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've been really thinking about this tweet.
This point is interesting, and I think rather noteworthy. There were many protests over the Vietnam conscription, Muhammad Ali's being the most famous example, so perhaps saying no backlash at all is a bit hastey. And who could forget our poor friends in Ukraine.
Still, I think she raises an interesting point. Most men still, (both legally and socially). Have to abide by the traditional man script. And this pressure is more on them then womens end of the social contract, which (from what I can see) is basically non existent.
Now the easiest explanation for this double standard is probably just gender bias: we simply have less empathy for men as a whole.
The way I see it, there are a couple of plausible solutions to make things for fair or consistent(any additional ones are welcome):
Gender "Equality". Extend "bodily autonomy" rights (for those who are actually consistent and believe in the concept, as a side note, I believe this is just a silly excuse) to men and end the draft, eliminate male disposability. Both men and women ask each other out. Stop valueing men as pure economic units. Men aren't wallets or soldiers, their people! Ect. Basically "Masculism" or some variation of MRA movement.
Extend the social contract obligations to women, and all that entails. Basically bring back some (or all) of the "patriarchy".
From what I can tell, 1 has kinda been tried, and has basically failed, probably due to the gender bias mentioned. I imagine Lauren favors the 2nd option, (& I kinda do). Implementing it may be unrealistic, however, due to various political and environmental constraints. I think realistically though, we are probably gonna have take a hard examination at the female end of the social contract at some-point, when birth rates and their implications become more severe and un-ignorable. Maybe we get lucky technology bails us out, but fundementally, I find the prospect of a society with no children, no families, etc, to be deeply dystopian.
I think one thing conscription shows (and the fact that many societies have it) is that, no society really wants to cease to exist. Nor should we. There is something valuable about societies existing, and continuing on into the future, even if we have to make some sacrifices for it. I think one can make a case (and many indeed do!) for extending some modified version of the social contract/roles to women. I've been deep thought about if societies might attempt this in the future, or what a modified variation of feminine roles/obilgations would look like. What do you think?
The main ethical difference I can see between conscription and 'forced' childrearing is the immediacy of the consequences and the duration of the commitment.
If a nation is faced with an invading force or a war over critical resources and can't front enough manpower into the fight, they will very likely cease to exist. So the country, or perhaps the state the governs it, if it considers preservation of its people a priority, has a strong basis for forcibly recruiting men if there's insufficient volunteers. "If we don't make you fight, then we're all going to die."
By comparison, if women start abandoning or delaying the childbearing role, there's no immediate danger, you won't even feel the pinch for decades. There's no enemy that will march over you in the end. And likewise, conscripting them doesn't mean sending them to a distant battlefield to fight on a frontline. They would continue to exist in your society, living fairly normal lives for the 20+ years it takes to raise all those kids.
Plus, the Faustian bargain it presents has some upsides: more women in the workforce means more economic productivity, and more money to spend on luxuries. And hell, fold sexual revolution into the deal and you get more sex for pleasure, with fewer duties tied to it, and able to optimize the activity for things other than procreation.
By the time anyone asks "wait, who is raising the next generation to carry us into the future" you've already reconfigured your whole economy around other pursuits.
So there's a legitimate question: if the threat is not immediate, at what point are you actually justified in pressing women into service? How dire must things appear? How much foresight are you allowed to use?
And something small to consider: if some men will go to pretty serious lengths to get out of a draft, what might women do to render themselves ineligible as brood mares?
As I pointed out with my comment, there's also a big question of convincing people the threat even exists to begin with. Right now more Americans believe the opposite is true and that overpopulation is a larger threat than low birth rates. Large amounts of people fundamentally believe in a limited amount of wealth and resources in society and that having more people just cuts into their own share. Even conservatives (who are more sided towards birth rates being an issue but still 40% believe in overpopulation more) do it when they complain about immigrants "taking jobs", so I'm pretty sure this divide is just because birth rates has become memetic among parts of the online right and not reflecting a deeper view about growing the pie.
Meaning even if you convince society to press women into some sort of top down birthing related authoritarianism, it's likely going to be getting them into having even less kids.
"Even conservatives (who are more sided towards birth rates being an issue but still 40% believe in overpopulation more) do it when they complain about immigrants "taking jobs""
This seems very obviously false. Do you actually believe this? That conservatives who complain about immigrants taking jobs are concerned about sharing a fixed pie with more people rather than with immigrants who will do jobs for less money forcing the price of labour down. I'm far from a conservative, but I've heard the second plenty (from people on both sides) and never, even once, heard the first.
office-theyre-the-same-picture.jpg
The price of labor will be forced down if the pie is fixed. If the pie is growing and immigrants are adding more jobs as well as more goods and services, it means that wages throughout the economy offer more buying power.
They're really not the same.
We have zero sum and non-zero sum relationships with everyone. Simplifying from a nation to a single company as an example:
Everyone from the owner down to janitor have a shared stake in the company staying solvent, but there are non zero sum relationships too. The owner would like to pay the janitor the smallest amount that still gets his floors cleaned and toilets unblocked. Part of the janitor's bargaining power is that while he won't work for a peanut, no one else will either. If the owner can pull some strings and get access to a bunch of workers who will work for a peanut then the janitor had better either accept the peanut or be out off a job. They are aligned in some ways, but not in others. This is true no matter how much value the new cheap workers add to the company or how much of the savings could potentially be passed on to the consumer.
If we dismiss the janitor's complaints as a dumb yokel failing to understand that immigrants are adding to the economy and increasing his buying power, we're the ones not understanding the whole picture.
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