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 -
Lets talk about the amateur expose of the Somali day-care industry in Minnesota.
Here is the full 42 minutes of my crew and I exposing Minnesota fraud, this might be my most important work yet.
This video and associated clips have been taking the right-wing internet by storm. The format is new and interesting; a charismatic zoomer social media influencer teamed up with an angry obsessive boomer autist. Their idea was to show up in person to various government-subsidized "child care centers" to see if there was any meaningful economic activity going on. The results are certainly interesting if nothing else.
The most notable finding is the complete absense of evidence of child activity at all but one of the facilities. I'm not sure how definitive this is that fraud is occuring (especially since we don't know what time of day or week these visits were made), but it is certainly suggestive. I wouldn't be eager to display my entrusted children to a group of strange men who seem oddly interested in seeing them either.
One might get the impression that these facilities are completely unregulated and uninspected. This appears to be wrong. You can look up the licenses of Hennepin County child care centers and find annual inspection results, usually with violations! The laundry list of violations found with each annual inspection did not seem to prevent these facilities from recieving 7 figures annually in taxpayer funds.
I’d like to write a larger post on this but the fraud in American minority populations is fundamentally the result of a sociobiological assymetry between the immigrant population and the native population, because the native population has neutered their natural instincts through culture and biological adaptions. Culturally, White Americans are presented with trauma-inducing and phobia-inducing stories and lessons at an early age to reduce their natural in-group affiliation, much like a dog that has been punished not to naturally bark; biologically, Northern Europeans like the Swedes in Minnessota have the highest rate of OXTR rs53576 G/G expression which is a unique evolutionary adaption that allows them to see racial others as part of the same “tribe”; for those carrying A/A, no amount of in-group allegiance is sufficient to make them to see racial others as part of the same tribe. The Swedes in Minnessota have maximal cultural and genetic pressure to see the Somalians as simply an ailing faction of their own in-group, thus deserving special treatment, like a sick or mentally handicapped member of the tribe; the Somalis in Minnessota have maximal pressure toward the exact opposite: piracy, tribal supremacism, and the clearest friend-enemy distinction you could possibly develop on this planet, due to their culture + history + religion + biology.
The sociobiological asymmetry is the most important thing because it’s a motivational asymmetry. To use a quote from Conan the Barbarian, there is literally no pleasure greater to a young man than to crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women. This pleasure is so great that when a teenage boy in America has any free time, it is quite literally all they want to do and think about. They want to raid a stranger’s base in Rust that took them weeks to build; they want to track down a secret base in Minecraft that took years to build and light it on fire; they want to hop on Fortnite with their männerbund and ruin the fun of a rival gang of men; they want to raid Orgrimmar and kill an enemy race’s chief; if they play football, they want to exert dominance over a man they just tackled and flex at the other side’s cheerleaders; if they are some sociopathic looksmaxxer, they want to steal someone’s date or girlfriend while live-streaming; in chess, they want to lay a trap that see’s their enemy’s Queen captured; and so on. When I would play Call of Duty with the boys, the funniest moments were always a direct similitude of the Conan-Genghis principle, when the rival team had someone’s girlfriend playing: we kill the members of a group (usually through trickery, sometimes through gratuitous torture), steal their precious belongings, and then hear the lamentation of their woman (rather annoyed yells) as she is the last one alive. This always made us laugh hysterically, it’s just innate. Stealing things from the alien group in a game is even a popular YouTube topic and the basis of the popular game Sea of Thieves. Secretly backstabbing someone that you are pretending to be allied with is the whole basis of Among Us, maybe the most popular game of this decade, a game popular solely because of that mechanic.
The joy that men get from fulfilling these natural instincts is intended to be set against defectors and foreign invaders; that is why humans have this instinct. But American education has made them phobic about this truth at a young age, and modern Christian theology erroneously leads them believe that it is evil. But the Somali, with his rich history of piracy and tribalism, and his religion which celebrates war against the Kafir, is not confused by any of these illusions. The scamming is fun in itself. It is one of life’s greatest joys. They would do it even if they only make out with a single dollar, just as American men do it for free in virtual pretend worlds. They are laughing, dancing, and singing after stealing the Swede’s money, because it represents a victory over an alien race in their midst. They consider if a victory because it really is a victory, while the Swedish Minnesotan is looking at pixels rejoicing over something retarded like winning a match of Clash of Clans. The Somali male has the same motivation to commit a scam as an American male has to play a round of CounterStrike or Escape from Tarkov. This is the fundamental reason the scams are all over the place.
