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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   24068 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 10, 2026

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On Social Norms

The English writer G.K. Chesterton talks about what one should do if you encounter a fence unattended in a field. Some people might have the impulse to just tear it down. After all, what is it doing there, standing alone in this field? But he actually suggests that one should investigate. The fence may not seem useful to you in this moment, but it was probably put there for a reason, and one should try and figure out what that reason was before discarding the fence entirely.

I think that notion can be applied to social norms too, even once it seems outdated.

So here's one example: Should men open doors for women? When you're trying to figure out whether a norm has any use still, it's helpful to look at what it was there for originally. Was it there to help someone, to protect, to orient society in a useful way? Is that use case still in some way valid now? If so, maybe that norm is still doing something good, even if it isn't evident immediately to you.

One thing I dislike about critics of social norms is how bad they tend to be at understanding why people had certain norms in the past. Many people believe that everything was simply oppressive and to shit on people, without critically thinking about anything in particular.

Feminist for example, love to dunk on slut shaming, without thinking about the alternative, which is basically people getting sick as shit from disease, and various illegitimate children with multiple mothers/fathers. Of course, as long as you get checked for STD's and use protection, you could avoid many of those problems, but the fact we see large amounts of STDs, abortions, and single motherhood among various racial groups withing society (blacks, Hispanics, & native americans) doesn't make that argument convincing at scale. I've known of men & women who deliberately for go condoms because it doesnt "feel good", and then get a pikachu face when they are given diseases or get pregnant.

Its become more and more apparent to me that there are many people in our society who simply dont or cant make good decisions, even if given an optimal environment. Perhaps there is a discussion to be had around norms about dating and sex, even if we conclude slut shaming isnt an ideal solution?

I was reading a horrible tragic news story recently and it got me thinking that the powerful taboo we once held against suicide - while it seems cruel and unfair in hindsight - had a certain cold logic underpinning it. When life was far more precarious, and difficult, and miserable; when people were dying of hunger or plague or because they got a trivial cut that went septic before antibiotics; when parents commonly, routinely lost the children they loved no less than we - it must have been brutally hard to keep going, at times. That maybe shame and stigma worked where no amount of positive encouragement would have.

Forgive the lack of development: I think there's something here, but I don't have the time to expound right now: taboo against suicide isn't anti-suicide, it's just the way culture expresses its boundaries.

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