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.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I am not part of the dissident right although there are some ideas where there is crossover, as is to be the case to anyone opposing the prevailing racism of our time and standing for the rights of groups associated with the right. Your crossover with the woke is quite much closer though.
And obviously the people who agree with the woke like you, do not allow victimhood politics for right wing identity groups but you do tolerate and allow it for left wing identity groups, and you directly attack those opposing this distinction. Your ideas fit directly with the woke. Your constant attacks towards any victimhood/identity politics for white people in particular is obviously racist especially when there are no white identitarian groups with substantial influence, and much more of other groups with said influence which promote a racist agenda. This is a very extreme and also very ahistorical agenda. It has only been promoted as the way to eliminate tribalism among moden far left and American liberals, who often don't realize how radical they have been.
I deliberately argue that unlike the woke we need to actually try to separate legitimate victimization with illegimate excess promotion of a group as victims where it is unwarranted. That accurately recognising victims and perpetrators is a key aspect of justice, which is undermined by various people not just you who try to argue that caring about victims of the wrong tribes is inherently evil and is dissident right-esque as you try to portray it. Which is a blatant circular argument. Its evil because you define those arguing it as evil.
In reality the moderate position that is in line with justice and the truth is that identity groups associated with the left, need to knock it off with their victimhood politics and hatred and come to tolerate and compromise with respecting the rights and identities of groups associated with the right like white christian straight middle class men. And of course those who have a self hateful mentality which is blatantly unjust should do likewise for their own group.
I even argued against right wingers adopting the same mentality as the woke and gave specific reasons of why, rejecting the claim that it is slave morality for the right to adopt that kind extreme supremacist tribalism. My specific argument was that it was unjust, caused unnecessary conflict and was a totalizing vision. So unlike you, I manage to distinguish my position with an extreme one in favor of any group. And I leave room for moderation for left wing associated groups too. I do think that both tribalism to a point and promoting legitimate victimhood to a point is justifiable for different groups and also explicitly for any identity groups associated with the right.
Especially those associated with the right, in the time where progressive extremism that disregards their rights is the more pervasive movement.
What is satirical is how you twist things and paint yourself as someone in the middle or as a "conservative" who somehow focuses much more on attacking the right than the left. Especially when the left wing tribalism is dominating by denying the right wing groups any legitimacy, which is an agenda that you completely fit into. In your David French-esque world it is Hlynka and those fake conservatives like the Torries who actually implemented the far left agenda in policies such as hate speech laws, mass migration, intolerance to native identity politics and AA that represent the true conservatism, while actual opponents of it are "woke"!
Apparently, these ideas are too incoherent for various people here to give a damn, which is convenient for those like you who try to muddy the waters.
Either various people here have a problem with their comprehension. And they tend to be those who previously have shown the same lack of comprehension and promoted this concern trolling argument. Or they actually can comprehend this distinction fine but like to pretend they don't.
In any case, the argument in favor of concern trolling white people, Christians, right wingers, men, whoever, is a blatantly false and easy to undermine through basic logic. The fact that so far it hasn't been sufficiently attacked and ridiculed is itself insulting for those who failed to do their duty and weaken a horrible argument that is pretty key part of the worse behaviors in politics today. There is clearly in certain spaces a shameful lack of conviction in areas where strong conviction is fully justifiable, but would challenge the basic premises of the woke/progressive stack faction. Worse than that the excess of conviction exists in trolling those who actually try to undermine these pervasive today fallacies.
Hi there, I've been posting in rat-adjacent spaces under this pseudonym since the fall semester of 2012, yet clearly you are unfamiliar with me. If you were you would already know what my reply is going to be.
I see your claim that "unlike the woke we need to actually try to separate legitimate victimization with illegimate" and raise you. We need to reject the entire victimhood narrative/framing device wholesale. It's all illegitimate. Hegel's whole schtick about oppressors and the oppressed is a crock that bears only a tangential resemblance to the real world. Likewise, the entire concept of "slave-morality" is what the kids these days call "a cope" a desperate attempt by 19th century leftists to rescue their narrative from the increasingly overwhelming evidence of history. Amusing when viewed in light of the post about Napoleon's legacy up thread.
I didn't read OP's comment and have no interest in alt-right talking points, but isn't this an un-Christian take? Imo concern for victims is a much more ancient, Christian idea than a Hegelian one. My main problem with the current victimhood stuff very much is that I see it used by people who are already well off and privledged to look down on others. Figuring out the people in society who are actually struggling and uplifting them seems like a very reasonable Christian project - certainly that was the kind of thing I was taught in church at least.
Privileged/disadvantaged is exceptionally close to bully/victim, but it isn't the same. Being a victim doesn't make you righteous, it increases the possibility, but that's beside the point because victim hood isn't what's important - what is important is that you help people who are suffering so they don't have to suffer.