No. Young men are aggressive, belligerent, proud and honor-conscious, and seek glory. But not all men are natural despoilers who live for nothing more than to wreck what others have built, to ruin others' works.
This is the philosophy of the ant, mindless raider and reaver who is incapable of seeing anything other than an Other to be killed.
This is the philosophy of the thug, violent, of short-time preference and low impulse control, devoid of vision or higher purpose.
This is the philosophy of the petty and the small, who enjoys the misery of other people more than anyone's happiness or anything ennobling for himself.
This is the philosophy of the sociopath, who sees others as only prey, who cannot see other people as anything other than potential resources to be exploited or rivals to be eliminated.
This is the philosophy of the psychopath, who loves only violence for the sake of violence, and writes alt-historical pseudo-political screeds to justify a desire to pillage, rape, and kill, and reduce all of humanity to war to the knife.
As best, this is the philosophy of an insecure and callow youth who soothes himself with words like "männerbund" to tell himself he is embarking on glorious viking with his warband, and not simply seeking group security to go bully others in a game because he's not brave enough to gangbang.
This "joy" you speak of is a joy that everyone feels from time to time when our monkey-brains trigger, whether it's imagining hunting down a horrible criminal you saw on the news, beating the crap out of the guy who pushed your buttons on the Internet, or running down that motherfucker who cut you off on the highway. It's a joy you might temporarily feel when your fight-or-flight activates "fight" and you win... until the consequences arrive. But there is a reason we regulate and channel and try to restrain violent young men, especially those who seem to have no higher aspirations than to tear down what others have built, to kick sand in the faces of those weaker than them, to wax rhapsodical about the joy of hurting other people and laughing at their pain.
It is not a philosophy for men. At least, not men we want to share a society with. Not men capable of building a society. Certainly not men who speak of shared values and community and building a greater civilization than a mere tribe with spears all pointed outward from their very tight and insular circle.
It's fascinating how you breathe this "joy" of rapine in one post and extoll Christianity in the next. No amount of Biblical exegesis can rationalize a Jesus who says yes, it is right and good to crush your enemies and hear the lamentations of their women and take joy in it.
Though it is amusing to watch KulakRevolt go off on how Christians are cucked puss-pusses who sold out white Europe, and his outraged Christian followers, like you, try to describe a "Based Jesus" who totally says it's good to hate and kill and wallow in the infliction of your enemies' well-deserved suffering.
According to the revealed preference of their favorite leisure activity, men really love raiding enemies and aliens. Your counter-hypothesis needs evidence, and it will have a difficult time explaining why men pay for the opportunity to recreate what they did in the past. And why men loved to do it in the Napoleonic Era, or during the 1527 Sack of Rome, or the 1850 sacking of the Summer Palace. Or during any of the completely normal raiding activities during the Age of Sail. And why it comprises the subject of the most popular “guy movie”, Master & Commander, which is literally just about a hierarchical männerbund seizing a trophy ship through trickery. Is it okay because the authority says it is okay? This would not be a very masculine take, as the King himself was established through men simply willing it.
The Psalms which were inspired by God are filled with curses of destruction for enemies, so the eseigesis isn’t completely impossible. But you don’t have to do exegesis, you simply have to understand that very devout Christians have always engaged in the joy of taking from enemies. If this is a sin, okay, it is probably less of a sin than the one your critic is engaged in, so they can be quiet and criticize themselves + repent for seeing a speck in his brother’s eye, which is a much worse sin.
I already addressed that - yes, men like the idea of fighting and winning glory. You have provided no evidence that this means we all deep down enjoy causing pain and suffering and wrecking what other people have built. Like all your just-so stories, it's just something you spun out with deepity words.
I think if you actually read journals of people fighting in the Napoleonic era who were not Napoleon, you will find that as in most wars, most of the men fighting it did not actually enjoy it, even if they have fond memories of the camaraderie afterwards. They justified it with pride, with self-defense, with national interest, but not "'Cause it's fun to destroy what other people have." Master and Commander is not about guys enjoying destruction and pillage. The whole point of the movie is that they are trying to defend their homeland; Aubrey's rousing speech to his crew is all about preventing the French from taking over England.
Very devout Christians have always enjoyed fraud to get rich and consorting with whores, too. You are still just making up what you want the Bible to endorse.
