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 -
How much effort should a person be reasonably expected to carry out if they want to be politically informed?
On one extreme, no effort should be required. It's hard to know what this looks like, but one could imagine a world in which chips in your brain automatically feed you current news and political events from a raw and unfiltered pool of sources. You would just have the knowledge, and if anything wasn't listed, you have the right to be outraged.
On the other, serious and substantial effort. Basically, you'd have to devote much time to knowing the current political scene and all perspectives and facts. Think of watching both CNN or Fox as mandatory activities to ensure you hear both perspectives, or read articles about the same thing from both sides, etc. Do your own research every time and come to your own conclusions.
This is assuming, of course, that whatever your line is, external parties must meet their end of the deal. So if you say that a person should be able to watch CNN and be informed, then CNN must report all things that are relevant without partisan slant.
My own thought is that the bar for being informed currently seems rather high. The avenues for uncovering relevant facts and knowledge requires much more than "I know what I was taught in school" because that stuff got outdated before you even graduated. Twitter, paywalled news institutions, academic meta-reviews, etc. are all things you would have to learn to read and discover.
But maybe individuals should invest hours into researching at least one topic a week. What say you?
This was actually a lot easier in the pre-digital world, and persisted until relatively recently—until the 2010s I had a newspaper delivered to my house every day. The nice thing about newspapers was not just that they curated the news for you but that they were laid out in a way to encourage browsing rather than dedicated reading. Even if you skipped half the articles you could still glance at them and get the gist of the news. Newspapers still exist, but it's not the same. I cancelled my subscription after unreliable delivery meant that the paper was either coming late (i.e. after I left for work) or not at all. Then the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette cut print editions to a few days a week and made you download pdfs the rest of the time, and, accompanied with a price increase, this was the last straw. But what really doesn't exist anymore is newspaper culture. By this I mean the utter ubiquity of the daily paper in people's lives. When I was a kid, everyone read the paper, and I mean everyone. Blue-collar workers like my dad would get to work a half-hour early to drink coffee and read the paper. If you didn't have a subscription, no problem. You couldn't enter a bus, or a break room, or a coffee shop without someone having left one lying around, or, in the case of the coffee shop, one provided by the establishment for customer convenience. There was a time when "Did you see the article about..." was a reasonable conversation starter, even among strangers, because even if the guy hadn't read it chances are he was at least vaguely familiar with it.
This is a fascinating peek into the news culture of the pre internet era. I do wonder if the industry of journalism was better because these people actually had more power, and news wasn’t so commoditized. Maybe actually being important to the everyday person gave journalists a lot of status, and that encouraged them to take their ideals seriously.
The actual secret reason is nobody really knew what people read when they bought the newspaper. So, you couldn't cut the foreign policy stories, local news, etc. OTOH, the Internet knows exactly what you're clicking on, and media responded accordingly.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link