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.

  • I don't know if it's because Westerners don't think that people could actually sincerely believe in their religion like that so they must be ACTUALLY motivated by something else (wrong, as their writings tell us), or their belief that inside everyone is a Westerner waiting to come out who supports gay marriage and diversity,

It's both of these things. And their go-to reason for why these sorts of people behave the way they do is "socioeconomic inequality." IMO this is the result of a reductionist worldview that flattens everything to care/harm. And then even only economic care/harm, because have as a society lacked widely agreed upon moral common ground to work from that the only pure evil that can be imagined anymore is economic privation. Any other evil can ultimately be traced back to a resource-poor upbringing or generational poverty or economic exploitation.

They can't conceive of faith or honor or things like that, those must be false consciousnesses obscuring the true, material cause of the anger.

On the one hand we have a group that wants millions of arabs to live in the same town as their grandparents live. On the other hand we have a group that wants millions of arabs to be refugees. There are good moral reasons to oppose ethnic cleansing but also the massive net positive of arabs staying put in their home towns. If one doesn't want large numbers of arabs on the move, the natural response is to support Hamas. Israel's efforts to destabilize Syria have been a major humanitarian crisis but has also had consequences reaching far beyond the local region. Religion or not, there is no reason for the Palestinians not to fight back.

Israel has offered the Palestinians a state numerous times. Israelis interfered in Gaza very little for the past 15 years and even abandoned settlements on the territory. It seems the Palestinians too prefer to remain "refugees" (if that term can be applied to people living somewhere for three generations with at least some degree of autonomy).

Why would the Palestinians agree to less than half of their land? As for Gaza they are under a blockade and can't export goods. They have the right to strike back as long as Israel is conducting acts of war against them.

Because that's the best they are going to get.

Gaza is under blockade because they elected a regime that ran on the platform of eradicating Jews and Israel.

If they didn't fight back they would have been pushed out of Palestine a long time ago. There are still millions of Palestinians in Palestine because they fight back and defend themselves.

How would they have been pushed out if they had a sovereign state? Remaining a quasi territory of Israel is much worse if your goal is to keep your territory.

Again, Israel withdrew from Gaza over a decade ago and they insist on attacking the Israeli civilian population. Pushing gazans out of gaza was totally off the table until the Hamas self defense operation last month.

Gaza is under a blockade which is an act of war. If Israel is blockading Gaza than the people of Gaza have every right to use military force against Israel.

what about the Rafah crossing with Egypt? its not like israel surrounds Gaza