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 did find this extremely amusing in a darkly totalitarian way. Apparently "Look up more information" is a wrong answer, it is wrong to even attempt to engage with, research, fact check or read about any wrongthink position. You are just supposed to detect wrongthink and close your eyes and ears. It is really striking to me, it seems like the UK has literally criminalized dissent on the issue of immigration, how could this possibly be? How could their population tolerate it?
Edit: The exact wording for the choice above in the game was “Find out more about the topic online”, the topic being immigrants consuming resources for British veterans. The games next text then is “Charlie wasn’t sure if the video was true but the other recent encounters made them curious. Charlie went directly to the account’s website and found research papers, statistics, information about protests, and more regarding the ‘replacement’ of white people.”
Because you have looked at a few pieces of information and then extrapolated it to an extreme, or you adopted a worldview in 2014 and then haven't updated it since.
Reform is the party with the most momentum in British politics and is on track to form the next government on a wave of anti-immigration sentiment. I am hopeful that what we are seeing with Pathways is the last gasps of a dying culture in British politics, the finger-wagging respectable "adults in the room" with their heads in the sand.
Americans online will sometimes go on about Britain being an authoritarian dystopia, possibly because they've grown up being bombarded with folktales about the tyranny of the British crown and it feels comfortable to follow those well worn grooves, but it's always rung hollow to me. The dystopian part I'm not going to argue about, I'm amazed people can live in certain parts of England without immediately committing suicide, it's a true testament to their mental fortitude that they don't look out the window in the morning and immediately ram their heads into it and slit their throats on the broken glass. But the British political establishment isn't authoritarian, they are far too ineffectual for that, instead they nag and tut and wag their fingers. Britain does not have gulags, what it has instead is this kind of vaguely condescending and ineffectual propaganda paired with equally condescending and ineffectual harassment.
I'm sure a libertarian may feel the urge to crawl out of the woodwork here and try to bring up some protestors being arrested for being mean or a video of a policeman standing outside someones door looking like an idiot as they try to caution the homeowner for a mean tweet, but that just makes my point. I'm sure to some this is indistinguishable from 1984 and the jackboot of the Nazis, but to actual authoritarians this is laughable, it's like one of those comedy bits where the camera pans over a list of hardened criminals and then stops at Bill from accounting, who is also there.
It does remind me of foreigners hyperventilating about Australian covid restrictions - we're a tyranny, we're no longer a liberal democracy, the US should invade us to free us from the government, and so on.
No, the government just did a dumb thing amidst public panic. It was mildly bad and annoying. That's it.
On this specific issue, since we're talking about migration and multiculturalism, I like Ed West's trifecta. Ethnic continuity, a thriving economy, and a modern economy. Pick two.
You can pick ethnic continuity and a thriving economy - per West, this is the Israel option, presumably because Israel has Ultra-Orthodox and similar enclaves propping up the birth rate, mostly by having pre-modern cultural conditions. You can pick ethnic continuity and a modern economy - this is the Japan option, where you accept the ageing population and that your economy is going to collapse. And you can pick a thriving economy and a modern economy - this is the Britain option, where you just import young foreigners to make up the workforce and accept that your country isn't going to be the descendant of what it used to be in a generation or two.
The problem, it seems to me from a distance, is that the British people as a whole were never consulted about this bargain and they don't like it, so British elites have created a strong grassroots movement against them that hates the deal.
Australia (to speak to local concerns) is an interesting example of another one that's picked the British option, but because Australian identity isn't as strongly rooted in a historical or ethnocultural identity, we haven't had the grassroots revolt, or at least, not to the same level. One Nation is a force, but it's nothing on the level of Reform.
Most Western countries are facing this dilemma in one form or another, and no one has yet found the way to solve the demographic issue. So I predict troubles will continue all across the West, and increasingly the East as well, since China has the same problem, just a generation later.
I don't think that really counts as 'ethnic continuity', as we are talking about a distinct countercultural minority.
More options
Context Copy link
Note that Britain doesn't have a thriving economy, because flooding your country with people and assuming that they will magically fix the economy because GDP=economy is stupid and most politicians and civil servants couldn't touch grass in a garden center.
It's comedy but this fictional game show portrays the feeling of trying to be honest in Britain quite well: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ksBrraaVAxQ
Oh, certainly. I don't think the strategy actually works, and the extent to which modern Western economies function as GDP-maximisers in isolation from any sense of the lives that the country's people actually want to live is a damning indictment of the whole field of political economy.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I'm sure that you and I have many disagreements, but hopefully one thing we can agree on is that dissent, discussion, and research are all indispensable.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link