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 -
There can be no reconciliation without truth. This is a phrase that comes up in indigenous affairs, and advocates for indigenous peoples use it to mean that there cannot be a reconciliation between indigenous populations and the states that oppressed them without there first being a truth-telling and a serious reckoning with what was actually done. I believe that it applies here. "Woke 1 was crazy"; OK, which parts were crazy? Who said them? Who believed them? Will there be a reckoning? Will the people who pushed crazy ideas be kept away from any levers of power, institutional or otherwise? Or, instead, is the Democrat machinery trying to put out a message of "whoopsie daisy, we went a bit far there sowwy" until the next time they can go for the big prize? Based on how little has come back on the architects of the COVID response, I think the answer will be just "whoopsie daisy, sorry, vote for us again please".
Given that there's still an active fight over men playing in the WNBA, the DSA seems to have a lot of influence within the Democrats, and I'd estimate not even 10% of the downstream cultural impacts of "Woke 1" have receded from the high-water mark of ~2022, I don't think anyone has won. To look at some concrete policy examples: Canada and several US states still allow abortions with no gestational limit (i.e. "full-term abortions") and the UK has decriminalized full-term abortions; trans self-id remains the law of the land in e.g. large parts of North and South America, Ireland, Western Europe, Australia, and Scandinavia; land acknowledgements are common enough that Wikipedia documents them as present in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and parts of the US; and the concept that a nation should enforce its borders and deport people who violate them still remains controversial. Software has eaten and now runs the world, and the world of software is still as hard-line progressive as it was in 2022, both in the open-source world and in the halls of the major tech companies. Wikipedia, the world's reference to large parts of reality, remains staunchly progressive; and the cultural bias in the software world will absolutely tilt AI developers' sense of whether a model is "biased", and so when LLMs replace Wikipedia as the default person's answer to questions, it will also put a progressive tilt through the world's understanding of itself.
There's no "won" to assign to any "we", not yet. The vibes are shifting, and most of that shift has been through (and because of) Trump's second term, but IMHO he's got a good chance to flub the midterms after making a mess of Iran, and any shift in electoral performance will be read as a bellweather. Even if he performs well in the midterms and is succeeded by a Republican, I wouldn't say there's any "win" to call until there's evidence of a sustained and durable cultural shift. What became "Woke 1.0" was latent in the culture for some time before it erupted, reactivating people who were sympathetic to the "politically correct" era of culture but mixing their memes with the Tumblr generation, as the latter graduated from being "just kids on college campuses". That generation built on groundwork laid in the 60s, where the left was able to push a lot, make a lot of counter-cultural headway, and when the high water rolled back they somehow landed college professorships and dodged pretty much any serious consequence.
More options
Context Copy link