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PaperclipPerfector  22d ago (text post)   24402 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 8, 2024

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I recently saw an item in my newfeed about The American Exchange Project:

To connect our divided country, the American Exchange Project sends high school seniors on a free, week-long trip to a hometown very different from their own.

There was some positive feedback in the news article I read. I found it a bit surprising just how much the rural/urban divide has grown. I've often lived between the two areas with my schools often having kids living in high density housing along with kids raising barn animals. My parents preferred living rurally, but still had to live close to cities to find jobs.

I've been on two exchange programs myself. One as a middle/high schooler going to Europe with Student Ambassadors (a now dead org). And the second as more of a work exchange trip going to the company's India office. There is something undeniably effective about just having very different people sit down and talk/interact with each other in a non-violent setting. Not that I really disliked either set of people before visiting them, but I felt I definitely understood them better afterwards. There are coincidences of living, and the things you see living in an area. They just sorta seep into your conscious. My young middle school self noticed that Europe generally did not give a crap about topless women. Tits galore on billboards and beaches in Spain. Europe was also pretty open with alcohol, and the 15 year old in the German family I stayed with openly told her parents about the drinking party she was going to. They had to remind her that I wasn't allowed to go, and American drinking ages had to be explained. Bunch of things I noticed in India as well, main one was just the sheer volume of people.

Had a shower thought today about how some people (like Joe Rogan) thought Covid would bring us closer together as we worked to solve and fight a collective problems. I think we maybe mostly agree that did not happen. I'm starting to think that covid was the opposite kind of problem we need. To get that kind of problem solving, humanity coming together juice, I think more people need to be offline, meeting in person, and ignoring things happening too far away from them.

Staring at the sun today. Watching the eclipse today, reminded me about solar flares. I'd predict that a widespread solar flare that knocked out communication networks would probably leave us all a little happier than Covid. It would probably be very bad for some people, but we'd know less about those people.

There is something undeniably effective about just having very different people sit down and talk/interact with each other in a non-violent setting. Not that I really disliked either set of people before visiting them, but I felt I definitely understood them better afterwards.

When I was younger, I did a fair number of programs that involved getting grouped with other people you didn't know and having to work together. It was also an eye-opener for me. The rural/urban divide was certainly present, but not the only divide: having been raised in a straight-laced, middle-class, white collar household that I thought knew how to do physical labor, the blue collar work-hard-play-hard approach to life wasn't something I expected.

I have occasionally mused in the last few years that mandatory national service after high school would probably improve national cohesiveness. Not for militaristic reasons (although those aren't completely invalid), but also because being forced to meet and work together with very different Americans would be good for the country as a whole. And there are some useful life skills that some would never pick up otherwise. Even if it's just cutting trails in National Parks/Forests or whatever.

But I'm not sure how I could convince the median voter to go for it: probably half don't trust the country to be left in charge of their kids, and a similar portion think their kids are too good to spend months of their lives on something outside of their worldview.

I have occasionally mused in the last few years that mandatory national service after high school would probably improve national cohesiveness.

This hasn't been how it's worked in Russia.

Also, the usual moral hazard of forcing people to work for you and not letting them quit.

Russia's military is incredibly dysfunctional. Conscripts are pretty much dogs. It's not like being a grunt has a lot of prestige in other countries, but potentially better examples would probably include Korea, Germany, Switzerland, or Israel.

You're not wrong. The self-selection process for the times I've seen it work is likely an essential part of it working at all. Self-actualization is something that requires internal motivation, and can't be forced. But it can be an aspirational picture.

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