site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 20, 2023

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.

15
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

The official honest-to-God NATO account posted that. Not some third-rate dingbat functionary, like the execrable Karen Decker who posted about how Afghanistan needs more “black girl magic”. No, this is the public-facing voice of a war machine that controls hundreds of billions of dollars, and it decided that the best way to make its case to skeptical world was to spam references to media primarily targeted toward middle-schoolers.

Can't appeal to the dead white patriarchs , they're racist. Can't appeal to a defense of Christendom (even if that weren't verboten, Russia is still Christian), the only civilizational throughline left are platitudes we get from cultural consumption of deliberately watered down and simplistic media.

2.those civilizations were far more adept at social engineering, such that they could far more successfully integrate people like this into their social fabric and find roles for them which utilized their strengths and defanged their more dangerous and subversive tendencies.

You could argue it the other way: those personalities didn't exist because they were far less adept at social engineering.

The increase in modern state capacity has dovetailed quite well with the Rousseauian/early liberal impulse that society is responsible for many of man's ills and these ills can be cured with more intervention and the general optimistic view about the perfectibility of man.

The state today is ludicrously more powerful and has aided along major changes in daily life, so the thinking goes: why could it not just fix all those other endemic social ills like inequity in dating? Beyond that, modern systems' tolerance for deviance may allow these people to fit more appropriate niches than before*

I think this is silly for a variety of reasons, but I imagine that's a major factor in making people like the above who blithely assume enough "raising awareness" or "activism" will resolve any issue they don't like.

* It's hard to determine how much freedom merely releases people to do what they always would have wanted or creates new impulses they then mistakenly see as immovable

Can't appeal to the dead white patriarchs , they're racist.

His appeal includes William Wallace, though. Read literally, this would be an appeal to a dead white patriarch. Of course it's not meant to be read as referring to William Wallace the actual historical figure but William Wallace played by Mel Gibson in a Mel Gibson movie, but Mel Gibson is a living white patriarch, an outspoken Christian and, outside of his movie career, often remembered for getting plastered and going off about the Jews while resisting arrest.

Most of the movie figures he's referring are white guys created by white guys, too, apart from some of the Avengers, the non-specifically indigenous Na'vi, and JK Rowling as the creator of Harry Potter (and of course even in that case we're hardly talking about a creator beloved by the woke people, to put it mildly).

Sure, you might argue that it's "watered down and simplistic", but the reference is still to a certain kind of watered down and simplistic material (and it's not like history's appeals to dead white patriarchs or Christendom were particularly complex, either.

His appeal includes William Wallace, though.

Scotland got snuffed out as an independent nation before it could do any imperialism.

His appeal includes William Wallace, though.

Fair enough. I will say you've touched on part of the difference (another important one being that apparently people don't see it as part of their project - as they do with American founding fathers - to undercut the hagiographic and anachronistic view put forward by Gibson because...it's not a live American issue)

Most of the movie figures he's referring are white guys created by white guys, too

There I have to say: meh, less convincing. It's not the same as appealing to Ben Franklin or Thomas Jefferson. I edited it from "dead white men" to "patriarchs" specifically to emphasize I meant the founders or central figures in the national myths (which, in America, seems forever subject to "problematization")

Harry Potter and Churchill are both famous, but in different ways.