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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 6, 2023

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Sure, I agree it is voluntary, doesn't mean the migrants are doing something bad if they try and mitigate the impact of the culture shift on themselves, or that they should not come if they aren't happy with the culture shift.

Eating pasta at a certain restaurant is completely voluntary, but if their pasta comes with rocket on top and you really really hate it then you can freely move it to the side or onto a different plate. You're not a bad person for not accepting the rocket on your pasta and taking steps to get rid of it vs not even visiting the restaurant, maybe the rest of the meal is really good and you like it very much.

Same with migration, migrants are not and should not be expected to accept literally every cultural thing about their new host country and should be completely free to take steps making their experience more pleasant for them, it's no different to removing the rocket from your meal. We would scoff at anyone who said "If you don't like the rocket then don't eat at this restaurant, if you continue coming here you should be expected to consume everything on the pasta", we should do the same for people who make the analogous argument for immigration.

Au contraire. If the rule in my house is “Take your shoes off at the door,” and one of my guests prefers to keep his shoes on, he can either get with the program or gtfo. He doesn’t get to have it both ways.

Having said that, the conversation would be more enlightening if you gave concrete examples.

Countries aren't houses? If someone who live a city away wants no shoes in his house, that's his choice (i'm fine with it). If he wants his wife to wear a veil, whatever. If he wants to live in a big house with his extended family, is that my problem?

Sure, some cultural issue are important - we might not want to import people from honor cultures who settle disputes with violence or don't want to get educated without careful consideration and pushes for assimilation. But your analogy didn't point to that, it asserted both a right and a positive good to deny immigrants for entirely arbitrary reasons. Which seems dumb? My ancestors, and yours, likely had all sorts of cultural clashes and broken taboos against the natives when they came, but it's still nice that they did.

Neither are countries restaurants. Between the two analogies, I believe mine is both superior and a better way of framing the question.

That said, I’m not sure you really understood my analogy correctly. Yes, if someone who lives in a different house has different rules and customs, that’s absolutely fine (barring a few exceptions). Under my analogy, those would be different countries. So if I move into a women-wear-veils house/country, it would be just as wrong for me to demand the homeowners make an exception for my wife/daughters as it would be for someone from a wear-shoes-indoors house/country to move into my house and demand I accommodate them.

Also, I don’t see how my analogy asserted that it was a positive good to deny immigrants for arbitrary reasons. I think you’ve misunderstood the analogy, and that’s causing you to overthink the details of the analogy without getting into the ideas the analogy represents.

For example, “taking off your shoes” could represent any number of customs/laws: anything from genital mutilation and honor killings to speaking English and using the correct finger to point with. That’s why I said it would be more enlightening if BurdensomeCount gave concrete examples.

Same with migration, migrants are not and should not be expected to accept literally every cultural thing about their new host country and should be completely free to take steps making their experience more pleasant for them

Going to have to hard disagree there. The migrants presumably had either some notion of the price and thus the refusal to pay it is on them, or are fleeing an even worse situation. In either case the correct/pro-social response is not accommodation, but rather an admonishment to "suck it up buttercup". Imagine someone who buys a house under the approach line of an airport and then spends the rest of his life whinging about how he has to listen to the sound of airplanes all day. The airport was here first buddy, either stick a sock in it or move back to your old place.

Accept is the key word that needs some refinement. Migrants are entirely free to try to change society in their image. Their host society is entirely free to say "lol no." So long as both non-violently accept the outcome of that negotiation, it's all above board.

The issue many rightists have is that their host society instead goes "meh, just let me have my McDonald's, reality TV, and video games, and you can do whatever you like." That's arguably a bad outcome, but it's entirely on the natives for allowing the situation to develop like it did.

But the airport's positive or negative impact still remains whether it was there first or not. If it is net negative then the fact its been there 50 years shouldn't on its own be enough to protect it from change. Thats literally just status quo bias.

If you move to a country with a despotic myrderous tyrant ruling it, are you really bound to not be against them, because they were there before you?

It should be a consideration perhaps but its not the whole enchilada.

If you move to a country with a despotic myrderous tyrant ruling it, are you really bound to not be against them, because they were there before you?

Yes, absolutely, because you are the guest of this tyrant! You are voluntarily agreeing to be bound by his rules so that you can live in territory he controls. If you want to continue to oppose this tyrant, you're welcome to do so, but that necessarily precludes moving to his country and asking him for his protection.

Why? If I don't think he is a legitimate authority and am just working through the bureaucracy to move, why should I care? The country and the despotic tyrant are not synonymous, i can accept that i should follow the social rules of my new home, but i am not allowed to join the already existing resistance movement for example?

don't think he is a legitimate authority am just working through the bureaucracy to move,

If you don't think he is a legitimate authority, why are you respecting his authority and acting in all ways like he is? If you don't believe he's a legitimate authority, then you don't engage with his governmental processes. Going through his immigration system and respecting the laws he has set up is actually legitimising him, and I am assuming his system also includes an agreement to be bound by his laws. You can violate that agreement if you want, but you are still voluntarily bound by his legal system (I am assuming rebellion is illegal under this murderous despotic tyranny). If you actually don't believe he's a legitimate authority, then you can immigrate following the rules and procedures of the resistance movement and join their ostensible state.

Because having the appropriate papers is probably going to be pretty important. Remember your bureaucracy is not synonymous with the despot, just as the populace is not. If there were a legitimate authority it too would likely have a bureaucracy to engage with, and quite possibly exactly the same one. The despot is certainly within its rights to punish you for rebellion as well of course.

