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 -
Once again, the institution of marriage was solving some pernicious coordination problems (women don't want to get pumped and dumped and left preggers, men want to to have sexual access to women who are virgins or as close to it as possible, neither can truly verify the intentions of the other) so for COMPLETELY SECULAR REASONS its very very useful to have "abstinence until marriage" as a strong norm and "'til death do us part'" as an 'enforceable' obligation.
There's a lot of other obligations that we tie up in there that trip people up, to say nothing of the obligations to the children that emerge.
But
A) You can't really construct a piecemeal version of this and expect it to work. and
B) You need some severe punishment for breaching the covenant to really make it stick. Religious folks have fear of their God as a factor, I don't know what we can impose on nonbelievers (short of a death sentence) that will keep them in line, even against their baser instincts.
Any secular punishments we create can likely be circumvented by clever/powerful enough actors.
India seems to have a pretty strong taboo on dating and marriage solely from a secular framework. There's very little religous shame about it more family honor and intense cultural and patriarchal enforcment.
East Asia in general also has this. But on a much lesser level. Having a few relationships before marriage is ok but Westerns style serial/casual dating is rather scandalous and not common.
However, the highest levels of both India and East Asia are becoming more westernized so it's possible that like many things the Western model will prevail because the West is seen as enviable and high status.
More options
Context Copy link
Doesn't help that of you make a diagram of the carve outs vs the actual events the average evangelical person makes for divorce, cheating, etc etc;
what you end up with is a circle. All divorce is wrong and bad, except for my divorce which was justified. And his divorce, he was in a different place in life than she was! And her divorce, she fell out of love with him!
It's like, Bitch! It said till death do us part, not till mild inconvenience do we cling together! There are +/- 30% divorces in my church, much higher than in my hobby wargame group of mainly autistic mainly communists. Probably the autism doing the heavy lifting there, though.
The nasty thing is once someone decides they want a divorce, they can go about trying to create the conditions to justify it (to others) and to make the other party feel it is the only option.
With my own breakup, I realized the meta issue: its not just that someone doesn't want to be with you, but they no longer want to want to be with you. Like, some people have a full switch flip and not only don't desire the other person, but have no residual memory of desiring them? Feelings just gone without a trace.
Whereas me, if I was feeling like I was falling out of love or feeling disgust for a partner, that triggers an alarm for me. "I want to make this work, so what can I do to address my own feelings."
Quitting easily is not in my personality makeup, for better or worse.
It's a problem.
On account of the aforementioned autism, I had similar issues where it was like "I don't like this but upon the first splitting of the check we entered into a sacred contract to just shovel a mile of shit every day" and I had to train myself into "No actually, the sacred contract comes later, dip out now before it's too late!"
Oof, I also know that feeling.
Learning to to 'gracefully' (but rapidly) extricate yourself from unhealthy situations once you realize where you're at is an important skill, rather than letting sunk costs dictate your actions.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
As a side note, I have contact with a lot of religious types and putting aside threats of divine punishment, what these groups do is they heap social status on couples that get married and stay married. The flip side of this, of course, is that it's shameful to be long-term single, or even worse, a single mom.
India tends to do this on a secular level.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
It seems to me that there are two nodes for human sexuality.
Going full chimpanzee "Death do us part except for cheating [oppresses and protects men and women equally], all sex is rape, woman must marry rapist, woman must be virgin if still living at home [protects father's property rights]" is stable. (Yes, the enforcement for deviation from this procedure was death, but enforcement for everything in the ancient world was death. Personnel were cheap back then.)
(The all sex is rape + woman must marry rapist requires a bunch of unpacking: technically speaking, it doesn't prohibit casual sex, but gives the woman the means to invoke a shotgun wedding if she becomes pregnant. It also draws a stated distinction where a woman was assumed, and not assumed, to have cried rape by default- which protects the man.)
Going full bonobo "No STDs or pregnancy and everyone fucks like rabbits, marriage is for life (even including adultery) and carries sexual/financial obligations for both parties, single motherhood very institutionally difficult" is also stable.
