vorpa-glavo
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User ID: 674
What do you want my response to be to "American conservatism just doesn’t appeal to me because I’m not scared of everything"? Can you write us a sample response to that claim, if it's not a waste of time?
I mean, I could try. Something like:
While an American liberal or progressive might feel like an American conservative is coming from a place of fear, this is a misleading impression. First, it is worth pointing out that wanting things like lower immigration, more barriers to trans care for children and fewer government hand outs doesn't have to come from a place of 'fear.' Just as liberals/progressives believe that their policies come from a high-minded place of concern for their fellow man, so too a conservative can genuinely believe that the best thing for all peoples is to adopt those policies.
In the case of immigration, a conservative might believe that brain-draining poor countries is bad for the stability and well-being of those cultures, and that migration might serve as a release valve for pressure that would rightfully lead to successful rebellions that might actually make those countries better off in the long run.
In the case of trans care, it doesn't have to be fear of the "other" at all, but a genuine conviction that the evidence in favor was actually substantially weaker than often claimed, that it originated in a different country with different background information that doesn't seem to apply to the anglo-sphere. Add in the replication crisis (which also affects medicine), and the evidence that the WPATH is an activist organization that seems to go beyond the remit of evidence, and you have a recipe to truly believe that trans healthcare for minors is a net negative for most children, and society as a whole. This is not about "fear", but a genuine disagreement on the merits of the evidence and an approach to epistemology.
Even aside from all of this, it is worth pointing out that liberals and progressives seem to be afraid of their own side's bugbears, in a way that is out of proportion with the statistics. They fear hate crimes, rape, and discrimination to a far greater degree than the statistics would seem to justify. It is wrong-headed to think that what makes conservatism unique is "fear", as opposed to the positive values they do espouse.
I wonder if any of you sometimes feel that someone of the outgroup just made a good move or just a good point (in other words, produced useful propaganda) in the culture war that takes you by surprise. A long time ago I noticed some liberals quoting a statement from a Christian pastor regarding abortion and I now decided to trace it back to the original source.
I mean, I certainly think people on the other side of the culture war make rhetorically strong points that are likely to resonate with other people, but I don't know if that ever "surprises" me.
More often, I find myself disappointed with the zingers people on "my side" are making, even if they make for good propaganda.
I'm slowly coming to the view that the only "legitimate" way to argue with another person is to engage with their "highest" human self as far as possible, and not to use cheap tricks. I heard about a friend trying to reach their anti-covid-vaccine parents, who had been talked into that position by Facebook video drivel, and that friend tried everything but found the most success in just sending pro-covid-vaccine Facebook video drivel. I suppose if all you care about is manipulating your parents to get a vaccine, because you genuinely think that it is best for them and for society, you might be able to justify that to yourself, but I felt a sense of discomfort with it.
I don't just want to find the right psychological levers to make other people believe what I want them to believe. I want to convince the human in them that what I believe is the case - or to similarly be convinced that I am wrong.
There is nothing inconsistent about being pro-life; this is simply a very progressive man dressing up his progressivism in the guise of Christian religion.
Not on its own, but few people are "pro-life" and nothing else. Very, very few people try to follow all of their beliefs to an "optimized" conclusion.
This is why no Catholic has ever decided to become a mass murderer and kill as many baptized infants as possible to maximize the number of people in Heaven. (Maybe the murderer is damning his own soul, but it's just one damned soul against hundreds or thousands of souls that might go astray and commit mortal sins if they're allowed to grow up. And in the end, if he can manage to truly be contrite about it, even he might end up in Heaven.)
It is also why no pro-life Catholic has tried to put together monetary funds to get hospice patients hooked up to as many machines to keep their body technically alive as long as possible. They're pro-life, but only up until a point. They have other values that trade off against their pro-life stance.
vorpa-glavo
6d ago
The abortion case is only complicated by the question of whether or not destroying a fetus is "doing harm". If you agree that it is, then an abortion is clearly morally wrong as just about every ethical system agrees that "doing harm" is wrong.
I don't think that last part is true.
Virtually every ethical system allows for "doing harm" in a number of circumstances, whether it is a doctor cutting off an arm to save a person's life, a military killing enemy combatants, or killing animals to eat them.
In fact, the most famous philosophical thought experiment around abortion, Judith Jarvis Thomson's violinist is specifically constructed to argue that even if abortion is doing harm to a human being, it would be morally permissible. (Personally, I think the thought experiment really only succeeds in arguing for abortion in the case of rape, but that's neither here nor there.)
vorpa-glavo
10d ago
Do you really think you can read a text that long in the space of a week or two, and come to a decision about the content of the bill? That’s not even doing much analysis on the effects of the provisions, just reading them.
