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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 6, 2023

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I bet you've heard the phrase "living well is the best revenge." I think it's also the best argument. There are so many ideas, or larger schemas, that are alluring in abstract. See: every teenager's politics. But far fewer paradigms are actually effective in practice. (Granted, which ones work does vary somewhat based on the local circumstances / environment.)

Living out one's ideals is a costly signal of sincerity, and achieving success and happiness by doing so is the least refutable argument. This is a big reason why religion is so persistent despite sounding batshit crazy from the outside — and I say this as a religious person. The philosophy makes sense once you fit yourself inside of it, but the incentive to attempt that in the first place, despite the context of a secular overculture, is that religious people are more likely to thrive.

Anyway, my question is, why don't more culture warriors pursue this path, of exemplifying why their chosen philosophy is good? Am I wrong that it's the most convincing way to advocate for one's ideals? Or maybe everyone is indeed trying to do this, and most just don't seem very effective from my particular vantage point / vis-a-vis my conception of the good life? Perhaps it's a selection effect where people who deeply care about what everyone else is doing are less likely to be happy, point blank, so anyone discernible as a culture warrior is already precluded from "living well is the best argument" unless they learn to give less of a shit in general.

Edit: Apologies for not responding individually, this ended up getting more responses than I expected. But I appreciate you all and am pondering your points!

I’m surprised no one has pointed out the mental health gap between liberals and conservatives- conservatives as a whole are much happier and saner than liberals as a whole. It seems like right wing culture warriors point this out a lot too- that’s what the ‘feminist alcoholic cat lady’ trope is about. Why you don’t have liberal culture warriors claiming to be happier than conservatives is thus fairly obvious and why you don’t have conservative culture warriors claiming to be happier than liberals is ‘they do, just in terms of normal people vs neurotic wine aunts, because contentment seems normal when you have it’.

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