site banner
PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   29663 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 13, 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.

7
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

portrayal of its inhabitants as people who killed, looted, and enslaved without a second thought

I don't know; you can find plenty of primary source material from individuals and groups of people that were out killing, looting, and enslaving. They justified themselves in lots of different ways - but pillaging and looting and killing, especially in war, wasn't exactly uncommon in the past.

Oh really? I was honestly unaware, my impression was very little had survived from that era at least in terms of writing.

I guess I'd misspoken here: I wasn't referring to Bronze Age peoples justifying their pillaging and looting, but others...the Romans, the British, the French, the Spanish. The Vikings. Plenty of documentation there, much of it in English, about exactly what these people thought as they pillaged and looted. It doesn't seem that much of a stretch to say that people in the Bronze Age were also pillaging and looting shamelessly.

Modern museums have so many cuneiform tablets that most of them have not been published.

If you want literature, check Gilgamesh or the Enuma Elisha (Sinuhe has already been mentioned). If you're interested in morality, check law codices, like the Stela of Hammurabi.

But these are totally different places and eras. I'm talking about the society depicted in the Iliad, Greece around the 1100s. Maybe we could get hints at it from more contemporary literature from other places, but Gilgamesh is about a society 1000 years earlier.

I thought you wanted insight into the Bronze Age. My bad.

Sorry I should have been more specific I'm talking about Greece. At least my impression is that when far right folks invoke the Bronze Age, they are also mostly talking about Greece and using the Iliad vs Odyssey as primary material instead of Gilgamesh or the the Story of Sinuhe

I don’t have details on this, but I believe that there are a few Mycenaean Greek primary sources and that historians who study them broadly agree that the most high-status job in the society they depict was… pirate.

Haha what a resume padder. I would definitely be interested in reading more.

I mean a lot of fedora tipping atheist scholars will try and date most of the Old Testament to slightly before or during the Babylonian Captivity at the earliest (so around 600 BC) but if you believe that Moses wrote the five books of Moses then that dates them solidly within the Bronze Age. And the books of Moses and Joshua are all about conquering the holy land because God gave it to them. That was their motivation, but their actual actions often involved completely eradicating the local populace, which isn't too far off from what we see bronze age morality as. Mind you I'm religious and have no issues with the Israelites wiping out the Canaanites but without the divine justification it would be pretty awful.

That's fair and to be clear I certainly wouldn't claim that ancient morality was the same as ours. But I'd also be skeptical that there was no change in culture or values across regions and time periods, and likewise would think there's a limit to what records from one era in Babylon could tell us about a different era in Greece. And if the books were actually written in the 600s then this would be fairly close to the time period the Iliad was written in itself, and I would even have the same questions about a (comparatively) modern culture writing moral narratives about a more ancient one.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats