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 -
Part of what Nineteen Eighty-Four shows is that the Party spends far more time monitoring its own members than it does monitoring the proles. You don't see the internal politics of the Inner Party "on-screen" (O'Brien is the only Inner Party member we see, and for the first two thirds of the book he is putting on an act to entrap Winston Smith - in particular we know that the telescreen was still recording while "turned off"), so you don't know how the Inner Party monitor each other. But a large part of the book is about how the Inner Party manage the Outer Party (through constant surveillance and loyalty testing) vs the proles (with bread and circuses on one hand and exaggerated foreign and domestic threats on the other).
"The Book" (in-universe title "The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism") purports to be written by Emmanuel Goldstein, the leader of the clandestine opposition, but Winston Smith gets it from O'Brien so we don't know who actually wrote it. It functions as an author tract describing the nature of the Party regime, although it is of dubious reliability as a factual description of Oceanian politics. "The Book" says that ambitious, able and demonstrably loyal (with a subtle hint that part of demonstrable loyalty is being an unprincipled sadist) Outer Party members can join the Inner Party by competitive examination, but that most ambitious Outer Party members get wiped out by the Thought Police. Most, but not all, Inner Party members are children of Inner Party members, although this isn't official policy and the authors of "The Book" think that it isn't unofficial Party policy either, just normal nepotism. "The Book" also says nothing about the internal politics of the Inner Party, and is ambiguous about whether Big Brother is actually real (Stalin's dictatorship) or not (Breznhevian oligarchy).
More options
Context Copy link