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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 23, 2023

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The history is too recent. It is like expecting Latvians or Poles to not want to destroy statues of Lenin.

I don't buy this. I'm not going to go to Italy and demand that the Arch of Titus be destroyed as an affront to the Jews. Past a certain amount of time, these monuments are historical and should stay. It's been over fifty years since the civil rights era when black people had enough political power that they could reasonably make a move to destroy monuments to their oppressors. At this point any monuments that are left should be off limits.

This can read as "when you have power, immediately destroy everything your opponents value or they'll start arguing for some arbitrary statute of limitations".

That would be a foolish way to read it.

You should value statues of Lee because you should value peace. You should value the idea that there is a limit to warfare and strife, that the sword can be sheathed, that people who have fought to the death can reconcile, that bloody civil war can in fact end. It can do this because the people fighting it did not perceive the conflict to be existential, and so at some point they were willing to stop. That is a rare and profoundly valuable virtue, and one that people should not treat with disdain.

You should value the idea of leaders who conduct themselves honorably, even for an evil cause. You should value this because no cause, no nation, no people, not even individuals are ever truly virtuous, as the line of good and evil runs through every human heart. You should value this because people following orders, even bad ones, and obeying what they see as honor and duty, even if woefully misguided, is what makes conflict survivable for a civilization. Fools mock the idea of "just following orders" because they've forgotten what it looks like when generals or the armies they lead don't. Fools mock the the idea of "honor" and "duty" as applied to those they see as villains, because they are stupid enough to believe that morality is a solved problem and that one can simply "do the right thing". Having a historical understanding that amounts to a Saturday morning cartoon, they presume that the moral equilibrium they have received from their present environment via an entirely passive osmosis is obviously and eternally correct.

If you believe in prioritizing the destruction of everything your opponents value, it's because you don't want to coexist with your opponents in any way. If you are unwilling to coexist with your opponents in any way, there is no way to make peace, as conflict becomes by necessity existential. It seems to me that most people advocating this sort of conflict have no conception of the horror they are asking for.

If you believe in prioritizing the destruction of everything your opponents value, it's because you don't want to coexist with your opponents in any way.

If your opponents and everything they value are evil, why should you *want( to coexist with them, unless you absolutely have to?

If you are unwilling to coexist with your opponents in any way, there is no way to make peace, as conflict becomes by necessity existential.

Which is certainly a problem if you lose such a conflict, but if a clear assessment of relative power indicates you're much, much more likely to win, how is your opponents ceasing to exist forever not a goal to be much desired, enough to be worth suffering serious losses to attain?

If your opponents and everything they value are evil, why should you want to coexist with them, unless you absolutely have to?

You wouldn't. You're describing at how someone arrives at the mindset I'm describing. But of course, no large-scale, long-term stable collection of humans is actually evil in this sense, and those who come closest are notable by their commitment to the idea that large numbers of their neighbors are irredeemably evil.

Which is certainly a problem if you lose such a conflict, but if a clear assessment of relative power indicates you're much, much more likely to win, how is your opponents ceasing to exist forever not a goal to be much desired, enough to be worth suffering serious losses to attain?

"I am Ozymandias, King of Kings. Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair."

History is littered with societies thinking themselves invincible, only to be destroyed in conflict. Sometimes the strong do what they will and the weak suffer what they must, but sometimes the strong break their teeth on the "weak" they attempt to victimize.

History is littered with societies thinking themselves invincible, only to be destroyed in conflict

Except, you can't be destroyed in conflict if there's nobody outside your group to be in conflict with. If you conquer and force to submit and fully assimilate to your group and its ways, or else destroy, the whole rest of humanity, then the entire future of humanity belongs to your group.

Sometimes the strong do what they will and the weak suffer what they must

I think that not only are we here, but that in this case, "the strong" are indeed so powerful that they have better than even odds of pulling off the above-described world-domination. Again, if you subjugate and exterminate everybody until your group is the only one left, literally the whole of humanity, how is that not a "stable win"? And if you (IME correctly) assess that the odds are good that you can pull it off, then why not?

your group is the only one left, literally the whole of humanity, how is that not a "stable win"?

Queue the schisms.

Sure, but both sides of the schism are still your heirs/descendants…

At no point in this discussion have I used "group" to describe biological descendants, and ideological heredity is neither innate nor reliable. While ideologies can and do have descendants, no individual or group can be forced to either adopt or maintain adherence to an ideology.