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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   29533 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 13, 2023

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Recently, I've been subjected to several posts on Twitter about Peter Singer. Singer posits a compelling argument: Society accepts a certain concept, A, yet its variant A', which along many relevant dimensions is similar to A but should be less objectionable, is met with taboo. Here is Singer's post, although I don't want to get into the the details because I'm thinking not about the argument itself but the prevalent reaction to it. The most common response to Singer's points is not an intellectual rebuttal but rather an expression of shock and outrage. The taboo around A' is like an emotional firewall, preventing any rational discourse.

This pattern of reaction is disconcerting. We live in a world of complex issues that demand thoughtful consideration, yet it appears that a significant portion of discourse is reduced to emotional outbursts. It's really hard for me not to feel disheartened or even adopt a misanthropic view when I see things like this.

So, is this emotional explosiveness truly representative of the general populace, or is it just that on Twitter, the most extreme views gain the most traction? Moreover, how can we, as individuals seeking constructive dialogue, navigate this landscape without succumbing to frustration or misanthropy?

I'm genuinely interested in understanding whether these reactions are as pervasive as they seem and what strategies we might employ to foster more meaningful, thought-provoking conversations, especially in a world dominated by emotional responses.

Besides being obvious sneerclub bait, this post is kind of ridiculous because you can sum it up as "Why does the Motte exist?", but I just want to know if there is any way to bring more people into the Motte's style of discourse or how serious a problem it is that some people are seemingly unpersuadable.

I think in the specific case, it makes perfect sense that society developed a taboo against goat-fucking and not goat-eating. Widespread goat-eating is harmless, even beneficial if you lack other food sources; widespread goat-fucking leads to novel zoonotic diseases appearing. Social taboos don't develop as some representation of a society's shared ethical considerations, they develop as a mechanism to control the behavior of members of society. They don't need to be rational, they need to be effective in encouraging prosocial behavior and discouraging antisocial behavior.

I'm pretty sure the risk of zoonotic disease can be dropped to near zero by the use of a condom. Given that they were first made out of sheep intestines, there's a poetic way it comes full circle.

There are plenty of taboos that have no empirical justification, such as burning widows alive after their husbands died, which was a common practice in India till the Brits stamped it out. The fully-generalized-counterargument that is consideration of Chesterton's fences sometimes requires a bulldozer.

I agree, there are lots of vestigial taboos/practices in many (most?) cultures that don't necessarily make sense any longer and could be usefully re-examined. Some perhaps never made any sense; I'd be curious to learn how a practice like widow burning ever came about. But that old saying "you can't reason a man out of a position he didn't reason himself into" seems to apply here.

I am amused at the idea of the future society that looks back at current bestiality with disgust because our sheep shaggers aren't using protection.

Much the same reason as Pharaohs and other kings/warlords entombed their wives, concubines, servants and slaves with them when they died.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sati_(practice)

It has origins before recorded history, but went out of fashion for a while before a resurgence in the colonial era:

Sati practice resumed during the colonial era, particularly in significant numbers in colonial Bengal Presidency.[55] Three factors may have contributed this revival: sati was believed to be supported by Hindu scriptures by the 19th century; sati was encouraged by unscrupulous neighbours as it was a means of property annexation from a widow who had the right to inherit her dead husband's property under Hindu law, and sati helped eliminate the inheritor; poverty was so extreme during the 19th century that sati was a means of escape for a woman with no means or hope of survival. Furthermore, the practice of jauhar by noblewomen, which emerged during the period of Islamic invasions as a means of escaping rape and torture at the hands of captors after their husbands were killed in battle; raised the status of women who refused to be dishonoured after their husbands' death.

Basically, widows were often fucked, unless they had sympathetic children or family, and were often pressured into killing themselves ritually, or often did so themselves, because they had no social safety net. The ban of sati was about the same time that advocacy successfully had legislation passed to allow widows to remarry.

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