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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 26, 2026

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Why do people engage in culture war though?

Because I think every side is wrong. We don't actually know how to organize society right now and need to figure it out. We also don't seem to be smart enough to figure it out theoretically, so we're stuck doing live cultural evolution. Liberalism is a loosening of cultural norms, and you can read two purposes to it. One is that it gives space for figuring things out when you have big changes in material circumstances, like mass literacy, the industrial revolution or social media. The other is that the lack of oppressive norms is an end in itself and the way to the good life. The first one makes sense, the second one is quite a bit iffier, but the second one is also a simpler idea and if things get vulgarized it's a tempting hole to fall into. Things seemed to work pretty well up until around 2010 when social media showed up and broke some invisible precondition for 20th century liberalism. The message then quickly morphed into one where we have figured things out, just don't be a dick, only bad people are disagreeing. We need to wind down this whole free speech nonsense since we know what's right and what's wrong already. Oh, and we're totally going to be explicitly racist from now on. I'm not buying this as the end of history, and I'm not sure the system would self-correct on its own.

Outside pressure will force the sides stay sharp, adapt to their terrain and come up with new ways to act, instead of everyone ending up chasing the same bureaucratically assigned goal and stagnating. The multipolar world also keeps bringing attention to the pain points of each faction, like Catholic sex abuse scandals, immigrant crime in Europe or the crippling lack of human capital in current US right wing, when the factions themselves would prefer to just suppress discussion of the matter and leave the problem to fester. I'm hoping that poking at these will eventually build up to a broader understanding of what works and what doesn't and what can be changed to improve things in the future.