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 -
I find it interesting that The Motte tends to treat atheism with kid gloves that are not reserved for other belief systems. For example, the idea that there is no difference in intelligence between different genetic groups of humans is widely called out here as being simply wrong. Which it almost certainly is, in my opinion. But consider the idea that methodological constraints actually are a metaphysical theory, or further implying that shoes are atheists. These ideas are, I think, even less likely to be true than the idea that there is no difference in intelligence between different genetic groups of humans (at least the latter can be empirically shown true or false; the former is just a category error). But atheism on The Motte is usually not met with accusations that it is as absurd, indeed perhaps more absurd, as any flavor of wokeism. Nor is the history acknowledged that New/Internet Atheists almost certainly led to a willingness to embrace relativism everywhere and ultimately wokeism by the masses of "laypeople". Wokeism gets often and in my opinion properly pilloried on here for being nonsensical on the level of correspondence to objective reality, but atheism typically gets a free pass. Even the philosophers on here mostly refuse to really call it out as being absurd when the topic comes up.
Does this happen because atheism is largely not viewed as a threat anymore (since its birth of wokeism is already in the past) and because since wokeism is this community's main out-group and atheism is vaguely internet-weirdo-aligned in the modern West, people here tend to follow the principle of "the enemy of an enemy is my friend"? Or, to be more charitable, maybe it is because wokeism can fairly easily be criticized on the level of normal scientific investigation, whereas the claims that atheism makes go so far beyond typical constraints of the scientific method that one actually does just quietly make an exception for it because its claims are fundamentally viewed as being orthogonal to scientific investigation (and people just fail to ever mention such)?
I think your attempt to re-trace the philosophical and metaphysical implications of the New-Atheism-to-Wokeism transition and being confused as to why we're seemingly uncritical of a movement accused of birthing our outgroup is getting tripped up by missing an important element: libertarianism. I realize I shouldn't be speaking for the others, but many "New Atheists" were probably animated by the same basic impulse: don't coerce us.
The atheism wars of the 2000's were animated by this very same impulse--it's what that whole culture war was about, and funny enough, it's also what our current culture war is about. 2000's atheism was about fighting back against stifling normative cultural programming from Christians, and the current moment is about fighting back against ungrounded ideals being programmed into the mechanisms of society. So yes, we treat atheism with "kid gloves" because we are godless liberals who didn't go woke.
Again, as someone who could have been one of those cringy Reddit atheists, I like to think I can get along well with religious people, but at the same time, I'm not particularly interested in acting as if some ancient Jewish guy magically came back to life after being left for dead in the Israeli desert just to accomodate them, nor am I particularly interested in being told I'm going to Hell after I die just because I don't really feel God in my bones. No, I guess this isn't grounded in any coherent idea of metaphysics or whatever, but I don't care about that aspect most of the time; it's based in practical reality.
I’m skeptical of the ‘new atheism birthed woke’ idea, tbh, and I say that as someone who doesn’t like either very much- new atheists are still around being new atheists, and they’re often stridently anti-woke. No one really pays attention to them(which I suspect is why the motte is so uninterested in criticizing atheists), but Dawkins is still out there making 13 year old Redditor arguments.
As someone who does think that the "New Atheism" community played a pretty outsized role in shaping what basically makes up modern progressive culture, I would almost certainly say that the Atheism part of it is largely irrelevant. It's more of a coincidence than anything else, it could have happened in pretty much any other online community (I do think social media plays a role in this) that leaned left.
I don't think irrelevant at all, if anything I feel like the denial of any higher source of truth or morality is pretty damn central to wokism. Hence the emphasis on "lived experience", and statements like "no bad tactics, only bad targets".
Harvard was founded as a Calvinist Seminary, do you know what you get when you take Calvinism and delete the concept of Divine Grace? You get something uncannily similar to the modern progressive "victimhood" memeplex. I don't think that is a coincidence.
It might be in my view of what Wokism actually is. To me, I think it's a way to make a better world in a way that doesn't threaten, and maybe enhances status/class based advantages. There's nothing inherent in that, I think, that goes against belief in a higher deity.
For what it's worth, Calvinism is one of those religious beliefs I do have a serious problem with, in the same light as I look at Wokism TBH. And the truth is, I don't see any reason why much of the memeplex couldn't come from a liberal Calvinist community.
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
More options
Context Copy link