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 -
Our struggle with China is racial
There are aspects of human civilization which would, with enough time be understood and adapted by any sexually reproducing species of sufficient intelligence, simply because they are instrumentally valuable with regards to the instincts that all biologically similar animals share. Animal likes food too. Animal likes sex too. Animal plays games too. Animal fights enemies and wages war for resources too. Many animals beat few animals, so animals have incentives to form alliance structures or be outcompeted and exterminated. Yet wouldn't it be surprising if they valued the same things, or felt the same ways, where instrumental necessities didn't require it? Shouldn't we then expect to see, dramatic differences in what are superficially institutions, even amongst intellectually comparable animals?
Consider the family. Every functional civilization has been patriarchal at least until recently; and the physical and cognitive differences explaining this are seen in the animal world as well. Woman needs man, and man must find his mate. It'd be great if she were loyal though. Yes you could punish disloyalty after the fact but that's not exactly foolproof. Hey what if she literally couldn't run away? If every couple breaks the feet of every daughter then she'll make a perfectly suitable mate! The logic here is of course unimpeachable; and yet is there any reason to believe Nero himself wouldn't react with a similar disgust to it as modern (non-anthropologist) man?
Where unimaginable cruelty naturally pervades even the closest family bonds between the strong and the weak; concern for outsiders may be expected to be similarly lacking. A toddler bleeding out in plain view to the complete indifference of most passers by is not at all surprising when you remember what their close genetic ancestors did, nor are the countless similar videos you can find on the Chinese interwebs: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ECeC4R-Gjtc.
I don't need to mention that where humans cannot expect compassion, the fate of man's best friend is not at all uncertain.
Other areas of human life like the ability to be moved by beauty seem similarly lacking in a civilization whose pre-1800s painting and sculpture never approximated that of Ancient Rome, much less Michael Angelo, when portraying human subjects (as opposed to landscapes were they admittedly excelled).
A people with innately different instincts in one field, might also be odd in other ways, like committing mass cannibalism against political enemies in the absence of famine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guangxi_Massacre .
Their literature might include bizzare scenes, like a inferior man demonstrating his pious hospitality to his superior by secretly killing and cooking his own wife to feed him. https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ghmx4v/what_can_romance_of_the_three_kingdoms_liu_an/
Different from birth
Someone covers your nose or lays you face first against the bed. What do you do? Seemingly every non-disabled European American newborn that isn't cognitively impaired has the same reaction; to move, struggle and fight against this horrifying imposition. Nearly every Chinese American baby has a different reaction; complete non-reactivity.
Isn't this precisely the kind of difference common stereotypes, a history of slavish behaviour, and the above section would suggest? Can you think of a more elemental test of innately different instincts than a newborn's reaction when you screw with his breathing? Have you noticed that basically everyone still wearing a mask is Asian?
https://sci-hub.ru/10.1038/2241227a0
** The necessity of racism **
What does it mean to allow members of a high IQ species of alien fundamental moral and aesthetic instincts to increase their power in our institutions?
What does it mean, for an entire nation of them to become the dominant power on the planet?
There are countless flaws in your argument, starting from the fact that Roman patriarchs considered family their literal property; to the obvious ability of the Taiwanese, majority ethnic Han and indeed many of them descendants of Han elite, the type most selected under those Han-specific civilizational pressures, to match and exceed «the white race» in humane civility and even aesthetics of their life; to the fact that the Chinese today have hundreds of millions of beloved pets. And of course there's plenty of love, loyalty and honesty in Chinese art, or found in relationships with Chinese people across the world. And we know generally that racial essentialism is a crude approximation for overlapping distributions, and that it's more sensible to speak of norms of reaction, and clearly such barbarity can be found in European history that the difference can only be said to be one of degree, not of kind... Honestly it's just trash. And your whole interpretation of foot-binding as aggression against kin to prevent running away, or whatever, is either atrociously disingenuous or so stupid as to make responding pointless. Read some interviews of surviving women from traditional families who have had that done to them, see what they think of it.
But let me put this aside. Let's grant the core of your thesis: that the Chinese civilization, with its peculiar circumstances, has created a separate human type, deficient in some aspects of humanity that the «western type» of human finds paramount. Simply put, that from your perspective the Han Chinese are less human.
Okay. This can certainly be the case, and I believe that even highly related peoples can have distinguishable genetic inclinations, like the old European racialists asserted. But, if we're dealing in extreme and stupid generalizations – then by my standard, you Hajnali goodbots are not fully human either, and far more dangerous. You personally are an apt example.
