site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 19, 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.

2
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Our socio-cognitive firmware was just not not setup yet to make that leap because evolutionarily it was not effective.

Or "why Cain kills Abel" for short.

You don't need to use that fancy language or understand computers to communicate this concept; even someone from 1000BC can hear it and know, including that God has a real problem with this, even straight up calling it 'sin' [oddly, 'didn't like the offering' was not sin even though it facially meets the definition of such], but also won't do fuck all to stop it (as a design constraint of creation/humanity, not what He'd personally prefer in that moment [1]).

It requires Humility to recognize that despite moral disagreements one does not have the right to coerce another to a particular moral foundation beyond some minimally burdened social contract.

Diana Moon Glampers is evolutionarily correct, but not morally correct, to kill Harrison Bergeron. Humility is why you're supposed to be angry about that.

CL won so hard that it became immunocompromised. The illiberal enemies have had to metastasized like a cancer from within because CL could not be beaten from without.

So did it for Christianity, for the same reasons.

[1] Jesus as proof.


We are stuck in an evolutionary saddle point and need an externalized existential disaster to push us forward to continue our evolutionary journey.

Why is this in the middle of your analysis? It's two different problems.

If you're this type of liberal yourself, which I suspect you are, then I am truly sorry.
I have no other input other than to remind you that "get laid" [or "reproduce" more broadly] and "die" are in that order for a reason.