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 -
How does a prosperous society combat insidious "compassion"?
The article then notes acts of violence including eggs thrown, paintballs shot, and one homeless beaten dead (though the motive is not specified). None of this seems particularly remarkable to me, as the base rate for being subject to intra-homeless violence and general excess mortality seems substantial in any American city.
Yet the article's top reader comments predictably shout from the rooftops "cruelty", "what happened to compassion", "these so-called Christians", "it's a war against the homeless, not homelessness". Worse, I don't get the sense this chorus is particularly performative as compared to other virtue signaling hobby horses. Instead, my read, based on nothing more than a decade-long familiarity of NYT reader comments, is that a majority of the readership genuinely believes the people of Kalispell, Montana to be deplorables as a result of their anti-homeless actions.
I haven't egged, paintballed, or beaten any homeless and don't intend to start, but I firmly believe that any city will be worse off if a "compassionate" genie magically conjured up 100 homeless people to live its streets; no comment on whether I think a city should welcome a "cruel" genie who's able and willing to magically poof away the same. I also understand second order effects and believe people respond to incentives. It seems to me, then, that every compassionate Times reader equals something like 0.0001 compassionate genies, and every cruel Kalispell resident 0.01 cruel genies. Mechanics and process aside, the end result is a San Fran full of growing compassion and ever more unhoused, and a Kalispell with a cruel lid on the homeless, and maybe even a reduction down the line.
The part I struggle with is, how does a society argue against compassion? Even if the rational counterarguments are themselves obvious, it seems like a fundamentally losing messaging game. We raise our children to be compassionate and we look for spouses who are compassionate. Trying to shout from the rooftops that compassion is actually bad when it comes to the homeless feels akin to telling the world that generosity is bad when it comes to tipping. Which is why I'm resigned that no matter how many articles are written about the tipping culture being out of control, it will creep up to more industries and circumstances and higher preset amounts. Similarly, I'm resigned that more tax and charity dollars will go to the homeless and the homeless industrial complex ad infinitum, because you can't argue against compassion, at least not outside of the ratsphere and among the voting masses.
But perhaps an answer is to change the framing entirely. Ivy League campus DEI would have never died from straight white men (and adjacent Asians) arguing how anti-white and anti-man the apparatus is; it's just not persuasive enough for the public long accustomed to hearing about oppression, systemic racism, patriarchy, and the value of diversity. Falling the accepted wisdom requires something entirely different, recently having one oppressed in-group fight another until the contradiction is impossible to sustain.
So is there an entirely different approach to beating back compassion when it comes to the homeless problem? Is it possible to effectively campaign for the cruel genie?
This is the problem brought up in David Stove's What's Wrong with Benevolence? His answer to the title is: nothing, if it is combined with other virtues. The elevation of benevolence to the status of fundamental virtue, which began around the 18th century and which was accelerated by utilitarians.
What is required is the recognition that other virtues have a fundamental value, e.g. justice and prudence. This is not easy, even if the arguments are good, because most people are highly agreeable (in the Big Five sense) so they fear conflict, and they tend to see benevolence as a route to conflict-avoidance: "If only we are kind enough to the unhoused darlings, they won't cause any trouble to us."
It's the same dynamic with a lot of woke activism. Disagreeable radicals can bully around most people, because most people's default model for handling such conflicts is to bend the knee and hope it saves their own necks.
So elevating benevolence as the sole virtue has the persuasive power of elevating most people's submissive natures into approved virtues, and hence it has both philosophical arguments and self-interest in its favour. That's also why people's benevolence tends to extend to e.g. accepting misbehaviour by the homeless, but not Peter Singer-style austerity of living like a monk and donating all your income to the poor. Accepting abuse is much easier to market than undertaking privation.
I'll add one more explanation, beyond most people are highly agreeable: most people are lazy. Figuring out what is just and prudent takes more mental energy because it involves trade offs. It's way easier to assign a vague benevolence label onto some idea or policy. Hence, it's easy to be pro raising the minimum wage because it's benevolent! Takes way too much thinking to figure out the second order costs that make it unjust and imprudent.
An example of this is labels for legislation. The reason why they tend to have fuzzy "apple pie" names like "Inflation Reduction Act," "Patriot Act," "Social Justice Act" etc. is because a lot of voters will never think too far beyond the labels.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
ಠ_ಠ
Maybe "Peter-Singer-essay-style austerity", to ensure accurate phrasing just in case those allegations aren't all faked?
Is it? I'd argue that there's a popular "millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute" philosophy that points exactly the other way. Even if the first-order utilitarian analysis might judge a particular instance of abuse to be cheaper than privation, a second-order look at incentives suggests that rewarding abuse might merely engender more abuse.
I fear the real distinction here is that abuse of other people (the ones who can't afford to isolate themselves from crime) is easier for most people to accept than privation of themselves.
Although, in this analysis, "donating all your income to the poor" is deprivation that's also often tainted with various levels of abuse. The guy who takes your donations to buy food because some combination of his employer/family/government/health screwed him over is merely depriving you. The guy who takes your intended-for-food-and-shelter donations to buy intoxicants is abusing you. The guy who blew off high school and was then surprised to find that he can't get or hold a livable wage is in between.
I was thinking specifically of his ideas about giving aid rather than his sex life, but yes.
That's certainly easier, but people also seem willing to tolerate e.g. volunteering their pronouns when it's required for the job.
Depends on the poor people in question. Singer was thinking of starving children in the Third World, IIRC. However, as you say:
Malthusian logic would suggest that the response of many of the Third World parents would be to have more children... At this step, serious benevolence-only types might start consider measures to encourage smaller families, such as "More education for women" or "More encouragement of contraception."
Garrett Hardin was big on this. He thought standard charity to 3rd world countries was net negative. It merely lets them have more children and be further food insecure. If you want masses of starving people, give food to the poorest Africans.
I once tried to explain Garrett Hardin's point in a college anthropology class discussion and the TA became very mad. Her face frozen in anger glaring at me. Pointing out second order negative consequences doesn't make you thoughtful, it apparently makes you evil.
That was one of the formative experiences of my life watching that anthropology grad student lock up in anger because I said that dumping food on Africans whose agricultural capacity was decreasing due to desertification was actually a bad thing. Some large portion of Africa getting screwed by desertification was a major point of that class. So what happens when you send them food aid? One of my only failures to hide my contrarian nature in college.
Yes, one of the marks of bad social science (and other sciences, but it's particularly tempting in complex open systems) is not to ask the question, "And then what?"
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