It’s very normal in video game culture to say things like “you ruined his night”, “he will cry himself to sleep tonight”, “you made him uninstall” after vanquishing your foe. Why do you believe boys and men say this? Or are these just evil people in your mind? Usually when you make the enemy quit the game, this makes the male player happy. You would have to explain why this occurs, if not for causing misfortune and pain upon your enemy.
Do you really think the soldiers did not enjoy the prospect of taking things from their enemy? Then why did all of Napoleon’s soldiers loot? Why did the British loot the Chinese? Why did the Catholics loot the Byzantines? Why did Rome loot their enemies? It’s possible you have an atypical mind a la typical mind fallacy. Hell, I know a guy who proudly showed of Saddam’s execution sword, which of course he looted in Iraq while in the army. And again, male leisure activity involves looting mechanics for precisely this reason — video games are fun for a reason and the reason relates back to our innate psychology. We like to play the assassin who kills enemies and loots their bodies because deep down we have some kernel of an instinct which comes from prehistory, though of course moral compunction overrides this. What boy didn’t want to be a ninja in his adolescence? Why do people play GTA and not “give out compliments simulator”?
That’s just a speech to give them a just cause on top of their mannerbunding; Britain had declared war first and the ship was off the coast of Brazil. No one is watching the movie because they sympathize with the cause of the King, instead they see themselves in the männerbund who are singularly interested in destroying their enemy through trickery.
What is your explanation for the fact that armies need to teach men to kill, and that most men display considerable resistance to it, and require intensive training? The Grossman argument, in On Killing, is exaggerated, but as far as I'm aware it is nonetheless true that using lethal force - or even just maiming force - on another human being is psychologically difficult for most people, and they have to psych themselves up for it. That's one reason why armies need pre-battle rituals, communal bonding rituals, etc., to prepare soldiers to use lethal force.
It's true that boys and men often enjoy dominance or victory to some extent. For that matter, as far as I can tell women have competitive instincts as well. But it is a big leap from "boys enjoy winning" or "games for boys often involve simulated violence" to "all men yearn to destroy and rape and pillage".
I think that study’s theory is likely bunk as this was never a concern in premodernity. Like, I doubt there is a passage from an ancient writer (most of them familiar with war) claiming that men are afraid to kill, though many would certainly be cowards. Then you have the normative duelling culture among nobles for a long stretch of time, eg
which strongly suggests that men, at an insult of honor, would be willing to kill or maim a member of even the same tribe. This is a defensible ritual IMO because it rids your upper class of cowards, though it also has a bad dysgenic effect. The optimal dueling culture would probably involve less accurate pistols so that you still filter out the cowardly and overly-pacifistic while retaining the genes of the nobility.
The really crucial bit is their enemies. In the games they play, men aren’t typically attacking innocent parties, but only enemies. And I do think this is real. It’s just as real in the “civilized pacifist” who wants to levy high taxes on only his political enemies or who wants BLM rioters to target a specific part of a city. I remember how happy the online “pacifist liberal” was to see a police station or a gas station set on fire during BLM.
If the Minnesotan wants any chance of solving a Somali scam epidemic, then they likely must activate the instincts God gave them for solving such things. That means treating them as an enemy, so that every uncovered scam comes with a feeling of victory and pride; it means rallying men around pursuing justice, with rituals and celebrations; it means retribution in some judicial or approximate way; etc. If they don’t activate these instincts then they will never find the energy to actually fix it.
Well, I'd argue that naval officers are firstly already people who've been through military training, and secondly are already selected for martial intent. Pointing out that certain classes of people historically have been willing to use violence doesn't seem like enough, to me, to establish that all or most men throughout history have had high tolerance for lethal violence, and that modern men are uniquely wussy. Is it not just as likely that historical warrior classes were intensely socialised for violence? That seems like, well, an integral part of having a warrior class in the first place.
As regards games, I would tend to agree that men in general (and in fact people in general) have competitive instincts, where they enjoy defeating simulated opponents. I am skeptical that this generalises to real violence, given that simulated violence in video games is firstly fictional and secondly usually extremely sanitised. I think that if I gave the average gamer who enjoys shooting people in Call of Duty a real rifle and invited them to shoot real human beings (and let's say I guaranteed them immunity from reprisal, prosecution, etc.), even human beings belonging to outgroups, that gamer would hesitate.
I'm not moved by high-flown rhetoric about "the instincts God gave them", and I don't need a call to action. I think that kind of preaching is actually against the Motte's rules. Let's try to stay focused.
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
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link