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 -
An anonymous substacker has written up a good piece on the Rise of the West. Essentially, he comes to the conclusion that the divergence began in the 1000-1500 A.D. period and that subsequent colonisation efforts by Europe of the rest of the world was simply an outgrowth of those earlier advantages.
This of course upends the familiar trope of "the West got rich by the backs of the Third World" so popular with leftists in the West and in countries like India, across the political spectrum. I bring this up because if the poor countries of the world today have any hope of catching up, they should first re-examine honestly why they fell behind in the first place. Yet I see precious little of that, except mostly moral grandstanding about the evils of the exploitative West.
This also has domestic political implications because a lot of white guilt-driven narratives are sprung from the narrative that the West got rich by exploitation and thus the logical corollary is that evil white people should repent (preferably through monetary reparations). The narrative that colonisation was simply a natural outgrowth of European pre-existing advantages that grew over time naturally undermines it. One could also note that the Barbary slave trade, or the slave auctions in the Ottoman Empire, shows that the Third World was far from innocent. But of course these historical facts don't have high political payoffs in the contemporary era, so they are ignored or underplayed.
This assessment lines up more or less with Charles Murray's mapping of significant historical figures in his book Human Accomplishment, which shows disproportionate numbers of notable people being born in the European core i.e. Northern Italy, Western Germany, France, the Low Countries, and England starting in the late Middle Ages. This in turn lines up more or less with the Hajnal line, suggesting that changes in family structure and social organization in western Europe during the centuries between the fall of Rome and the Renaissance were the proximate cause. England in particular may have been making moves in this direction earlier than the rest of Europe (the loss of specific terms for extended family members in the English language and simplification of rules for blood money payments in the event of clan feuds seem to have happened there first).
This is very interesting to me, can you elaborate?
Most languages have different words for eg maternal and paternal uncles, brothers in law married to your sister and brothers in law related to your wife, maternal and paternal grandparents, 1st and 2nd cousins, aunts by marriage and aunts by blood, etc. I’m not an old Germanic scholar but my understanding is that old English was no exception- however, English today does not have those terms, and their disappearance is probably linked to the hajnal line setting in.
Likewise blood feud payments were drawn from an elaborate clan structure; each relative of the killer paid a certain amount based on how closely related to him he was(or else the killer was killed in turn) and each relative of the murdered man received his share of the payment, again, depending on how closely related to him he was. Where the law codes governing this survive, it’s possible to track the extent and closeness of extended families by looking at the codes- in laws and 3rd cousins being dropped indicates smaller extended families.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link