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 -
I agree with the general thesis on the need for balance between chaos and order. I disagree with your framing of it stemming from Catholics and Protestants as its source. I think it's a fundamental variable of human psychology: some people have more affinity/preference for order, some people have more affinity/preference for chaos, and Christianity is just one of the many many ways this conflict has played out throughout history. The Catholics did not inspire order within humanity, but simply took the half of humans who wanted order and united them around itself, while the other half rejected it. The issue is not that a religious schism has propogated itself through our culture and caused the modern rift, the issue is that people are fundamentally different from each other and have different preferences. If we have to share a society, they're going to disagree about how to run that society. The only possible resolutions are
-Oppression: one group gets what they want, the other doesn't.
-Genocide: one group eliminates the other and then lives in peace (this isn't really possible here because chaos/order affinity is only slightly genetic, so conflict will pop up again every generation)
-Compromise: each group only gets part of what they want
In most types of conflicts there would be a fourth option: Segregation and local politics, where each group can go live among each other and do things their own way in their own spaces, having minimal interaction with the others. But that's not an option here because the Order people explicitly want to control everything in society, not keep to themselves, so localized politics IS compromising with chaos.
The culture war can't be healed unless both sides can regain enough respect and compassion for each other that they genuinely want compromise instead of always attempting Oppression. The only compromises we get are unintentional out of strategic necessity, not because anyone is genuinely trying to make both sides happy. Unless that changes we're going to keep getting conflicts.
I don't think the US culture war is Law vs Chaos - the "Red = Law, Blue = Chaos" and the "Red = Chaos, Blue = Law" narratives are roughly equally easy to write. "The real problem is that the Blues want total control of everything down to your kids' innermost thoughts while the Red just want to grill" seems to be the most common narrative on the Motte and is of the Red=Chaos variety.
The Blue tribe has room for the hippies and the HR ladies, with which of those groups is winning the intra-Blue conflict switching from decade to decade. Similarly the Reds have room for the Gadsden-flag waving hillbillies and the father-knows-best authoritarians. In both cases homo sapiens hypocritus leaves space for both in the same person depending on which is convenient.
In so far as there is a deep underlying conflict behind the US culture war (mostly, it is pure tribalism), it is elves vs dwarfs. Reds think that wealth comes out of the ground and that cities are parasitic on farmers and miners, Blues (and Greys, who are just dissident Blues) think that wealth comes from the application of human ingenuity and that rural areas are parasitic on productive cities.
As a centrist and a believer in horseshoe theory, I will admit that right-left doesn't cleanly split into chaos-order, because they're orthogonal. Right and left are more flavors of how the law should be applied. The typical rightist wants the law to control culture and behavior while keeping the economy free, while the typical leftist wants to use the law to control the economy while keeping culture and behavior free. The extremists on both ends want the law to control both absolutely everything, while only differing in what form they want it to take. The opposite extreme, the maximal libertarian, wants chaos and to just let everyone fend for themselves and hope it turns out okay."
From my perspective as a centrist, I think we need balance between all of these. And for the past 50 years or so there has been too much order and not enough chaos (on average, there are exceptions here and there). So the Order people on the left and right are the villains, trying to oppress their chosen hated group (whites or non-whites depending on which side), or just genuinely trying to do the right thing but failing miserably because their authoritarian policies cause bad outcomes when pushed too far. While the chaos people are trying to make us more free and marginally improving things when they manage to gain a little ground (even if they would cause problems if they took it too far).
I'm not fully satisfied with this breakdown. I think the elf/dwarf thing also makes sense to some extent, and probably does a better job of explaining the cultural differences between right and left. But I don't think it's the true driver of the conflict. Moderate right people and moderate left people are capable of getting along and compromising with each other. And if both were laissez-faire about letting each other live their own lives then they could live next to each other in harmony. The conflict is driven by the hatred between the authoritarian right and the moderate left, and the hatred between the authoritarian left and the moderate right. Because the authoritarians won't leave the moderates alone, so they are forced to participate in the culture war whether they want to or not. The broader left-right divide is then caused WW1-style via alliances: the ally of my enemy is my enemy.
More options
Context Copy link
That's on the surface Blue=Law, Red=Neutral. Although when you combine it with "Blues want to allow trans-and-minority criminals to prey on people while Red wants them in the sex-(not-gender)-appropriate prison", you realize that no, it's not; Red sees it as being about Anarcho-Tyranny vs Ordered Liberty, and Blue does also. (Both are wrong, but IMO Blue is much wronger)
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link