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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   9064 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 24, 2026

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A while ago I saw somebody complain somewhere on the internet about a bunch of young Amish guys causing some annoyance to him. I don't remember the exact details, but something like they would take a shortcut over his property with their buggies and it would destroy some grass or something. Again, my memory isn't clear about the details, I seem to recall the poster put up a sign saying its private property or something and it was ignored and he was asking for advice on what to do. Multiple highly upvoted comments suggested he go find a local elder and tell him about it and the elder would make sure it would stop. Everybody in the thread seemed convinced that this would be pretty much guaranteed to work. If Amish youngsters are causing problems you can apparently just talk to an elder in their community and the problem is solved.

Personally, I would like the Western world to stop being individualist liberals who don't feel any responsibility for their communities and would rather have them act like the Amish in this regard. If the Amish elder in the anecdote above would have replied "people are morally responsible for the things they actually do, why are you coming to me? I didn't do anything", considering the subject of this anecdote already put up a sign which got ignored, he would have to escalate to the police or something. I think people should be in communities and communities should hold their members responsible to a moral standard. If somebody from a community does something bad and they can get away with it without getting into trouble with their community, that says something about their community.

Of course, this reasoning presupposes people actually are in a healthy community. In some specific cases I think the above logic does permit some sort of group judgement. In other cases people might have innate communal intuitions which might not do their job properly in the current unnatural hyper-individualistic societies we find ourselves in where we offload any responsibility for our fellow men unto the government.

Personally, I would like the Western world to stop being individualist liberals who don't feel any responsibility for their communities

Of course, this reasoning presupposes people actually are in a healthy community.

Talking about communities is missing the point. The groups in question "men", "women", "migrants" aren't communities at all, can't be and shouldn't be.

For example, most healthy communities contain both men and women, but two men living on opposite sides of the country and have never met aren't part of the same community.

Demographics aren't the same as community, and unlike a community, there's zero sense in assigning a moral identity to a demographic that makes it members beholden to each other.

Talking about communities is missing the point. The groups in question "men", "women", "migrants" aren't communities at all, can't be or shouldn't be.

I don't see how it's missing the point. Men and women tend to act in pretty distinct ways, and healthy communities tend to recognize it,and set up social rules that take the differences into account. This becomes doubly impossible under individualism, first because it forbids you from even recognizing there's a difference between the groups, and secondly because it dissolves the community structures that would allow for setting up these social rules.

It's missing the point because the post it was responding to wasn't about communities. As an independent criticism of individualism it's fine. As applied to groups that aren't communities (but are sometimes thought of as communities when considered as identity groups, like "men" or "women" or "blacks"), it goes in the wrong direction.

Men and women tend to act in pretty distinct ways, and healthy communities tend to recognize it,and set up social rules that take the differences into account.

That doesn't mean at all the group of "men" is a community. You can have communities that are all one gender, like maybe the boy scouts or girl scouts, but you can be male without being in the boy scouts.

Remember, the top-level post was about the responsibility of group members for the behavior of other group members. If the group is just something you are born into and says nothing about your relation to other group members, this doesn't make sense.

An example of something that can be a community, is so less often in modernity and arguably should be more so, is a neighborhood. A gender is not.

“responsibility of group members for the behavior of other group members. If the group is just something you are born into and says nothing about your relation to other group members, this doesn't make sense.”

I don’t think they would have a responsibility in moral sense. But as far as DNA is essentially Code then people who share DNA are likely to behave in the same way and if the fathers program does murder it is likely Sons code will do murder. Etc.

But as far as DNA is essentially Code then people who share DNA are likely to behave in the same way and if the fathers program does murder it is likely Sons code will do murder. Etc.

I pose to you the same question I've posed to 6tjk, hanikrummihundursvin and a few others on this forum.

Do you believe that I should care about who's someone father is more than I should care whether that person shares my interests or wants me dead?

Why do I have to choose between your conditions? It’s not an either/or.

I can care about someone’s genetic makeup and care if they share my interests or want me dead.

Isn’t your question obviously a false conundrum?

I supported Pinochet killing communists and I am anti-immigration of bad genetic fits.

Public polling shows non-whites and in fact every non-white race on net being against traditional liberalism. A persons father is a great predictor for whether they will be against your interests.

That question presupposes that a) those two things are orthogonal, and b) that you know the answers to the latter queries. If you don't, and if lineage correlates to interests and aggression, then who someone's father is can be eminently worth caring about.

I think it can be reasonable to hold X responsible for Y's actions in the case where X is in some kind of position of authority or responsibility over Y. I don't think sharing an ethnicity, or religion, or gender, and so on automatically puts you in that kind of position relative to others in the same demographic. Although even in your case it's not clear to me that petitioning the elder in the Amish community to use his authority to rectify the issue is coterminous with assigning some kind of blame to the elder for the issue. Something I've learned plenty of times in my own profession is that just because something is not your fault does not mean it is not your problem.

What about modern society gives you the impression that it is capable of working on that scale? The Amish elder in question almost certainly knows their families personally. And he is quite literally in a position of responsibility (even if informal). It’s not some abstract thing. This is virtually never the case for the examples listed in the OP.

What about modern society gives you the impression that it is capable of working on that scale?

That I remember it working in a large city under a communist government that was high on modernism. This isn't a technological issue, it's a social issue.

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