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.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Objectively, the conditions faced by Americans from 1980 to the present are not stressful. Ask an American teenager today if they would like to switch places with an English teenager from 1346 (during the plague), or a Russian teenager from 1939, or a Yemeni teenager today.
It recently occurred to me that there are perhaps individuals who choose to commit suicide who are actually not suffering all that much. Implicitly we have a mental model that says that suicide is an extreme option that is reserved only for cases of the most severe suffering, but maybe this is not the case. Maybe people do it on a bit of a whim more often than we think. (I have little doubt that the suffering experienced by a young person who receives a terminal cancer diagnosis, and who so desperately clings to their final months of life in spite of its futility, is greater than the suffering of at least some individuals who actually do choose suicide.) There are many individuals who, by their nature, do not experience deep passions. They don't get particularly attached to their career, to their favorite TV shows, to their friends; all of these things could be swapped out for alternatives, it's a matter of some indifference to them. Perhaps there are also individuals who do not experience a deep passion for life as such, and for these individuals it would be much easier to simply give the whole thing up over a minor inconvenience.
At any rate, suicide statistics in a vacuum are meaningless without a cross-cultural and cross-temporal comparison of suicide rates in different times and places, cultural attitudes towards suicide, motivations for suicide, etc.
I think the original claim is that it's the extent of social and cultural upheaval and dislocation between 1950 and 1990 that was stressful.
More options
Context Copy link
In his seminal work Suicide, one of the first works of Sociology, Emile Durkheim specifically refutes the thesis (from Le Play) that suicide is caused directly by poor material conditions.
He instead provides a now famous two-axis typology wherein the causes come from one's relationship to others and society, which material conditions only effect indirectly by affecting one's relationships.
Your second paragraph seems to me to describe quite specifically anomie, which modern living conditions are often accused of exacerbating:
What better way to describe recent times than dizzyingly extreme constant changes where nobody knows what is expected of oneself and no reliable way of judging one's position in the world can stand?
I dunno. It just seems like first world problems or a skill issue to complain too much about the modern world in any way (I'm only talking about first world western nations for the entirety of this conversation). It's a really nice world we've been given. Just the right difficulty setting, so to speak. I think the years from 1985-2005 in particular were essentially a paradise, real "peak of human civilization that will never be reached again" type stuff. (I've talked to both Gen X'ers and boomers who have similar nostalgia for the 90s, so it's not purely me being nostalgic for my childhood.)
I could see people killing themselves after the ASI singularity. When you've become such a god that the only challenge you have left to surmount is your own self-destruction. But we're not nearly there yet.
I'm approaching this as someone who is trying to build a mental model of a phenomenon that is deeply foreign to me. I am fantastically in love with life and fantastically afraid of losing it, so I think my threshold for when I would consider suicide is simply higher than many other individuals. Even many types of emotional and existential "pain" serve only to sweeten life (Nietzsche correctly identified that melancholy is a positive emotion). I will again reiterate that an "increase in suicides" by itself doesn't mean much without knowing what the base rate of suicide is in a wider range of cross-cultural contexts. (We also have to define what a "suicide" is. Is a Hamas suicide bombing a "suicide"? Is it a "suicide" if a young Russian man signs up for the front lines because he doesn't care much either way if he lives or dies? There are certain death-inducing phenomena that are present in other cultures but not our own, and that should probably factor into the conversation at some point.)
That's fascinating to me. Perhaps I need to get checked for depression, but aside from dangerous situations where instinct takes over (say, car swerved a bit in bad weather), I have no interest in life outside of what it means I can provide for my wife and family (both materially and emotionally), and can't actually remember the last time that was different.
Maybe, but, I'm deeply skeptical of the over-medicalization of normal psychological variance. Honestly I think you're closer to the population norm than I am. Everyone's always talking about how depressed they are and how meaningless everything seems. I feel like the odd one out in that I've never struggled with any of that. But on the flip side, I do struggle mightily with anxiety issues, and a few other types of mental health issues besides, so it's not like I got off free or anything.
You perform a vital evolutionary function. If your barometer for responding to external stimuli was too sensitive and hyperactive, it would only get in the way of the fulfillment of your duties. I'm deeply appreciative of people like you who are capable of performing the vital functions that I myself would only be able to perform with great difficulty. (My own designated functions, should I have any, are not nearly so vital.)
If we think of human civilization as a single living organism, then the various personality types and psychological dispositions that we find among individuals define the cell types; different individuals are specialized for different functions. Diversity (and experimentation, and mutation, and tragic ends) is necessary for the organism as a whole to function.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link