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 mentioned here many times that I consider the gender (sex) divide the greatest factor in our model of understanding modern political thought and action.
Background; middle-class male, young, Catholic family, Mediterranean, living in a big, poor city. Moved to Central Europe to work in a big èlite public institution with many young people, especially females. History of belonging to Marxist organisations in the past btw.
As a passionate about history, I normally talk about it, especially in a highly-educated environment where discussions about complex topics are the norm.
What I noticed in the past year it is astounding and moulded a lot of my thought. Every time I talk with women about history, and the topics fall on some past event/political regime/ideology/whatever, there is a lot of disinterest towards it from the women's side. Not disinterest in the sense of "I do not care", because as I said it is a highly-educated environment where being uncaring about this kind of thing is uncool, but disinterest in the sense of:
"I understand that in the past things worked a certain way, but the past is always worse than now because women had it worse".
From there, after it happened dozens of times with dozens of different women, I elaborated:
Women are the true accelerationist.
I could not elaborate or argue about past political or moral issues or ideologies or sovrastructures, because, from the other side, the argument is always that every behaviour or ideology of the past is ontologically evil because it discriminated against women.
I will never forget how when I was arguing about how 19th-century European states had probably a higher state-capacity than contemporary European states, I was accused of sexism because I expressed a preference for a non-contemporary political structure. The same happened when I mentioned how I admire Charles De Gaulle (because Macron, while being bad, is better than him because he is more feminist).
The most amazing moment was when I said to a group of women (yes, a lot of weird moments this year) that the loss of Church participation alienated a lot of people and diminished the sense of belonging and social participation of the community in the public thing. They agreed with me (!) but still for them, it is better now because they prefer a more isolated society but with more feminism.
Women are true accelerationist because the consequence of feminism has been a weirdo para-futurism philosophy but without fascism. Everything that can be conducted to the past is suspected as part of a reactionary plot to be judged on moral grounds. No detached interests in History per se, but only moral condemnation of everything that is not the "current year".
For me, it was fascinating to discover how males and females consider history, especially when the topic of "in which historical epoch would you like to live?" and every woman answer "now".
The biggest consequence of this sex divide is, imho, that a feminist liberal society has a huge gap in understanding the context when society begins to decline after drifting from some past ideology or structure. It is not possible for them that something contemporary can be worse than something present in the past.
I would like to receive some input on my "theory" from the residents of the motte, expressed in the English language which is better than mine.
PS: for people who are curious, I never received any sort of cancellation or consequence for my brazen rhetorical behaviour. Europe is not as woke as the US, and I am a kinda of "high-status male" for several reason, so I noticed that women tolerate way more whatever I say.
Suppose you asked a black person which historical period of the USA they would rather live in. Very few would prefer to live in the 19th century, or during Jim Crow laws, or during racial segregation, or any time before the recent present. Would you also conclude that black people are accelerationists, and be surprised when they also agree that they would rather live in a less socially cohesive environment but also less racist environment? Same would go for gay or transgender people - my own answer wouldn’t be any different from the women you talked to.
Also I don’t understand why the answer to “in which historical period would you rather live” would be anything but “now” for literally anyone (except for a cop-out answer like 2013). What advantages are there to living in any pre-21st century period? Even setting medicine aside - higher rates of violence and warfare, fewer social opportunities (most people lived and died as farmers), living under the threat of famine, much worse food, living conditions and sanitation, repressive social conformity (look what the Catholic Church did to slightly different versions of Christianity, no need to be an atheist). All this for… what, having a vague sense of purpose? Surely you have a higher chance of getting purpose and social cohesion today by joining a community, movement or even forming one around your idiosyncratic belief system (see Rationalist), without abandoning any of the modern advancements that truly make your life better?
