site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026

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.

4
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Conversation, cooperation, civility, all the foundations of complex, positive-sum human interaction rely on shared values to operate. Liberalism generates values-diversity. When values become sufficiently diverse to be mutually incoherent, conversation, cooperation and civility can't function any more. That's what you're seeing around you: values-incoherent people losing the ability to interact in a positive-sum manner because they lack the necessary common ground.

The grandparent now reads "Removed by @FCfromSSC". Was this on purpose? I often see deleted posts reading "Removed by [$MOD_NAME]", but I only just now realized the mods might not be aware of it, like they don't notice filtered comments.

Looks like a UI screwup. I approved the post, and given that I still see option to remove it in the UI, and having just toggled it back and forth to test it, I'm not sure what's going on there.

Don't lay this at the feet of liberalism. The problem is several universalist beliefs systems have formed due to liberalism's permissiveness. These universalist beliefs are zero-sum and require their adherents to both proselytize and interfere with other groups values systems. In a vacuum these belief systems are effective at outcompeting "liberalism" in peaceful ways but their main problem is they can't outcompete each other without violence. Liberalism is a stable solution within a particular value substrate that acts as an additive transformation to myriad existing beliefs, requiring them to adopt a particular value base in regards to divergent belief systems around acceptance and non-universality. Merely add that substrate to your beliefs, keep to your own community, and voila problem solved, no violence. However you can outcompete that by being the only universalist game in town. However belief systems exist in a reactive state, so the rise of one universalist belief begets others, which leads us back to the cycle of violence until everyone "rediscovers" the Chesterton's fence of the liberalism substrate.

Why do human's keep returning to universalist beliefs? Because we are dumb tribal simians and the spite and anger we get at targeting outgroups is a drug addiction beyond heroin. We are pretty much fucked as a species, we can't outgrow our firmware, and most of us just want to sit in the trees and hoot about that other group that looks slightly different to us.

Beautiful! Fantastic reasoning!

The natural segregation of people who speak a different political language according to their Dunbar friend groups of 150 has a greenhouse effect on the universalist systems of each political tribe: the blue collectivists, the red civilizationalists, and the grey individualists.

Now add in the effect of media and social media echo chambers which assume a universalist system’s supremacy/supermajority, conflating another universalist systems’ craziest adherents with the whole of them. Drug dealers.

This is why the only stable path I can see forward is tricentrism, where the major ideological silos are broken open by the explicit and valuable recognition that those people over there in that other tree are not the enemy unless one of us chooses a universalist system.

Just a bit too pat and simplistic. Looking around, it seems to be precisely the illiberals of all stripes who cannot engage civilly.

if liberalism generates values diversity, then illiberalism has a symmetric failure mode whereby, due the illiberals' need to enforce cultural uniformity, tribal boundaries are formed along literally any cleavage site in value-space (no matter how close the groups' values may be in absolute terms), and are amplified until civil behavior becomes impossible. Indeed, some of the most horrific and bloody human conflicts have been between some of the most culturally similar tribes.

Just a bit too pat and simplistic. Looking around, it seems to be precisely the illiberals of all stripes who cannot engage civilly.

It seems to me that you are begging the question; do you recognize a population of illiberals of any stripe who nonetheless engage civilly, or is the identifying mark of the illiberal an inability to so engage?

How many of the illiberals you actually observe emerged from uniformly liberal environments? How many of them used to be liberals themselves? How many of them arrived at illiberalism through liberal arguments pursuing liberal ends by liberal means? How many of them even recognize that they are now illiberal?

What percentage of Europeans would agree that Europe no longer has any meaningful claim to free speech principles? Would you agree that Europe no longer has any meaningful claim to free speech principles?

Do you believe that "free speech" is a coherent, actionable concept that has been in meaningful effect? If so, where and when? Do you expect its return?

if liberalism generates values diversity, then illiberalism has a symmetric failure mode whereby, due the illiberals' need to enforce cultural uniformity, tribal boundaries are formed along literally any cleavage site in value-space (no matter how close the groups' values may be in absolute terms), and are amplified until civil behavior becomes impossible.

I am skeptical that people who lose the capacity for mutual toleration are actually close in values-space in any meaningful way. Could you give some concrete historical examples of people losing the capacity for mutual civil behavior despite coherent values?

On the other hand, I observe large human cultures operating in highly cohesive, cooperative ways for centuries. Few of these long-term-successful cultures appear to me to have been equally or more liberal than our present society in the modern era, and most and perhaps all of them were much, much less liberal.

It seems to me that you are begging the question;

Does it seem that way? I don't think I gave any indication that I believe only liberals can be civil. Illiberals of a tribe can often be civil to illiberal members of the same tribe.

As for the rest of your questions, they come across as an antagonist gishgallop. Instead of subjecting me to a barrage of questions that clearly veil some point you are trying to make, you would do well to simply state your point clearly.

I am skeptical that people who lose the capacity for mutual toleration are actually close in values-space in any meaningful way

Now it is you who are begging the question.

If your idea of "too different in values" applies to two groups of Arab muslims who have the same genetics, same language, same religion, same basic economic modes, who disagree over point of theological authority, then your conception of distance in value space is hardly meaningful and not useful as a predictor of conflict. It's probably borderline tautology, for obviously any conflict arises over some difference or another.