site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 30, 2023

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.

13
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Thank you for linking that page on compersion, I got a great laugh out of that.

Oh man, I had to look up the Kerista Group who coined the term "compersion" as mentioned in that article, and dear oh dear. I think "cult" is the kindest word I can find. It started up in 1956 and lasted until 1991, which is pretty impressive, but it wasn't all free love and frolicking through the daisies by any means:

Kerista was founded by John Presmont after an auditory hallucination telling him that he was the founder of the next great religion of the world. After time spent in New York in the 1950s, and several island experiments in Dominica, Honduras, and Belize in the 1960s, Jud settled in San Francisco at the end of the 1960s

(Always Honduras! Same with Prospéra and for probably the same reasons: loose government regulations/amenable to bribery so you can set up and do what you damn well like so long as you grease the right palms).

From 1971 until 1991, the community was centered at the Kerista Commune (not a single physical building), founded in the Haight Ashbury district of San Francisco, California. The Keristans maintained a very high profile that included publication of a popular free newspaper and several national media appearances.

Entrance to the commune was extremely selective. Potential members were expected to attend the Growth Coop for several months, interact with other Keristans at potluck volleyball and during newspaper distribution, and socialize with various BFIC families. This intense mutual-selection process included months of transitional celibacy. Starting in Fall 1986, it included screening for AIDS/HIV before joining a sleeping schedule. By 1987 there was no celibacy period, but three months of transitional safer sex and quarterly HIV testing for the duration. A more controversial policy was men being required to undergo a vasectomy in order to join. That policy was overturned a year before the New Tribe ended.

Being 'unresolved-on-the-lifestyle', even momentarily or temporarily, warranted immediate gestalt and possible expulsion from the family or commune. Practically, a member could be "called out" on any standards violation or non-utopian thought or action by anyone at any time.

And the techie element was strong with this one, and naturally they went for Apple:

The Keristans shared income and could choose whether to have outside paying jobs or work within the community (which operated several businesses, a legally incorporated church, and an educational non-profit organization).

The most successful of the businesses was Abacus, Inc., an early Macintosh computer vendor in San Francisco, which eventually offered a variety of computer hardware, training, and services. At its height, Abacus had over 250 employees, offices in five cities, and revenues in excess of $25 million a year. It was voted the 33rd and 42nd fastest-growing privately held company in America by Inc. Magazine in 1990 and 1991 respectively, and was the top reseller of Macintosh computers in the Bay Area in 1991.

Is this sounding like a cult yet? Because it's sounding sort of like a cult to me.

In 1979 and 1980, two children were born in the community. Beginning in 1983, the adult male Keristans underwent vasectomies to deal with birth control and address global population issues. All male members subsequently had the requirement of having a vasectomy within a set period of time after joining the community.

The family structure of Kerista was composed of fidelitous groups called B-FICs (Best-Friend Identity Clusters). Keristans practiced non-preferential polyfidelity, which required consensus to accept a new person into the group.

Non-preferentiality was an important concept of Keristan polyfidelity, and had lofty goals but was more intended to keep people from coupling up. Keristans had a transitional celibacy period after joining a group of three months, sometimes waived.

A single B-FIC was composed of men and women who rotated sleeping with all of the opposite-sex members on a balanced rotational sleeping schedule. The sleeping schedule assigned each family member to sleep with a different opposite-sex partner each night. Since the BFICs were rarely balanced between men and women (typically more women than men), on any given night several family-members would have no partner to sleep with and were assigned a 'Zero-Night' when they slept alone. In addition to the programmed sleeping schedule, it was permitted to sleep with any opposite-sex family member at any time, which was termed a 'freebie'.

Oh yeah, way better than boring old monogamy and all its jealousy and conditions and restrictions on sexual and emotional freedom! 😁

I wonder how many other trendy terms or ideas have histories like this, if you actually go digging into their backstories. Somehow the sex/gender split in modern English has been laundered from its origins with John Money and his uh... unorthodox practices, and nobody remembers that the trans pride flag was invented by a man who stole his female colleagues' underwear and wrote stories about an adult man marrying a teen girl who doesn't age.