Not against that, but it still suggests looking at things through the framework of figuring out who the victims are (in order to uplift them) is valid, ordinary Christian business.
It does, but I worry that that's why mainstream Christianity has gone so astray and is currently falling apart. We made a measure a target. Basically I'm with hlynka, we need to abolish the victimhood narrative, not rework it - and while there might be versions of Christianity which support the victimhood narrative, they are flawed imo compared to our borderer shtick of personal responsibility and finding meaning in helping others.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The oppressor/oppressed bit is aaaaa-bsolutely not a Hegel original. His contribution (founding contribution IMO) to the current sickness was that knowledge begins with a relation among things, which is where the idea of oppressor/oppressed ultimately comes from, but was not him. He wasn't exactly an old school conservative, but he also isn't clearly recognizable as a modern liberal or leftist in any way whatsoever.
Also, Nietzsche was also completely not a leftist. The slave morality is indeed supposed to be a cope, of a sort, not of the 19th century but of the 7th century, BC. An ideology reaction of the Jews to their conquest by virile, life affirming masters.
The Leftist affair with Nietzsche is not based upon his being in any way on their side. He wasn't. The Masters are the good guys in his telling, to the extent there are any. The horrible man-beasts whose pure will and lack of moral feeling are not Leftists. Their love of him is based on outright ignoring most of what he had to say in order to grasp at a sense of libertinism.
You misunderstand.
Nietzsche may not have been a leftist but Nietzsche's philosophy starts from a position that the primary axioms of the left are true. That Rousseau is Right and Hobbes is wrong, that the church are a bunch of stupid meanies wanting to regulate your behavior, and that personal emancipation and actualization are the greatest of all goods. When I say "the entire concept of slave-morality is a cope" I'm not saying that slave morality is a cope. I'm saying the entire concept is a cope.
That "The slave morality is indeed supposed to be a cope, of a sort, not of the 19th century but of the 7th century, BC. An ideology reaction of the Jews to their conquest by virile, life affirming masters." is the sort of lie secular left-wing continental Europeans tell themselves to avoid confronting the fact that they lost the great power race to a nation of shopkeepers (the British Empire) and their mongrel ner-do-well foster kids (the US).
No, it really doesn't.
Uh are you sure about that? Nietzsche doesn't really "start" with the idea that all men are created equal, and I don't think you're talking intelligently about him or his work if you make that claim.
I'm honestly not sure if this is just you reacting to a half-baked understanding of Nietzsche gleaned from a mixture of other people reacting to his work (and maybe some disconnected quotes) or an incredibly artisanal hot take, but I feel like stressing that Nietzsche's philosophy very much did not start from the axiom that all men are created equal.
Rousseau's core axiom is not "that all men are created equal".
Rousseau's core axioms are, that all injustice is a product of social structure, and that social structures are imposed from the top down. Accordingly, the first step to building a healthier and more just society must be to demolish and discredit the existing social structures/norms. It is this conclusion that both Nietzsche and the political left are starting from.
However, as @FCfromSSC observes, the logical end point of this sort of belief is that there is no such thing as morality or "a higher law". Everything is "the will to power" all the way down. And I would argue that is why explicitly secular progressive and technocratic governments have displayed a historical tendency to pile mountains of skulls that put the likes of Genghis Kahn and the Holy Roman Emperors to shame.
You'll have to forgive me, because I thought that's what you were referring to when you opened up with talk of the primary axioms of the left. Equality and equity are very big bugbears on the left, and that's what my mind immediately jumped to when you spoke about a core axiom of Rousseau in the context of core axioms of the left.
I don't even see anything here that Nietzsche himself would disagree with. My understanding of his stance is that morality is in fact just another expression of the will to power, and it isn't like he has a terribly big problem with mountains of skulls. I think he'd disagree heartily with the left on exactly whose skulls should be put onto the pile, but the existence of it isn't really a problem from within his philosophy. Yes people are going to die, and as long as they aren't great people, who cares?
That said, I don't think there's all too much aversion to mountains of skulls these days. If you gave rationalists a button which said "In exchange for 98% of Subsaharan Africans getting their skulls removed and placed into a giant pyramid you will receive a perfectly aligned AI and full implementation of your desired social policies" I think that there'd be more than a few willing to push it.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
...I don't think @HlynkaCG is claiming that Neitzche starts from the axiom that "all men are created equal". He's free to correct me, but he seems to be arguing, correctly in my view, that Neitzche starts from the axiom that humans are in charge, that there is no basis for morality beyond the human mind, that there is no God and no innate moral order to the universe, beyond what we impose on it through our own will and nature. That, not equality, is the core axiom of Rousseau, in my view.
I can appreciate that, but I was under the impression that we're talking about the overlap between Rousseau and the political left - which is why my brain pattern-matched the way it did.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link