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 -
A couple weeks ago I had an argument with people on here about the Sexual Revolution, and its terrible effects on society, or lack thereof. Just about everyone except me was in agreement that the SR was a bad thing.
My thoughts and responses to objections were scattered throughout the thread, so I decided to collect them and make a brief and incomplete case as to why the SR, and the social revolution of the 60s in general was not a bad thing, and most of its purported deleterious impacts are overstated, wrongly attributed, or nonexistent.
Did the social revolution of the 60s make everybody unhappy and miserable?
Straightforwardly, yes. American self-reported happiness rates have been on a fairly steady decline since the 70s. With regards to women in particular, there is a phenomenon referred to as the ‘paradox of declining female happiness’, the observation that even as women have attained greater legal rights and generally been raised in status relative to men, their self-reported happiness has declined. This is often used by social conservatives to argue that women were happier as wives and mothers and that forcing them out of their ‘natural’ roles and into competition with men was a mistake.
I am generally skeptical about self-reported happiness, because it’s not clear if measurement invariance holds over time. Does the question “are you happy?” mean the same thing to someone in 2020 as it does in 1970, let alone 1900?
But suicide rates have also been rising in the US for a long time, so it’s fair to say people becoming unhappier is a real phenomenon. The trend is actually worst among young-ish adults. Here’s a tweet from middling right-wing e-celeb Indian Bronson blaming this trend on the usual right-wing bogeymen.
The problem with the “everyone is depressed and killing themselves because we aren’t based and trad anymore” story is that it doesn’t hold internationally.
It’s pretty undeniable that Western Europe underwent the same social revolution as the US. On many metrics like irreligion, illegitimacy, and rates of people identifying as LGBT, what a social conservative would probably call ‘the decay’ is actually significantly more advanced than it is in the US.
Yet over the past several decades in Europe, self-reported happiness has tended to either hold steady, or increase.
Suicide rates back this up. Over the same time period that suicide rates have spiked among Americans, especially American youth, they’ve declined in western Europe
It seems that everybody being atomized gay atheists hasn’t made Europeans more depressed or suicidal.
What about the dreaded epidemic of single motherhood? Well, as noted above, multiple European countries have single-parenthood rates (and as in the US, the vast majority being single mothers) equivalent or greater than those of the US, without the associated social dysfunction.
There’s not as much research as one would like, but from what I have found, the children of widowed mothers do not tend to differ much on outcomes from the children of biological, two-parent households, so “growing up without a father” doesn’t seem to be that important net of other factors.
What about the supposedly meteor-tier impact on the ‘sexual marketplace’? This is honestly worthy of its own post, but the short answer. Is, no, the idea that the upper 20% (or 10% or 5% or 1% depending on how blackpilled your interlocutor is) of Chads hoarding all the woman while ordinary guys starve is very thinly supported on the ground.
Last year a headline proclaiming “most young men are single. Most young women are not.” went viral. Specifically, GSS data showed that 63% of young men reported themselves as single while only 34% of young women did. This was of course immediately seized upon as proof that a huge proportion of girls are in “chad harems.” Since nobody bothers to read beyond a sensationalist headline, not many dug deep enough to discover that this proportion has been roughly the same for over thirty years, so if the chadopoly is real, it’s been going on for a long time.
As for the “divorce rape” the manosphere has spent the last fifteen years insisting is endemic under our gynocracy, only 10% of divorces actually result in any actual alimony paid.
I add this cautiously, because it’s the only study I could find to treat the question, and it’s about the UK, and it’s about twenty years old, but there is at least some evidence that men actually end up richer long term post-divorce. Which makes intuitive sense to me. Most men are breadwinners, so naturally when you don’t have to support a whole other human being, you’re going to have more disposable income on hand.
If you’re a conservative, then you think single motherhood, divorce, people being gay, and promiscuity, are bad in and of themselves, so from a conservative perspective, the social revolution of the 60s was tautologically a bad thing since that revolution was explicitly an anti-conservative one. But that is not likely to convince anyone who is not already a conservative.
When I have this argument elsewhere someone always hits me with “oh so you think everything is great, huh? You think this degenerate feminist deracinated hellscape we inhabit is a paradise, don’t you?” People on here are not generally that abrasive but anyway, no, I don’t, I think there are plenty of problems in the world. but I also don’t think there’s much evidence for “everything would be better if we RETVRNED” thesis.
This is all besides the fact that I don't think it's POSSIBLE to retvrn because I think the massive social changes of the past two centuries are down less to the Frankfurt School indoctrinating everyone with Cultural Marxism and more to the seismic shifts in the actual underlying material basis of society, which could not be undone short of some kind of totalitarian anti-technological world dictatorship (which of course would have to make significant use of modern technology to impose itself) enforcing the law of Ted Kaczynski upon the earth, but that is another story and I am tired of writing.