Law must protect and bind men and women equally. Right now, it only binds men; 100 years ago, it only bound women. (To a point, modern problems are caused by women taking revenge for this bondage against their sons.)
Well, there's an inherent inequality in that its really only men who can truly enforce the law (sans that threat of eternal damnation from an all-powerful God), so it would be harder to maintain that sort of equality if men didn't want to be bound by it.
We can refactor the question to be basically "how can we convince men to accept strong limits on their sexual freedom (i.e., stop using their physical prowess to secure sex) when their baser instincts would prefer more of a free-for-all? AND convince them to actively police each other?"
For me, it is easy. I believe that the second, third, and beyond order effects of enforced monogamy are self-evidently worth it: we get to have a civilization with internet, running water, and a functioning air travel system. Eventually space travel.
But a guy who finds himself near the top of the hierarchy, he might be well aware that he could vastly increase the variety of his sexual partners if he defects... and he reasonably believes he has sufficient power to get away with it. And a biological imperative to spread his genes to boot.
Guys at the bottom also have reason to defect, but rarely the capacity.
So refactoring it further: "How can we convince elite males who could improve their own position by defecting (whilst destroying the game for everyone else) to accept limits on their sexual freedom and thus their genetic success when other humans have limited ability to even police them?"
I don't have a good answer to this that isn't "Convince these elite males that there's an even higher power that sees all their actions and declares which actions will be punished. And punished VASTLY dis-proportionally, to boot."
We start to slide back towards my classic Skin in the Game screed. Elites need to suffer for misbehavior too.
The story of Henry resonated with a lot of readers of Radicalizing the Romanceless, so I am not certain that this is the case. The top and bottom seem capable of defection for different reasons but the middle of the hierarchy get made into chumps.
Guys at the bottom defect by not making an effort to turn into eligible husband candidates, because it's only marginally rewarded or even feasible. This is not a bit less of a social defection than that of certain elite males but it only has social consequences long-term and invites less attention, so it's easy to assume that it doesn't matter or that it's not happening at all. Indeed it's the men in the middle who have the least reasons to defect.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I am doubtful that the elite males were ever convinced to a significant degree that God existed, or at least that He would punish them for taking many mistresses, specifically. Certainly all the commandments against not murdering and such were treated as nothing but a polite suggestion, judging by the stories of power struggles around thrones.
What did hold elite males back was that older societies were less atomized, and their escapades were more likely to be known, fueling regular, non-supernatural consequences against them such as their brother getting angry and leading a coup.
Maybe it's the people who should be willing to punish elites, vastly disproportionately. At least for as long as the elites have names and addresses and can't murder us all with drone swarms.
Yes, but that's another doozy of a coordination problem.
I've sometimes thought about actively attempting to rally disaffected young males who are otherwise prone to wasting their lives on video games and porn and helping them acquire training, purpose, and power, to use towards demanding better treatment for males across the board and, ultimately, to punish the worst malefactors who oversaw the current decline.
Which, yes, looks very much like a paramilitary force if you squint, and so I wouldn't be surprised if I got assassinated before it hit any critical mass.
(Gavin McInnes tried this approach with the Proud Boys, and it really got away from him)
I think that is easily disrupted by, e.g. the Andrew Tate grift, where some guy who can convince men that he knows shortcuts to getting wealth and pussy and wrings all the money and enthusiasm out of them by having them chase superficial goals.
I've given up hope that 'the people' will enforce accountability, sans the rise of some Napoleonic (Trumpian? Messianic?) figure who can represent them and guide them strategically to advance a righteous goal on behalf of the whole.
And I won't ever pretend to be that kind of guy.
If we treated adultery and dumping the wife and mother of your children for some young hottie the way elites are policed about racism that would certainly keep elite males in check. IDK how we could create that sort of taboo but it's definitely doable.
Its somewhat of a Catch-22 because if it were simple to police 'Elite' males' behavior, they wouldn't really be 'elite.'
But yes.
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