site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 22, 2024

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.

5
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Social conservatism is relative. American red tribers don't refrain from sex until marriage but it's more often with a long term boyfriend/girlfriend that eventually leads to marriage as opposed to either hookup culture or cohabitating for 5+ years without planning to get married. Some of them do go to church every Sunday. Many go at Christmas or Easter. They don't generally avoid saying "damn" but that's been common for centuries so I'm not sure we can blame modernity for that one. If you define it by pre-1920s America standards then yeah nobody is a conservative any more but there are still useful distinctions.

The blue tribe Democratic lawyer in Connecticut is probably socially conservative than a red triber in a trailer park, but less so than a red triber of the same class. The manners of the upper middle class have always skewed conservative.

It seems like a major confound that you pretty much have to have a college degree to be a blue triber, whereas the red tribe covers the whole economic spectrum.

IME red tribe normie elites are fairly socially conservative, at least enough to raise objections to their grandchildren fornicating openly(although usually with a don't ask/don't tell) and expecting their dependents to be members of- and at least sometimes attend- a church. That's of course not getting into the omnipresent homophobia(which is enough for tons of people to call Russia based), continuation of at least occasional shotgun weddings, and belief that yes, it's better for mothers to stay home even if it's not realistic for lots of families.

A red tribe country would be by western standards fairly socially conservative, but Islamic norms would be a pretty small minority.