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 is not always a long arc of morality.
So this article is interesting, but the pessimist in me cant help but think that this is "wrong" in the long run.
Im not a fan of progressives by any means. I'm sure many here are not either but i also think that we must look reality straight in the face: Most conservative positions (Id argue at least 65% ) lose in the long run. Primarily due to demographic shifts. Primarily in age cohorts, but we cant be naive that race is likely playing a factor as well.
One example he takes that is in my opinion, quite poor, is Abortion. First and foremost, there have only been 3 states that have been to defend the pro-life position successfully at the ballot box recently, Florida (only be a 60% technicality), South Dakota, and Nebraska respectively. Many deeply red states have voted for the practice (Kansas, Kentucky, etc). And lets not forget the fact that there are 5 states in the union including DC, that have 0 gestational limits, and attempts to add limits failed in Colorado and New Mexico. This an extremist position by western standards, in is not law in the majority of the world.
This one particularly bothers me, because of how fucking disgusting and twisted many of these doctors who do these later terminations are, the fact that states protect them, and the fact that the mainstream media & democrats lie about them taking place on healthy children and mothers.
The pew research link ive sighted above also reveals that many among Gen Z support some level of gender ideology (well, surprisingly, most still think that gender is determined at birth) But id probably bet money that this could be shifted as well.
Lets all face the music, Conservative America is simply going the way of the dinosaurs. We have a declining birth rate, religiosity is going down the toilet, marriage rates are going down toilet. Same thing with "patriotism". I would love to optimistic here, but i simply don't see it. America is becoming a more progressive society, like it or not. While i don't think this is "Inevitable"... I also see no way it could be practically prevented. It just seems like historically and currently, winning the public over and tilting the overton window rightward is just really difficult.
But hey, who knows, maybe im wrong, and 50 years from now, we will be laughing at the idea of multiple genders, mass immigration, or secularism.
I have good news for you!
Nah. Religiosity seems to be leveling off and irreligiosity is holding steady or dropping. You flagged an article from 2019 on changing support for gay rights, but later studies are showing that the popularity of gay marriage may have peaked and its decline is driven by young Americans. And in Conservative America, the number of children is growing, driven by higher birth rates and the migration of families to Red States in the post-COVID timeframe. The highly religious have many more children than the irreligious, near replacement, and non-denominational/Pentecostal Christian denominations (who tend towards political conservativism) are likely to continue growing given current trends.
I don't think we should extrapolate wildly and irresponsibly from current trends now any more than we should have in 2010, or that things are all gravvy (for Americans writ large, or conservative Americans, or religious Americans, or what have you) but Conservative America is very far from dead, and is arguably the part of America that is furthest from dead.
Evangelicals have high birth rates, but also low retention rates into adulthood.
Gays have lower fertility than straights, so surely we will have no gays at all within a few generations!
More options
Context Copy link
Minor correction- thé highly religious have a replacement birth rate. Secular conservatives have near replacement.
Red tribe spaces like bass pro shop are full of kids. Parents of young children are like R+20. A crude correlate between birthrate and county vote share gives counties above 80% Republican as the threshold for replacement. There are two large American cohorts that are mostly replacing themselves- republicans and Hispanics.
White liberals, on the other hand, have a birthrate like Asians do.
Awesome. The source I grabbed had the number bouncing around a bit, but it's also a few years out of date.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The long arc of morality doesn't mean for every topic, but in general progressive movements do tend to win out over more conservative ones. They win out so strong that you don't even think about it much anymore, at least for these examples of the US.
Women wear pants and show skin above the knee, they work in leadership roles, and marital rape is illegal nationwide.
Universal suffrage is the default of democracy around the world now, even the pretend democracies of Russia or North Korea often act as if everyone can meaningfully vote instead of just property owners.
Left handed people are not only left unbeaten, but left handed products are readily available to buy for anyone who needs them.
Barely anyone cares about interracial marriage or gay marriage anymore. There is a small movement to try to shift the needle but it's not mainstream.
Tattoos are now widely accepted (within reason) and tons of people have them without much societal pushback or shame anymore.
The Catholics are just considered a normal form of Christianity now (our VP is a Catholic even!) Jews/Italians/Irish/etc are now considered an ordinary form of white instead of as foreign criminals and scum. Most blue laws go essentially unenforced nowadays, with alcohol as the only meaningful vestigial exception in some states.
Casual clothing is now commonplace in many work environments, with people even wearing branded tshirts and the like.
Jazz/rock/hip-hop/metal/etc are just considered normal forms of music instead of the work of Satan corrupting our kids.
There are a ton of things like this, victories that are either so absolute no one even considers going back (like women in pants, oppressing the Irish, or opposing rock music) or have opposition that is niche and opposed even within "traditional values" groups.
It's the same way the comment before me pointed out, even religion has changed. They're more accepting that the earth is round, heliocentrism, that germ theory exists, that changelings and witches aren't commonplace in the world. Many religions are even accepting of (or at least softer in opposing) the ideas of evolution and the earth being billions of years old. Many believe in no fault divorce, Trump himself has been married three times. And like the other example I gave above, left handed people aren't oppressed. We have a Republican presidency where one of the main advisors and figures in it (Elon Musk) was an unashamed fornicator who barely disguises his atheism, and no one cared. The average American Christian today is a sinful heretic to someone a thousand years ago.
So, the mother of all Texas Sharpshooter Fallacies?
Where's the Free Love that was as or more popular in progressive circles in the 1960s than full racial equality?
