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 -
The right wing should do patronage of good culture and right wing culture and abandon an ethos of disengagement and libertarian ethos.
Why?
Because if you know artists, they care first and foremost about doing their things and getting money and recognition. The reason the left has been so successful its because it is willing to provide support, and to deprive them for not aligning with them.
Secondly, people who are actually on your side will also act based on incentives.
And thirdly, because the end result is desirable. A culture of just whining, about leftist cultural output is impotent. There is nothing wrong with complaining about what is bad, but you should also promote what is good. We need a society that promotes good art and and good culture. There is more to life than line going up. And if you don't try to fill that vacuum, someone else will.
What this means effectively? A right wing goverment should defund leftist artists and promote rightist artists and allow people to join the side. Soon you will discover that many artists are actually rightists who were afraid to express themselves.
It also means promoting art programs.
Also some kind of art tends to be of a more negative and leftist form like rap and modern art. Not all but more commonly.
Beyond the goverment, right wingers and not leftists should care more about networking to promote art that isn't left wing. It doesn't have to be explicitly political. Lord of the Rings for example qualifies. Just accurate adaptation of great classics of western literature without left wing ideological blinders would also qualify.
Putting regulations in place to make them illegal or underpromote far left racebending art and make them less financially viable, and giving incentives for art that respects the source material for example.
Of course, someone could object to a certain particularly aggressive moves in terms of what you promote and not promote, and in being excessively far to the right and excessively intolerant. And I could even agree with them in some cases.
However, in the current status quo, things are so lopsized in the direction of the left that it is pushing the culture landscape in a more pluralistic phase to have less race bending far left culture being promoted and more right wing.
This means that more right wing patronage of art is good even from a more neutral, pluralistic standpoint. Which is a general pattern of the culture war, even outside art. If someone is fine with leftist domination and escalation then a position in favor of an impotent disengaged right makes sense. We don't have a sufficiently neutral and moderate status quo though for defence of the status quo to be the neutral position.
First, define "good art" because we've been having this conversation for centuries and nobody's got a working definition universally accepted. What is "good" art - technical merit and ability? subject matter? what the public likes versus what educated taste likes? And is "good art" art in "good taste"? What's good taste, then, precious?
Artists are about being transgressive, challenging social and cultural established values and thought, novelty, and all the rest of it. You can't pay them to produce 'conservative' art, and those who do so will be and are derided as sell-outs. Think Thomas Kinkade, who certainly had some measure of talent, deciding to make himself into a brand and churn out product on carefully selected themes that were repeated ad nauseam. "The Painter of Light" who was wildly successful with the public and made a fortune, but he's never going to get the respect of the art world.
Think of Tracey Emin versus the Stuckists.
They may have started out championing 'traditional' painting, but they've become another sub-set of the performance/protest artists of modern art.
'Good art' is not going to be given that accolade unless it accedes to the values of the liberal and indeed progressive strain of cultural hegemony. "Norman Rockwell type art" is not intended as a compliment. Is Marcel Duchamp's urinal good art? I think Surrealism did produce good art and it did give a shock to the art world, which every new movement needs to do, but as tastes and values evolve, there's no going backwards.
I don't think the current Right in America can make good art that will save them. The bottom line is that the old Right in America is dying. Christianity is in terminal decline and old school classical liberalism just isn't that popular anymore either. This doesn't even get into demographic change where white people (the base for the Right in America) are aging and dying while non-whites move closer every day to a majority. What art could they possibly make that inspires young people?
We are in an era of huge amounts of change, and the die has already been cast. The Right is more or less in the position that the old Pagan culture in Rome was with Christianity ascending and the old ways were hated, persecuted, and forgotten. The current Left won't always be in power, but its true challenger isn't going to come from the Republican Party, Christianity, MAGA, or libertarianism. It may not even come from America and possibly not the West
It'll take some time, but the answer is the same thing as it always is: Things that piss off their parents and teachers.
The greater proportion of parents that are leftist puritans, the more the counter-culture will swing right. No, it won't be Christian right, but it'll be about freedom to offend, same as it always was.
No, it won't. The left has captured the culture and the counter-culture, simultaneously. I don't know how they managed, but they did.
No man, that's progressive sleight. The counter culture is not a movement or a type of clothing or a button you wear, it is the culture that is counter to the mainstream. This place is counter culture (this is a pre-emptive bup-bup to the objection I hear some preparing to type, yes this place is counter culture). You are counter culture. Hell, at this stage of the game, you are a counter culture hero*.
What I think the left have done is develop the controlled opposition model into a multi tiered system, so now below the RINOS is a fake counter culture that is actually mainstream - for people who want to leave progressivism but are still saturated in it. It's a clever move, because it allows them to bridge the gap between their new upper middle class audience and the older money hating hippies, and also maintain control over people who try for the first time to exit the mainstream, like my friend Bill.
Bill is an army guy who never really paid attention to politics until recently when he started to get fed up with how pathetic he thinks the (Australian) army is and how completely unlike anything his dad or uncles or grandfather said it was, how the modern army is like a larp of what it used to be. He started paying attention recently, and when I sent him a barrage of links to read he felt a deep connection to the writing of moldbug and land, but he won't talk about them except when we are in private, and he's thinking of abstaining from the upcoming voice referendum because he knows voting yes is wrong, but doesn't want to vote no and 'embolden racists'.
He hasn't yet become counter culture, he's still just controlled opposition, because thanks to censorship 'to protect the marginalised', he doesn't even know real counter culture groups exist, and so must still reach for the mainstream culture for belonging. But they do, they might only be small and local, or hidden and secretive, but they exist. We exist.
We can't expect to immediately see Woodstock, we lost all the institutions and have to build them up again. That might mean decades even of eking out minor, almost pyrrhic victories, and it certainly means very little mainstream recognition, but so what? You haven't given up have you? And your blackpilled status is a motte meme. But giving up, even in the face of overwhelming odds, is for losers, and so you're still here reminding everyone to temper our expectations and not expect miracles.
*Sometimes in my idle daydreams I like to imagine you as the motte's Burroughs. Because you're both bitter about being Cassandras, but still capable of finding humour in it.
Yes, but it worked. Counterculture is, and long has been, a product of the same progressive movement that runs the mainstream culture. There isn't any real "counterculture".
No, defeatists cannot be heroes; their own side hates them for their defeatism and the other side hates them for being opposed.
Woodstock was manufactured too.
It didn't work - pol is not controlled opposition, for example. Chan culture is a counter culture. It's more accurate really to say that it worked in the sense that they have redefined counter culture for most people, but it didn't in the sense that counter culture is any culture which is counter to the mainstream. The left might define counter culture as hippies and artists, but we don't have to accept that framing and we shouldn't.
Well, I like you.
True, but it is still a cultural icon of 'the left as counter culture'. Actually it might even be more appropriate now.
Hah, thanks for this little aside about @The_Nybbler. You've redeemed him a bit in my eyes. :)
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
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link