Otherwise anyone moving to the 13 colonies should not have engaged in rebellion against the Crown. They accepted the authority by moving there and living under those laws and taxes and so on.

Because having the appropriate papers is probably going to be pretty important. Remember your bureaucracy is not synonymous with the despot, just as the populace is not

Going to be pretty important? You are accepting his authority and regime, and legitimising it by participating in it. You are voluntarily agreeing to be bound by his laws here, because that's the condition he puts on letting you into his country. Again, if you really do think that this tyrant is not the legitimate ruler of the country, then you are either going to immigrate in via the resistance movement or work to bring this tyrant down from the outside. That said, if you do immigrate legitimately you are then free to break the law and rebel against him anyway, but breaking a law does not mean you are no longer bound by it - I am not immune to receiving speeding tickets because I demonstrated a lack of respect for speed limits one time.

Otherwise anyone moving to the 13 colonies should not have engaged in rebellion against the Crown. They accepted the authority by moving there and living under those laws and taxes and so on.

The colonies were not a separate country - George was king of them both, so this doesn't actually apply in this situation.

Why does that make a difference? The original point included moving next to an airport in your own country meaning you can't complain about said airport. Thus colonists moving to a place that got taxed without representation could not complain. They could have stayed in places that did get representation, no?

They chose to move to a colony then rebelled when treated like one.

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@doglatine, I hope this reassures you that we’re still capable of concocting elaborate hypotheticals.

Extremely reassuring 😄

I don't see any of this as a relevant counterargument, my reply to you is "what if I told you that the 'status quo bias' is correct?"

I would argue that if you move to a new country that you are obliged to abide by that country's rules.

I'm not saying it shouldn't be a factor, i am saying it shouldn't be the only factor. Are you really saying if you were an immigrant to Gaza, you should be "cleansing" Israel because its in the constitution?

That your own conscience has to be entirely subsumed by the rules of the place you moved to, just because you chose it?

I am honestly surprised if that is your position.

That your own conscience has to be entirely subsumed by the rules of the place you moved to, just because you chose it?

Your conscience isn't being subsumed it's being exercised because You Are Making a Choice. As @ChickenOverlord so succinctly put it, You knew what you were getting into, so either get with the program or get out.

A bit further down you make a claim about being "entitled to agitate" and I think that this one of the core cultural differences between liberals and conservatives. Having an opinion is not something you're entitled to, it's a privilege that comes from having put in the work and being a member of the group in good standing.

I don't think it illustrates a split between libetals and conservatives, as much as a split along individualists and collectivists. If I compare with Jiro's answer below (who I think is also a conservative), he says essentially you should disobey the rules that are against your own morality regardless (hopefully I am paraphrasing him accurately) and do whats right.

So its more of the libertarian/collectivist split I think. Should you assimilate with the existing collective or maintain your own individual behaviours no matter what.

Are you really saying if you were an immigrant to Gaza, you should be "cleansing" Israel because its in the constitution?

I'm not Hlynka, but my feeling is less that you have to adopt their "destroy Israel" culture and more that if you don't do so then the native Gazans are understandably justified in not wanting you there and potentially trying to get rid of you and/or keeping more people like you from immigrating. It all boils down to "You knew what you were getting into, so get with the program or get out."

Sure, the Gazans might feel that, but you are also entitled to agitate for positive change. And that is also ok.

Going back to the airport example. We have Bob who lived there before the airport and thinks it is a nuisance and wants it gone. And we have Charlie, who moved in a week ago and thinks it is a nuisance and wants it gone.

How long they have been there has no bearing on the objective reality of whether the airport is more of a negative than benefit to the locals. Its ok for Bob to pressure the government but not Charlie, even for exactly the same reasons?

The Gaza example falls under "are you allowed to shoot them? If so, you're also allowed to do a lot of other things that are beyond the pale."

It would be perfectly fine to walk into Gaza and start shooting people who are planning murder and genocide. (It may be unwise, if you don't want to die, but it wouldn't be wrong.) If it's okay to shoot them, it's okay to do other things, like ignore the rules they put on you being there.

Then people who disagree with Western morality are entirely free to come here and do exactly what they want? That's the logical outcome of that position. If you think abortion is murder, you should be able to move to the US and murder Americans who support it?

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How long they have been there has no bearing on the objective reality of whether the airport is more of a negative than benefit to the locals.

That's one of the many problems with utilitarianism, who has a moral right to agitate for change is unrelated to whether or not the airport is a net benefit. Those who knowingly move near an airport and then complain about it are whiny bitches that will ruin society if we give them any credence, and it's our moral duty to tell them to shut the hell up, completely independent of if the airport is a good or bad thing.

In fact, a localish example recently here in Utah was that several developers built new houses in Lehi, Utah. The new residents then started complaining about the smell from the nearby mink farms and demanded that they got shut down, which they partially succeeded at . The right thing to do would have been to tell these whiny bitches that they shouldn't have moved close to a mink farm if they didn't want to have to deal with the smell. For the record I don't live in Lehi and have no connection to either the mink farms or the whiny residents.

The right thing to do would have been to tell these whiny bitches that they shouldn't have moved close to a mink farm if they didn't want to have to deal with the smell.

That still doesn't address the people who were there before the mink farm. Should the mink farmers not have moved in, in the first place and inflicted the smell upon them? Presumably they are able to complain? (and if there weren't any in this particular instance, imagine there were). I'm not a utilitarian, but the same argument from a pre or post event mover is still just as valid (or invalid as the case may be).