site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 6, 2023

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.

5
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

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.