I think being honest about the depression bit, the huge difference is the difference in expectations that Americans tend to have, especially middle to upper class white Americans. We are often told that hard work always pays off, that college will land you a good job, and that work should be fun and that everyone gets their “dream job”. It’s fantasy for 99% of the population— increasing population, globalization, and the absolute glut of college graduates makes it ever more difficult for a college graduate to land a good paying job out of school without having really good connections and internships. So what happens when you see lots of people doing exactly what you’re being told is the way forward and struggling to make it? When you watch and read about people making $16 an hour and owing $100K, giving up on owning a home and having kids because they can’t afford it?
The difference between the narrative and reality is depression inducing.
In which case maybe the Americans should get a taste of reality and come back down to earth. Billions of people around the world would kill to be in a situation where they are an American citizen making $16 an hour and owing $100k. If these complainers had any special talents then maybe they would have a point but these people tend to be bog standard "generic human units" with nothing going for them at all.
There's nothing "American," about being an economic migrant. Very few of the people who would work hard to get here, come for the unique American identity and experience. They're seeking a material quality of life that isn't comparable to what they currently have. Those that have it where they are, don't look with so much envy to the US.
More options
Context Copy link
I think we’re mostly on the same page here. The problem isn’t necessarily the reality being horrible and tbh if you’re willing to live in a lower cost region it’s probably fine. But when you put that next to what TV told you you would have, it feels like a let down because vulture has told you lies, basically. You are sold fantasies about the world of the adult. Doing what you like, for 99% of the planet is a delusional idea because unless you are extraordinarily talented you won’t even get through whatever the front door is. The vast majority of people who want to do anything related to the arts have a hobby. You won’t be paid for it, and everyone with a brain knows it. Every once in a great while there’s a unicorn, someone who manages to break through enough to make enough to quit the day job. It’s not sold that way, but it’s true. Likewise the idea of what you will have as a lifestyle in adulthood is wildly skewed. The median income is 50K nationwide. You cannot buy a large house and take lavish vacations and wear fashionable clothing on that income.
The problem isn’t the reality. The problem is that we tell everyone that they are awesome, that they will have an upper class lifestyle, doing a job that they’re passionate about, have time off and all kinds of bells and whistles. Most people won’t even come close. And then they feel miserable because they don’t understand that they’re doing just fine. If they were sold on something reasonable (a small apartment, a shitty job, and an occasional trip to a nearby campsite) they’d probably be fine with that. But the difference between the narrative and reality (on most fronts tbh, as the guy pointed out with dating) makes reality seem terrible.
What's worse is that even if you understand it, you can't make other people understand it. I may understand that I have a great lifestyle by historical and international standards, and that even by national standards my lifestyle is at worst average. My family don't, and are disappointed that I am not the kind of average that is depicted in media. Women sure as fuck don't understand; they are resentful of a husband that does not make at least six figures and takes them out to expensive restaurants and exotic vacations.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Happiness is a function of relative status, not absolute economic utility.
For the billions around the world, $16/hour in an unglamorous job would increase their status relative to their neighbors. For an American, $16/hour in an unglamorous job feels perilously low status compared to one's (fictional, learned from advertisements and social media) neighbors. You criticize them harshly as wanting special privileges, but in their mind they are mainly seeking to clear to a respectability threshold.
The problem underlying a great many problems in society — education, purchasing decisions, family formation — is the dangerous gap between the popular perception of average and the reality of average.
One thing I always thought was pretty funny on Reddit, was the way conversations devolved into hurling insults after it was clear one side of the discussion was losing the argument.
I effectively checked out of American society a long time ago, and looked with envy to other countries that were considerably less rich (i.e. Russia, Southeast Asia, pockets of Latin America), as a place where I was happier and lived in relative conditions more suitable to my lifestyle. When it came to laying that out on the table and why other countries might have more to offer and have other advantages over the US, the mockery always ensured with, "what, you gonna' b a broke Ruski gettin' sent to the front lines of Ukraine!," to which my response was always, "... as opposed to what? Paying $4,000 a month to live in a shoebox in the progressive heartland of the Bay Area, where you're persecuted for your political views?" I'd willingly go to war for a tribe and homecoming that's uniquely absent from a homeland that willfully hollowed itself out and transitioned into becoming a marketplace.
There's more to one's happiness than money at the end of the day.
have you migrated to either?