More options
Context Copy link
I think it's important to remember, when assessing this, that it's easy to skip over progressive defeats, because what's "progressive" is measured by what is progressive today and not what was always considered progressive. Few people remember to count temperance or eugenics or removing the age of consent when evaluating the progressive k/d ratio because those ideas lost out and quickly became no longer progressive.
More options
Context Copy link
This is an interesting trend in history, but i think another way to look at it is why its happening, and why certain societies and not others?
First and foremost, this doesn't seem to follow geo politically. It seems to be a phenomenon that's unique to specific societies, like the US, and this "progress" is not uniform nor takes place everywhere.
Most of east Asia is much more "racist" & "sexist" than the west. China is insanely oppressive and controlling, they are not democratic in the slightest. Out of wedlock births are few and are stigmatized in those societies, they do not allow gay marriage.
Ukraine is currently "losing" its war with Russia.
What would be the morally correct position on the Israel-Palestine conflict? Can we say that history is bending towards Palestine, Israel, or a 2 state solution?
The Taliban taking over in Afghanistan.
There is a loss of privacy & general alienation that comes with modern technology.
Why does this only happen in certain countries and not others? If its about morality, why is history permiting some "immorality" in some places and not others. What makes progressives such a cultural power house in the states?
It’s due to the nature of social progress and western responses. De Maistre defined how the revolution would be defeated 200 years ago; not through a revolution against, the Orleanist solution that failed not only in France but with Franco’s shogunate and which is at least unsuccessful in Iran, but through the opposite of a revolution, adaptatory and distributed change which coalesces into its own antithesis in a reverse dialectic, gradually restoring the civilization of the west.
The western right by and large does not realize this, and does not realize how to do this; this despite the distributists completing the system of de Maistre’s counter-revolution in an inculturated form nearly a century ago. In east Asia, things are different, as the embedded Confucianism of these societies naturally generates its own antithesis to revolution, resultant in the dialectic restoring their tradition passively. But we’re talking about the west, here, where Confucius is a strange foreign import of made up wisdom to sell fortune cookies. Things are different, and that’s ok.
What can you do? You can join real traditional communities and contribute to rebuilding functional villages which, by their very nature, will seek to confederate, turning into a standardization feedback loop that rebuilds a healthy society over the centuries. Quick and cheap doesn’t work; neither right wing Leninist vanguard parties nor neo-orleanism can push the process through, although political accommodationism to this societal rebuilding is probably a good thing.
More options
Context Copy link
I'd say it's taking place in most places. Outside of like the hardest of Muslim countries, women wearing pants and showing skin is basically the default now. Things like rock music/hip-hop/etc are listened to around the world. A lot of the examples I gave apply worldwide. Not every country is going to have equal "progress" on everything. That Japan still widely shuns tattoos in a way the US doesn't anymore, does not mean they aren't still warming up to them and becoming more lax on the topic.
It's true they don't allow gay marriage, but that's not the only thing related to homosexuality to begin with. They decriminalized it a few decades ago for instance. And polling seems to suggest same sex marriage is also getting more widely accepted too.
So even this is still changed in a way that just a few decades ago would be considered insanely subversive in China.
That Ukraine has been able to put up this incredible fight against Russia, long considered one of the world's superpowers that was in intense competition with the US, for years on end is by itself an accomplishment is it not? I remember how it was expected Kyiv would fall in days.
Again, that it doesn't apply to every conflict and country at all times equally doesn't stop it being generally true that things are a lot more "progressive" than the past on a lot of different topics worldwide.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
It depends how you define "morality" and "winning" in the long terms. Many causes marched towards to victory, and few of these victories looked as the founders of movement would imagine triumph.
If, for example, first century Christian fell asleep for 1000 years and woke up in 11th century, what would he think? He would be dismayed that Jesus hadn't returned yet, and he would be even more revolted by this barbarian world that reveres Jesus by worshipping golden idols and sheds rivers of blood in his name.
He would see history of this thousand years as complete triumph of satan and possibly started to question his whole faith.
The same with more modern examples. What would communist from 1926 think about world of 2026? He would see it as maximally degenerate and depraved world where capitalism won in the most decisive way possible and stomped the workers of the world to the dirt.
A fascinating difference in standards between the to worldviews you're using here. If you asked for a description of "capitalism stomping the workers of the world to the dirt", would a 1926 communist describe a world where hunger essentially isn't a concern, the common man having access to healthcare that was beyond the reach of emperors at the time, yada, yada, yada? Don't get me wrong, I have lots of problems with modern capitalism, but the idea that early Christians would find be revolted by 11th century, but OG, materialism-obsessed, communists would think anything other than that they must have died and gone to heaven upon seeing the modern world, is a bit rich.
Were those 1926 communists true believers in fixing the plight of the common worker or were those causes instrumental memes to get the masses on his side. Because if they were anything like the modern champagne socialists they wouldn't be. They pay lip service to the workers of the world even as they hate everything about them.
More options
Context Copy link
After 100 years of scientific and technological progress, the workers are not starving any more, how great!
You mistake communism for trade unionism.
Communism was never about higher pay and longer lunch breaks for proletarians, and it was ever less about wokeness and LGBTQ+. It was about building new world, world free of all oppression and exploitation, world where man in brother to man, not wolf. This is what communists believed in, this is what they were dying and killing for.
(to quote famous post-Soviet "We tried the best, happened as usual")
Here is one very rare piece of history - interview with last pre-WW2 German Jewish communist (the ultimate devil for many ppl out there). The hypothetical man IRL.
“A Communist Doesn’t Whine — He Shows His Teeth”
Most of the interview is about the vanished world of interwar Europe, but here is how he feels about modernity.
TL;DR: He does not think 62 different brands of toilet paper in every supermarket equal paradise on earth.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link