I think there is not a single perfect, fully human, race of man. Evolution is a cruel bitch and it didn't bother to create one I'd feel at home with. Certainly some groups, whites more obviously than others, have better competitiveness on the global scale, but this isn't about it. There are sparks of goodness and greatness in all major populations, but feeble, pointless and spinning into destructive attractors in separation from each other. Everyone is eager to get high on one's own group's supply, double down in natural inclinations. Asians are serious to the point of clowning themselves, thinking on the low level of optimizing the performance of inane arbitrary customs. Blacks are largely incapable of seriousness, which is why they can enjoy life more than anyone else. Arabs have a desire for epochal accomplishment, completely divorced from taste and prudence and so spilling back into their infertile sands as testaments to vanity. Russians are crazy, brilliant at finding ways to fuck themselves up. And you lot are so very marvelous at the scale of a Mannerbund or a village parish, but beyond that you can't handle psychopaths that emerge in any substantial population, and just get used, mumbling your nauseating «u can't get something outta nothing, sonny» or «u just need to believe in yourself» adages. Diversity is our strength indeed, except we're no good at really combining facets of our strengths, because we're blind and hostile to each other's Logos.
The principal mechanism of this is dehumanization. And I'd posit that whites are the worst in this department, this is one of your worst traits. You cannot suffer the heretic, the xenos, the mutant to live. You are overcome with disgust and an extermination impulse when you recognize something as genuinely alien. This fanaticism is not normal; neither are your aspirations to universal dominance of your doctrine, and therefore the fear of the Chinese is largely projection.
Following your Catholic Church programming, your futile wars of religion, and your acceptance of Jews (who are much more similar to the rest of the world, except more intelligent) into the ranks of your elites, you have devised (or have been taught) a way to cope with your tendencies. It's a primitive way: you simply insist on there being no real difference. Few notions in this world are more shallow than a Western liberal's idea of diversity; you think it's about puny cultural artifacts befitting of a theme park – garments, cuisine, language, inconsequential quirks, irrelevant myths and opinions. Even a slight deviation on a morally relevant dimension is cause to suppress the information, or explain it away with circumstances, pin the blame on some organized evil that can be vanquished. That's all just stopgaps.
You refuse to see others for what they are, because when you do, you start to hate. And in the process of not-seeing, you degrade yourself, before something finally gives. I am increasingly sympathetic to the Jewish paranoia that, if you were ever allowed to look past the «Judeo-Christian» front and once again properly notice them as a distinct race, a second Holocaust wouldn't have been out of the question. Where's Jewish Mickey Angelo, indeed?
The Chinese are not Anglo-Germans. They do not share your values. They do not share many of your weaknesses. It is harder to convince a Chinese than a White that being illiterate is «another way of reading», or hallucinating is «another way of knowing», or that economic collapse is desirable to clean our Lebensraum from the invisible poison of radiation. They are, in my impression, a bit less empathetic. But that's a form of wisdom too, which could help your race heal, if only you could see out of your ass anything that isn't either a warped mirror or the Devil himself.
天地不仁
以萬物為芻狗
聖人不仁
以百姓為芻狗
Somehow, googling returns a number of pages where straw dogs are confused with straw men.
Also, my old grand theory about the Chinese-Western difference in mental style.
I mean, what do you think it is ?
Ruthless goal orientation, lack of adherence to norms, chutzpah, etc. The tales of crying, broken down managers. (not girls)
It's fairly clear what it is. Then there is his father.
You mean sociopathy, I guess? I don't think Musk fits into the construct. Isambard Kingdom Brunel certainly does not. I also don't think low-empathy Chinese managers are lacking in this trait. And chutzpah of the SBF, Adam Neumann or Elizabeth Holmes type is not creative whatsoever, it's merely imitating the superficial aspects of a visionary to divert resources to mundane ends.
No. Faustianism is a peculiar mental type, which doesn't survive in captivity for very long, and one our feminized civilization is no good at measuring or seeing.
It's a problem of semantics, really.
There's considerable amount of evidence to believe there's a distinct human subtype (psychopaths), people who lack affective empathy, most emotions, show anomalous reactions to fearful stimuli, and have no conscience whatsoever. Also are goal oriented to the point punishment doesn't seem to work on them, supposedly. Generally, you can train people and animals to avoid doing something using electroshocks, this doesn't work on psychopaths.
He's almost certainly not a complete psychopath, but probably has a good few traits.
You'd know he was one because he'd have likely kept Amber Heard as a wife. Psychopaths love crazy women, the crazier the better.
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