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 -
It is true that this trend is obviously inconsistent with a civilisation that remains functional indefinitely. However, Western civilisation has not remained functional indefinitely. It has remained functional during current trends for ~75 years (NB: the 1950 date I'm using here seems to be relatively bipartisan and static; SJers and their foes both seem to talk about the 50s as the paradigm current trends have moved away from, despite their diametrically-opposed views on the value of that paradigm and the trends since, and haven't started talking about the 70s instead as time has gone on). It is possible that the trend is slow enough that the chickens merely haven't come home to roost yet; "there's a lot of ruin in a nation". Indeed, most of the people pushing this claim at any given time are specifically worried that we might stop having a functional civilisation at some point, and this is something that has happened before albeit rarely (e.g. the Fall of Rome, the collapse of Qing China into warlordism).
I can't help but notice that the USA and significant chunks of Western Europe are not in a good way at the moment. Germany's been talking for a while about banning the party that is now #1 in their polls. The USA has significant groups of people on both sides of the political aisle who literally support murdering their political opposition (citations: this board, and the Blue Tribe Internet following Charlie Kirk). Suicide is a non-negligible cause of death. We have cost disease, one of the causes of which is regulatory sclerosis of productive activity. The USA can't pass laws much anymore, to the point that it's become standard for the President to govern by executive order. It would seem that our civilisation is indeed somewhat less functional (at a nuts-and-bolts level) than it was 75 years ago, which is not in contradiction with the hypothesis you're attacking.
More options
Context Copy link