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 -
We're always just one Benjamin Spock away from revolutionizing childcare and killing a bunch of children in the process.
You used to be able to look towards a healthy society and base your judgement on that. Mixing and matching the old and new, good and bad, like a good conservative. But it seems 'good conservatism' doesn't necessarily lead to healthy children or 'healthy societies'. As we've managed to revolutionize those as well under their watchful eye and careful guidance.
I would like to blame people like Freud, Spock and other culture critique warriors who judged what a healthy society was based on other metrics than the societies ability to rear 'healthy' children. But at the same time much of the blame falls on the societies themselves for failing to defend themselves against bad memes.
Instead of firm guidelines, education and a social fabric built around babies, we get a cyclical revolution driven by anecdotes, hobbyists and professional weirdos constantly trying to keep up with an ever-degenerating society.
19th/early 20th century child-raising approaches in the developed world created several generations of people who killed something like 70 million of each other in the span of about 30 years and built multiple viciously authoritarian governments.
For someone living in 1950 and spending his time investigating child-raising, I'm not sure there was really any large-scale model of success to point to.
Victorian era America and Britain were just as big on the whole ‘kids belong in a coal mine, not in front a screen’ thing as Austria-Hungary, the Russian empire, and China. They also notably didn’t produce brutal dictators who killed millions.
Estimates for deaths that are more or less directly downstream from British colonialism also range in the tens to hundreds of millions, and it's not hard to draw direct connections between how British society at the time envisioned the relationship between adults and children, and how it envisioned the relationship between colonial master and colonial subject. On the US side, the Civil War was about in the middle of the Victorian era...
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Modern parents do such a wonderful job of teaching their children not to start world wars or become communist dictators. If only little Adolf and Joey had some gentle parenting, all that nastiness could have been avoided.
I think you're being sarcastic, but to be honest I think yeah, if little Adolf and Joey had gotten more loving parenting there's a very good chance they wouldn't have ended up becoming dictators.
That said, I'm sure that there have been many dictators who had loving parents so having loving parents is probably not a sufficient condition for not becoming a dictator.
On this website we do not besmirch the name of Klara Hitler!
But seriously, I've never heard anything to suggest that she was a bad mother. And I read about Stalin's mother and she didn't seem bad either.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
To be fair, I don’t think coming home from work every night in an alcoholic frenzy and viciously beating your 8 year old son would exactly be considered “Good Parenting” even by the standards of 19th century Georgia.
From what I know about 19th century Georgia I don't think it would be that exceptional.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I don't believe this applies to American 19th/early 20th century child-raising approaches.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link