It seems to me that you are shitposting for shock value. You mention paying $4,000 a month for rent, that is enough to buy a plane ticket. Note: I am not recommanding doing this.
And you mention conditions more suitable to your lifestyle, not just that you would prefer to be born there.
I will take shoebox over trench, thank you. (as described, neither is nice but it sounds to me you underestimate awfulness of war)
note: I would be willing to take part in war in defence of something I value
Seems more to me like you have a hard time comprehending that some people don't think the US is all it's cracked up to be.
I'm curious, do you think most Africans still live in mud huts too?
No? As evidenced by fact that I am nor trying to move there.
I am just asking how seriously you believe your own claim that trench in Ukraine is superior to renting room in Bay Area.
I think you are trolling/shitposting/lying and you do not actually believe that Russia or trench in Ukraine is superior to your life in USA. But if you are taking steps to emigrate to one of places you mentioned I could admire consistency at least.
(it is hard to take seriously someone who considers trench on frontline being superior place to life in USA, even Bay Area)
Construction materials used in Africa have no relation to how awful war is (especially drone/artillery flavoured trenches).
And no, I am not expecting mud to be dominating material nowadays.
Except for when you criticized me for "not preferring to have been born there." A statement I never made, hinted at, or even remotely gestured toward.
And I'm saying the reason you're confused is because you missed the principle the example is meant it illustrate and took the example itself too literally and ran with it.
Which wasn't the point I was making.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Still the ratio between people coming to US and people leaving speaks for itself.
Seeing people voting with their legs is about the only objective measure of oppression that exists. Genuinely oppressed people are running away from their persecutors (if they have the opportunity, most oppressed people in history had nowhere to go).
Not anymore, most Africans now live in favela style housing in mega cities. Hellish by our standards, paradisical by standards of their previous village life.
Considering it's much harder to be an economic migrant in other countries, this is unsurprising. Sounds like parasites found an easier target.
In a country where it's significantly easier to immigrate to? This is one of the things native born Americas cite in favor of the declining QOL of this country, of which I happen to agree. It's pretty strange why I should see this as a net benefit to living in this country.
Yeah, that one went right over your head, didn't it?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
If you never found your tribe and home in USA, what makes you think Russia would be any different? I can tell you from experience there isn't any more magical sovl in Russian people than the Westerners. Not obvious, at least.
Because I've got quite a good rapport and camaraderie with Russian people that I've known my whole life?
And none with Americans? Or is it that your rapport with Americans left you with the impression that they can't be your tribe?
From where I'm standing, one may convince themselves to think they're "fighting for the Russian tribe". They may even die happy. However, this worldview won't be aligned with reality.
Well let's be fair. This country gave up on me long before I did on it.
And no, I've got plenty of friends who are Americans, who are every bit as disillusioned with the country as I am. But I'm quite curious to know what the best self-aggrandizing vanity pitch for the US is, since it's one of America's favorite pastimes. I doubt it'll be any better than mine, which is also an abject failure.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
$4000 gets you a lot more than a shoebox even in the Bay area (depending on which town exactly), and it sure beats getting exploded by a quadcopter in a frozen shithole you don't care about.
The US has it's problems but contrary to popular belief you don't have to live in the Bay area. I can't help but notice that you are posting on the motte instead of sitting in a trench in eastern Ukraine so it seems you didn't find that option too appealing either.
$4,000 couldn't even get you a run down crack house in San Francisco.
Whoever's doing that isn't doing it right. You can live rich in a poor country or live poor in a rich country. That's if money's your only concern. There's little pride I have in being American in 2023.
I don't live in the Bay Area anymore. And unlike plenty of Americans, I've experienced the world, and lived abroad. The world does exist outside the shadow the mainstream media loves to cast over other nation's.
The Bay area is not San Francisco.
$4000, 1000 square feet, not a crack house. https://www.zillow.com/apartments/san-francisco-ca/one-henry-adams/9NJvHk/
Why make easily falsifiable claims with no basis in reality?
How much pride do you have in being Russian in 2023? Keep in mind you will never be a real Russian and the Russian elite is just as degenerate as the West.
It's weird to read this when you equated the entire country to San Francisco.
Ah. I stand corrected. I can find two, one bathroom shoeboxes for $1,000 less, right now. Further inventory is currently unavailable until later this year.
Is that better?
I'm not Russian, and yet they still have more reasons to be prideful then I currently see in much of the west. And believe it or not, Russia today isn't 'as corrupt' as you think it is for the average citizen. And saying it's only as bad as the west is quite sad, truly.
What's wrong with placing the focus on the trendsetters of the country? Would you prefer NYC instead which is even worse?
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
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link