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 -
An influencer couple announced that they aborted their pregnancy because the fetus had Down syndrome. This upset a lot of people including some fine congressmen.
However, it's actually very common. Screening for genetic disorders is generally performed between 10 and 20 weeks, giving plenty of time for a reasonably early choice. "As a result of these elective terminations in the U.S., there was a 37% reduction in the numbers of babies with Down syndrome born in 2018. This means that in recent years there were 37% fewer babies with Down syndrome than could have been born". In Iceland, almost all such diagnosed pregnancies are aborted after testing.
People with Down syndrome are clearly generally capable of living "happy" lives. They have the equivalent intelligence of an 8 to 9 year old. Most 8 to 9 year olds seem happy enough to me, and it would not be a horrible curse to live decades in such a condition. Perhaps we might ask if such a life is fulfilling, but a young child can't comprehend what that means; as well ask your dog if he's fulfilled by sniffing butts and digging holes.
For the caretakers of course, life may not be so rosy. Taking care of a small child indefinitely, knowing all of the joys and sorrows of adulthood that they will never experience, does not sound fulfilling, to say nothing of the physical and monetary toll. It's therefore unsurprising that most parents choose not to condemn themselves to such a future.
God in His infinite wisdom creates babies with far worse afflictions. Most people would agree that it is ethical, perhaps mandatory, to abort nonviable children who will live only hours in agonizing pain after birth. Down syndrome, as a patently survivable condition, lies on the edge of this boundary.
This is a pretty interesting debate as it demonstrates a real fracture point between the "alt-right" NRx folk (such that still exist) and the "trads" who might otherwise be allies of convenience. We can joke about 13/52 and find common ground on e.g., the execution of rapists, murderers, and child molesters; plausibly agree on the utility of racial profiling, nativism and remigration, and broadly reject blank slatism in all its forms -- but god forbid (and, I suppose, God forbids) we proactively prune a few fetuses with extra chromosomes.
The religious right will, of course, construct their Jenga tower of cope re: why their ideology doesn't immediately collapse back down into leftist slave morality, but ultimately, they protect them because they are pitiful, and that is indistinguishable from progressivism. I have no faith that these "allies" would be willing to bar the gates and sink the ships in a Camp of the Saints-style dystopia; it's all just LARP.
Isn't this just generic "boo outgroup"?
It seems to me that the religious right take a very consistent position on this - it is wrong to kill an innocent person. If the alt-right carve out exceptions, like it's okay to kill pre-natal people, or it's okay to kill people with genetic disorders, or even (implicitly?) it's okay to kill people who are genetically inferior in some other sense, well, they're the ones who would seem to need to justify the inconsistency.
The true religious right, the socially conservative right, has a principle. Do not commit murder. They have stated that principle openly for a long time. For the small, historically new or young group of weirdos constituting the alt-right, or neoreaction, to accuse the conservative right of 'LARP' or of being 'leftists' is surely absurd.
If anything I think the religious right could more plausibly argue that it's the alt-right, as you describe them, who are pseudo-leftists. If you're going to accuse the religious right of being 'leftists' because they're anti-eugenics, I think they're just as much at liberty to say that you're leftist because you're pro-eugenics, and eugenics was obviously a progressive movement going all the way back to the late 19th century.
Do the alt-right agree that "pre-natal people" are a thing, to begin with? The maximalist pro-abortion position does not seem any less consistent to me (as someone who holds it): something that does not have a record of autonomous human experience does not count as a "person", and if anything is wrong with killing it, it's not in the same category as what is wrong with killing people. (I can see an argument for not pulling the plug on the braindead from the perspective of "surviving relatives have sentimental attachment to the body" only.)
(Incidentally, I've been wondering, is there a literalist Biblical case in Christianity for the personhood of fetuses, or is this something that has been coloured in retroactively by modern analysis/apologetics "through a Christian lens"?)
I think there's a great case to be made that Christianity and Leftism are closely related, which only rubs people the wrong way because in the US the majority of those who identify with the respective movements have evolved to be mutually disgusted tribal archenemies. It seems kind of like what happens when you point out to modern Greeks all the ways in which their culture, genetics and language have been influenced by the Turks.
Alt-righters, whose LARP of choice more often than not is some sort of BAP-style Classical elitism, seem to be one group that definitively has the right to call Christians "left-wing", because the thing they are LARPing in doing so (Classical Antiquity) was overturned by Christianity with a memetic package that through a modern lens very much parses as such.
Once you're committed to believing in a category "human person, thus it's wrong to kill them," the difficulty lies not in finding reasons to exclude somebody from the category, but in finding a consistent reason why anybody deserves inclusion.
For instance, let's say that a very wealthy and powerful person, perhaps Hillary Clinton, pities some alt-righters and is pretty sure their lives aren't worth living by comparison with her much more comfortable and fulfilled existence. She finds that their deplorable presence is a constant political burden that makes her life dramatically worse. One might even say it ruins her life, given that she has been forced to spend her entire life fighting their plans!
Hillary Clinton is certainly more able to fund a skilled hitman to take out BAP, or you, than the reverse. Yet you say it would be immoral because you and he have "autonomous human experience"? In what sense are you fully "autonomous," living in a nation where she pays much higher taxes? And even if you/he are, how could you explain to Hillary (non-theistically) that your autonomous experience means it's wrong of her to kill you, even if you're ruining her life?
The difference between fetuses and adults is not that fetuses have lives less worth living, it is that they are very different looking organisms and it’s not at all obvious to people that don’t believe in souls being delivered at the moment that the sperm burrows into the egg that fetuses are people. That’s the thing you need to engage with. Some people might be arguing that it is permissible to “put people out of their misery” if they have lives which don’t seem worth living, but this is a much more fringe position than people who just think fetuses are not people.
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