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 -
Against Luxury Beliefs
I'll link Henderson's entire post about Luxury Beliefs for reference, but for the purposes of this post I'll be focusing on his brief definition:
Henderson speaks of luxury beliefs like Scott's Barber Pole theory of fashion, using many of the same examples. Put shortly: "Once a signal is adopted by the masses, the affluent abandon it."
He also frames it as a costly signal of wealth: "They can afford to (defund the police), because they already live in safe, often gated communities. And they can afford to hire private security... Expressing a luxury belief is a manifestation of cultural capital, a signal of one’s fortunate economic circumstances."
There are two contrasting claims here. The first is that luxury beliefs impose a genuine cost on the believer that he can afford to bear, like a wastefully pronking gazelle. The second is that the believer does not actually suffer that cost due to his existing position. The wealthy people in all-white gated neighborhoods on private islands bear no additional cost after all the criminals are released on the streets of a far-away city.
I believe Henderson is wrong that these beliefs are a luxury of the upper classes, and that they are rather highly costly expressions of loyalty from an upper-middle-class "Outer Party."
Henderson's income chart for defunding the police has three categories: <$50k, $50-100k, and >$100k. Thanks to rapid income growth and inflation, these categories no longer separate neatly into lower, middle, and upper class. Most of the people with incomes over $100k are not the estate-dwelling ultra-rich, but urban professionals in precarious social and economic positions. Indeed, crime-vulnerable city-dwellers are almost three times as likely to support defunding the police as rural people.
The most radical beliefs expressed in the great "uprising and cultural reckoning" of 2020 came directly from the most precarious and poor members of high status white collar classes: journalists, teachers, librarians, adjunct professors, social workers, petty officials, job-hopping employees of bloated tech companies. None of them were aping Obama or other members of a higher class. And all of these people suffer serious costs because of their beliefs, whether from direct violence from the underclass or indirectly from general social breakdown.
The day after John Kerry bought a beachfront mansion next to Obama's (his Martha's Vineyard one, not his Hawaii one), a woman in tech told me she had led a costly project to remove their business from the Netherlands "because the whole country will be underwater soon, thanks to the Climate Crisis."
Obama installed a 2500 gallon propane tank and whole-mansion backup generator; she had her husband destroy the portable generator that came with their new home, and suffered winter power outages in dignified silence.
Obama's children (and the children of all his class) live completely normal lives, just with more polo lessons and hedge fund internships.
Yesterday this woman instagrammed her Pride Month Announcement: a photo of her five year old son in a dress.
Henderson says that "Once a signal is adopted by the masses, the affluent abandon it." But Obama and the ultra-wealthy didn't create or model these dysfunctional and self-harming "luxury beliefs," only to abandon them once they became déclassé. They are entirely the product of a desperately status-poor and precarious outer party in a society where climbing the social latter requires winning a red queen's race of radicalism, caught in an increasingly rapid purity spiral. Those at the top pay little attention to the crab bucket below them, except perhaps to nudge the ladder a little further out of reach.
So why should we care? Because I think charging these people with hypocrisy is counterproductive, unless their name is Soros or their job title is "mayor" or higher. Most of them are not benefitting from these beliefs, and would be much happier not suffering under the constant pressure to one-up each other in expressing them.
Speaking of this, recent allegations around Pierre Omidyar, the founder of eBay, who is said to have both donated to 'defund the police' groups and also invested in a private security firm. Not a whisper of this on his Wikipedia article, but it is doing the rounds on, for lack of a better term, right-wing media sourced to "an independent journalist" Lee Fang. Fuller version of the story here:
How to eat your cake and have it? Social progressive cred on one hand, return on investment on the other.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link