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 -
There are other factors in play beyond the cycle. The ironman of this argument isn't really talking about barbarians from bumfuckistan being supermen who conquer everything. There's a weakman that does, but the ironman is Secular Cycles; approximately every 300 years (maybe less more recently), regional hegemons have periods of weakness due to internal conflict*, which may or may not utterly destroy them. Rome had roughly four cycles (the Kingdom, Republic, Principate and Dominate) and it pulled through the first three crises (including the civil wars of the Triumvirates at the end of the Republic, and the Crisis of the Third Century at the end of the Principate) bruised but intact.
The prediction of this ironman is not that Afghanistan will conquer the USA; it's that the USA is going to suffer internal unrest - most centrally, a civil war - which will knock it out of hegemon status and greatly reduce the power it can exert internationally (and mean very-bad times for its citizens). To some extent (though far from fully), this has already happened; I'm not confident the full civil war will actually happen, but one of the main ways I can see that it wouldn't is if the lower-level stumbling is enough to trigger WWIII (with approximately-equally-devastating consequences for those living in the USA).
Do note also that the strength of a great power is not maximised in the "Hard Times, Strong Men" phase. It's maximised in the (much longer) "Strong Men, Good Times" phase - the obvious current example being the PRC, which did have hard times in the first half of the twentieth century.
*As I said in a previous post:
To put it another way, lack of external threats eventually leads people to start competing internally rather than presenting a united front; notably, this takes longer than a human lifetime because virtuous traditions can be passed on for some time, but eventually you wind up with extractive elements (current Western examples would include social media platforms, the related advertising industry and to some extent the finance industry) and internal political division (the Blue Tribe and Red Tribe hate each other more than they hate external threats like the PRC and Russia) - the latter exacerbated by the former. Eventually everything falls through, reality reasserts itself, the extractive elements either starve or get executed, the political divisions end one way or another, and the cycle starts over.
More options
Context Copy link