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 went digging for numbers and found:
Slavery was a much bigger deal in the South than other places that freed slaves. The only other place I'm familiar with that had a similar proportion of slaves was Cuba, where slavery was abolished in 1886. However, as with the South, this wasn't chosen by Cuba - it was imposed by an outside power (Spain).
Given the trend in when slavery was abolished across the world, I think it's quite reasonable to suppose, if given the choice, the South would've continued with slavery into the 20th century. None of this requires assuming Southerners were "uniquely horrible or monstrous" - all it requires is assuming the more reason you give someone to avoid uncomfortable moral reasoning, the more they will avoid said reasoning.
Here's are the two questions one really needs to answer to argue whether we should have postponed ending slavery to avoid a Civil War:
The Civil War resulted in ~700k deaths and free 4m slaves. If I assume a year lived as a slave is half as valuable as a year lived as a free man, the naive utilitarian answer to (1) is something like 18 years. I personally rather doubt the South would've gone along with ending slavery before 1879, so I think the utilitarian answer is to prefer the Civil War.
The non-utilitarian answer is, imo, "wtf you monster - slavery is wrong".
Why the percentage of the South that were slaves and not the U.S. as a whole? You didn't divide those other countries into the pro-slave and anti-slave factions. Seems like a stolen base, especially when it was the anti-slave half of the U.S. that precipitated the end of slavery, just like in those other countries that weren't carved up for stats.
The entire purpose of this exercise is to consider how likely the South was to either choose to end slavery on its own or consent to have it chosen for them without bloodshed. The relevant metric, therefore, is how important slavery was to the South.
More concretely, the Civil War depended on individual state governments choosing to secede, so the geographic concentration of slavery in the US is extremely relevant. If slavery was evenly distributed in the US, I
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link