The fact that people are able to feel purposelessness today is an utter luxury born of the fact that their life are stripped of the daily struggle for existence and that they have time to engage in activities other than obtaining food, clothing and shelter - the answer to modern alienation is not to return to a life of privation and barbarism but to find meaning in the new social and technological landscape. Is there not a great meaningful story being told in the current digital age, where we are on the cusp of creating generally artificially intelligent beings? Doesn’t being part of an huge interconnected network of minds where thoughts can be beamed across the entire earth in less than second not fill you with wonder? Plus, for the first time you can find your community around something other than mere geographical proximity and the happenstance of your birth - why would I trade that for being an 11th century peasant who lived and died within a few kilometres of the village he was born?
I think that something like mid-1990s (or a few years earlier, depending on society) would be an acceptable answer in Western context. Well over a decade of almost uninterrupted growth until the Great Recession awaits, along with the rise of Internet as a system that facilitates human communication and togetherness instead of replacing it. Technically, that's pre-21st century...
Even that would be too much of a culture shock for most people. Consider the cell phone. Now that they're ubiquitous there's some consternation that they intrude too much into daily life; it used to be that if someone wanted to get a hold of you either had to be at home or (in an emergency) another known location. Now there's nowhere to hide. This ignores the fact that before the rise of cell phones if you were expecting a call you were pretty much stuck at home until that call came. And when a call did come you had no control there. Caller ID existed, but it cost extra so few people had it. When that phone rang it could be anybody, and the only way to find out was to pick up. When you did make a call, you generally couldn't call just anyone, since there was a charge for anything other than local calls, and it wasn't cheap. And of course you can forget about text messaging.
While the 90s may be know for the internet's meteoric rise, it wasn't really a thing for most people until the end of the decade, and even then it was more popular as a buzzword than something people actually used. By the year 2000 only about half of American households even had a computer, and fewer than 40% had internet access. In 1995 fewer than 10% had internet access. And the most popular way of getting internet access was through AOL, which was describes as a "walled garden" since it wasn't true internet access but access to a curated selection of popular sites. You got this access via a 14.4 or 28.8 kbps modem (though broadband was available in some places by the end of the decade) that was slow as hell, and through a machine that was as finicky as hell. This was the era when you'd try to do something relatively straightforward—like connect to a new printer—and all hell would break loose with Illegal Operations and Blue Screens of Death while you tried to navigate the autoexec.bat and config.sys via MS-DOS to make sure there wasn't some driver problem or IRQ port conflict or whatever. And this "togetherness" was limited to the before time, when the internet was Usenet and was the domain of hippies and nerds. By the time normies got online chatrooms were full of drunken fratboys swearing at each other and flame wars over which pro wrestlers were better (I still maintain that Nailz sucked).
Re: cell phones vs. home phones, you do realize that answering machines also came about at around the same time, right? We literally had machines for being able to receive phone messages in the event we were called and weren't at the house to take it, I don't think the whole "trapped at home waiting for a phone call" thing was all too common even before the dominance of cell phones.
Dude, if you were waiting for a girl to call you back you weren't looking for her to get the machine. There's a reason Soul Asylum sang "Waiting by the phone / waiting for you to call me up and tell me I'm not alone".
Okay, but what about the 95% of the time where you're not looking to score pussy?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I'm not saying I'd go myself, really - just that it wouldn't be in the same category as, say, answering 1917 or 1950 would be.
Also, of course, going by personal experiences, I started using Internet around mid-90s (being around 10 at that time), I'm fairly sure we had Internet at home before 00s, and was already pretty deep in the forums world around 98-99. Finnish online access was, of course, world-class from the get-go, with none of the AOL walled garden stuff. While I've had my fights with autoexec.bat and config.sys, that was more connected to (pirated) games to work than anything Internet-related.
There's a lot of charts like this showing that the time from ca 1997 to ca 2012 was basically less lonely time for teens than before and after that, and I hold that the most likely explanation is, indeed, that it was the time after it became possible to form and maintain friendships online but the online part of the friendship complimented the physical, in-person part instead of replacing it, which happened after smartphones became ubiquitous.
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