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 -
For the purposes of civil liberties/avoiding sectarian conflict/&c., atheism is a religion.
Thus, if Alice believes in a deity or deities, and Bob does not, they are equally obligated to refrain from imposing their beliefs on each other.
This is why many New Atheists drew such ire; they promoted their Views in a manner that would have been seen as inappropriate in the other direction. However, the symmetry breaks down in that atheism per se does not impose demands founded on metaphysical assumptions, although some atheistic ideologies do, e. g. Gaianism ("Thou shalt not eat of produce that groweth not where thou livest, even if it be transported in a minimally-damaging way, for it is an Abomination Unto Gaia for people in northern climates to make it through the winter without developing early-stage scurvy.") or
WokismThe Ideology Which Refuses To Be Named Because It Considers Itself Entitled To Have Its Precepts Be Unmarked ("Thou shalt not eat of ice cream from an ice-cream truck, for the song they use has the same tune as a racist song used by ice-cream places during the Wilson Administration"; "Thou shalt not avail thyself of the easing of thy toil by human-shaped machines, because certain pre-civil-rights-era attempts were designed to resemble caricatures of black people and called Mechanical Negroes-with-two-Gs.")The same principle applies to those demands as to "Thou shalt not engage in coitus with a consenting adult of thine own gender because the Bible says something that, if you squint at it, looks like it says not to; never mind that the relationships to which Paul was referring to were probably the older man/young boy type often seen in ante-Christian Greece."
More options
Context Copy link