site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32779 thread views

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
Top Bottom New Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

What makes his thesis “Bio”leninism is that in the 19th-20th century, society was less egalitarian and there were people being oppressed who would have otherwise been successful without these barriers which made socialism/communism attractive to a wider group of people than In current year, when all de jure discrimination is gone.

If you read something like Lothrop Stoddard's "Menace of the Underman" you find the exact same argument, that the revolutionary socialist movements are drawn from the resentful, biologically inferior underclass (what Stoddard calls the revolt of the "hand against the head"). It was a fairly common far-right line of thought that industrial workers, the primary base of support for bolshevism and other such movements, were in fact heredity 'undermen.' It find it a bit silly to say, "okay but now the underclass is really biologically inferior."

It find it a bit silly to say, "okay but now the underclass is really biologically inferior."

Is your position that the underclass has no biological differences with the elites? You should check out Gregory Clark, econ professor at UC Davis. His book The Son Also Rises would also provide support for Stoddard's idea that class distinction- particularly in the "long run", follows an inheritance that cannot be explained by generational wealth.

My position is that it's silly to say "the underclass back then wasn't really biologically inferior, but now they are."

Why? So we have one argument from the past about one group of people that you say was wrong (was it though?)

Why does that necessitate that a similar argument about a different group of people is wrong as well?

So we have one argument from the past about one group of people that you say was wrong

I didn't say it was wrong, assman did, more or less:

What makes his thesis “Bio”leninism is that in the 19th-20th century, society was less egalitarian and there were people being oppressed who would have otherwise been successful without these barriers which made socialism/communism attractive to a wider group of people than In current year, when all de jure discrimination is gone.

It would be surprising if previous claims of the biological inferiority of underclass groups turned out to be false but this time they were correct.

If you want to say, "the underclass was inferior back then, and they still are" that is a more consistent position.

I think they were back then and they are now. The idea is that in the absence of any discrimination at all, and the incredible living standards for even the most poor people, you need to search even lower on the totem pole to find the same kind of resentful people to form the most loyal members of the party.

I don't think it's an inconsistent position to claim that the upwards mobility of somebody hailing from the underclass but with good biological dispositions has improved in the meantime, meaning that the people who are still in it have been selected for NOT having those traits. I am not sure this argument is true, but it is not inconsistent.

It just seems like your position was trying to imply that "Bio"Leninism as a theory was wrong both then and now, and you try to demonstrate it's wrong by just associating it with far-right thinking.

But you do point out an inconsistency in the part of the post you quoted, but FWIW the original article on BioLeninism is consistent in the "both then and now position", and yes it is similar Stoddard's idea and the general thinking of ye-olde-racists... but that doesn't mean it's wrong:

Socialism works not only because it promises higher status to a lot of people. Socialism is catnip because it promises status to people who, deep down, know they shouldn't have it. There is such a thing as natural law, the natural state of any normally functioning human society. Basic biology tells us people are different. Some are more intelligent, more attractive, more crafty and popular. Everybody knows, deep in their lizard brains, how human mating works: women are attracted to the top dogs. Being generous, all human societies default to a Pareto distribution where 20% of people are high-status, and everyone else just has to put up with their inferiority for life. That's just how it works.

Socialism though promised to change that, and Marx showed they had a good plan. Lenin then put that plan to work in practice. What did Lenin do? Exterminate the natural aristocracy of Russia, and build a ruling class with a bunch of low-status people. Workers, peasants, Jews, Latvians, Ukrainians. Lenin went out of his way to recruit everyone who had a grudge against Imperial Russian society. And it worked, brilliantly. The Bolsheviks, a small party with little popular support, won the civil war, and became the awesome Soviet Union. The early Soviet Union promoted minorities, women, sexual deviants, atheists, cultists and every kind of weirdo. Everybody but intelligent, conservative Russians of good families. The same happened in China, where e.g. the 5 provinces which formed the southern Mongolian steppe were joined up into "Inner Mongolia autonomous region", what Sailer calls "consolidate and surrender".

In Communist countries pedigree was very important. You couldn't get far in the party if you had any little kulak, noble or landowner ancestry. Only peasants and workers were trusted. Why? Because only peasants and workers could be trusted to be loyal. Rich people, or people with the inborn traits which lead to being rich, will always have status in any natural society. They will always do alright. That's why they can't be trusted; the stakes are never high for them. If anything they'd rather have more freedom to realize their talents. People of peasant stock though, they came from the dregs of society. They know very well that all they have was given to them by the party. And so they will be loyal to the death, because they know it, if the Communist regime falls, their status will fall as fast as a hammer in a well. And the same goes for everyone else, especially those ethnic minorities.

I think it was true then and is true now, at the margins at least. Elites of revolutionary movements were highly intelligent, but they relied on a great number of deceived fools: peasants, workers, soldiers, lumpens.

The stratification has been going on for centuries, so children of upper classes have higher IQs, pass more complex Piaget tasks at earlier ages, and crucially more often have the temperament to deal with nuance. For all the improvement in social mobility, the cultural efflorescence fell short of expectations, with a great deal of accomplishment still carried by descendants of pre-egalitarian elites, middle classes, gentry. Evidence against this belief is usually circular – commoners like X, but we are all commoners now, so the consensus is that X is every bit as good as some elitist Y, or indeed much better.

Meanwhile in Russia, where actual Leninism took place, culture was practically erased together with a few percent of hereditarily advantaged population. I believe they sincerely thought that they'll be able to replace them with people of the correct proletarian descent and some schooling.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats