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 -
But there was no centrally-planned effort to create modern, career-focused people; it was simply an emergent property of industrialization. Our current demographic troubles will resolve themselves in a similar way, as high-fertility subpopulations and individuals replace those of us who are unwilling to reproduce. The intervening strife can be managed more or less successfully, just as countries around the world dealt with the social fallout of the industrial revolution in more or less effective ways, with some managing a relatively smooth transition while others succumbed to communist revolutions and other ills, but it cannot be prevented entirely.
This is only true if you're going to be strictly literal. Yeah, it wasn't "centrally planned", but the elites, from the Rockefellers to Bill Gates, have been fretting over population control for over a hundred years, and they were sponsoring psy-ops to achieve it out in the open.
Interesting hypothesis. Please provide as much evidence for it, as you'd expect from people you disagree with on the issue.
The demographic transition in the US was essentially complete by the late 1960s when the overpopulation panic set in, so the damage it did was primarily to China and India in the form of the one-child policy and forced sterilizations. However given that nearby countries like South Korea and Japan have just as low or even lower fertility rates today I'm not sure even that changed very much in the grand scheme of things.
Industrialization reduces the value of the kind of manual household labor children were responsible for in agricultural societies. Farming is done by massive combine harvesters, laundry done by washing machines, and food comes prepackaged at the supermarket. In the past, a child "earned their rent" starting when they were barely 5 or 6 years old, now they are a money sink until adulthood or even longer if they go to college.
Wealth gives people options, and most of them are more immediately pleasant than raising a child. Why change a diaper when you could take a vacation to the Caribbean instead? If you offered people the option of suddenly having an adult child who was already independent, came home to visit on holidays, and would take care of you in old age nearly everyone would take it in a heartbeat, but for many today their time horizons are not long enough to tolerate the years of effort needed to get there in reality.
This trend is not even necessarily linked only to industrialization, but rather urbanization more generally. Modern Italians are not descended from imperial Romans because those Romans didn't reproduce themselves, and as far as I know there was not any population control conspiracy going on in the 1st century AD.
That's multiple decades after the elites started freaking out about it.
Those are interesting arguments, but I wouldn't call them evidence. Evidence is a material fact that points to one argument being true over another. This one in is particularly interesting because on hand I'm tempted to agree - cities seem like alienation machines driving people into despair and therefore childlessness, but OTOH I'm old enough to remember where they weren't so. At least where I'm from even big cities had a distinct community spirit focused around each of their districts and neighborhoods.
I never said all population collapses in history are a result of a conspiracy, though it does look like the current conspiracy took some lessons from the fall of Rome.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link