street, you put them in the hospital". Nor any less.
Nah. I can recognize the difference between organizing and directing people to assault others, and measuring environmental contaminants. The first one is closer to violence, if it was unclear to you.
As a practical issue, I often see "X is violence" paired with the (sometimes unstated) claim that "X can be resisted with violence". I'll admit to some motivated reasoning as my opposition to murdering parliamentarians bleeds through, but I still think there's a difference between being one step removed from fighting in a gang war and being a dozen steps removed from issuing a fine for corporate noncompliance.
Measuring, maybe, but that's hardly all the legislature does. Sometimes crime bosses just order lunch too. The legislature makes rules which the direct result of which is violence applied to those who disobey, and no amount of talking about environmental contaminants will change that.
I didn't set the standards we're discussing here. The claim upthread is "All political action is violence." If you didn't agree with that, then it would've been nice to know earlier. I don't have any reason to debate the fact that some political action is violence.
Sometimes the politicians order lunch too. Or proclaim today National Northern Hemispheric Penguin Day or some other such thing. But a lot of it is about deciding what acts will now call for state violence against the actor, or arguing about how to divide the spoils from the protection racket.
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