I mean, I think that congressional staffers could theoretically divide up a 1500 page bill, and read all of the sections in a week or two.
vorpa-glavo
14d ago
I've never understood the argument the US customary units are "human-centric".
I mean, I find it really easy to work with some units because I know their origins. It's much easier to know that a "league" is about as far a person can walk in an hour, and it is 3 miles, and then to work from that fact to how far my D&D party could walk with 8 hours of travel on flat terrain, than to do anything involving distance with metric units.
vorpa-glavo
18d ago
I agree with some broad strokes about what you just said, but I would put it differently.
I think the most important thing about woke identity politics, is that it isn't fundamentally incompatible with the hierarchies of representative democracy and capitalism. Every group has its talented tenth, and letting a few of the people in charge be black, or women or trans people doesn't fundamentally, radically alter the power structures of capitalist, liberal democratic society.
This is the reason woke identity politics is allowed to exist in the United States. More dangerous or radical forms of identity politics or anti-hierarchical thinking are dismantled if they get too much steam. We know now that the FBI systematically dismantled black nationalist, white supremacist, feminist, environmentalist and other groups from the 1950's to the 1970's. I think that this created a selection pressure for decentralized, "headless" advocacy groups that were harder to dismantle, but which also struggled more to actually organize and make changes to society. Occupy Wall Street is probably the prototypical example of such a decentralized group that accomplishes nothing substantial, but BLM and other forms of woke advocacy certainly qualify.
There is no woke pope. There's no head to cut off. Sure, there are a handful of influential authors, but they could be thrown under the bus tomorrow and the movement would still continue because it is not dependent on a single head to function. It is a distributed entity, selected for by generations of federal infiltration of extremist groups, until it became something the government couldn't tame or control, but which the government also didn't need to tame or control, since its lack of organization leaves it fairly unable to permanently enact widespread legal changes. (Witness the cities that reduced funding to police in the immediate aftermath of George Floyd, and then quickly reversed course as soon as the public stopped paying attention.)
vorpa-glavo
18d ago
I mean, aren't there plenty of old stories about sluts getting away with it and becoming respected members of the community? The biblical prostitute Rahab got picked up as a model of "hospitality, mercy, faith, patience and repentance."
While helping the Israelites deal with their enemies is a good way to "earn" her redemption, that still sets a precedent that loose women can become part of the common fold.
vorpa-glavo
18d ago
For those who hold that sex is harmless entertainment, this seems like it ought to be confusing. Why did she expect to enjoy doing this, and why didn't she enjoy it?
I mean, little kids think they'll enjoy eating 100 cakes, but there's quick diminishing returns for many pleasures. I would venture a guess that psychologically, having sex twice in a single day is pretty doable, and probably still enjoyable.
I don't think there's anything special about sex as a pleasure that makes doing it 100 times much more onerous by the end. It's just like trying to force yourself to drink 20 shots of vodka, or smoking 200 cigarettes in a day. Pleasures just don't scale that way.
vorpa-glavo
20d ago
But isn't Luigi Mangione from a rich family? It seems like people on Tumblr that I follow still stan him (and are posting joke quizzes asking if he's hot), so it's not obvious to me that he's an underdog in this way. Like, sure, he's objectively poorer than the CEO, but I think a lot of the "appeal" of the assassination is the "righteous fury" at insurance companies, which many Americans have had bad experiences with.
vorpa-glavo
21d ago
I mean, don't a lot of Christians believe that Satan is appealing to fallen mankind? We chose him over God all the time, right?
vorpa-glavo
21d ago
Maybe abandoning certain values and sensibilities reduced the frequency of armed conflict, but it has led directly to demographic suicide. That's not a "peace" in my book.
Let's not redefine words. If things are peaceful, they're peaceful. They still might have other undesirable features, like demographic collapse, or things like natural disasters, disease, famine, etc.
The shakers died out completely peacefully. Nobody forced them not to reproduce, they made the choice themselves.
vorpa-glavo
25d ago
I'm not talking about STEM. I'm talking about all of college and technical/trade schools.
If the people want to resist your lawful efforts to change the culture, how do you stop women and sympathetic men from creating university alternatives where women are trained in a field and then hired even without a degree? Like, how do you actually put the genie back in the bottle here?
How do you stop people from creating samizdat, and passing down trades within their familes and a dozen other things that people who remember the old regime will want to do?
vorpa-glavo
25d ago
I mean, the the logistics of this fantasy scenario are hard to imagine. Is a genie just snapping their fingers here, or do we actually have to think about the logistics of how a society could sustainably keep Culture A with Economic System B, given some starting point close to contemporary American politics?
vorpa-glavo
25d ago
But will the people accept that? When I say there's no easy levers, I'm thinking about how hard it would be to enforce some of these things in practice.
The US struggles to stop illegal drugs from coming over the border from Mexico. How would we stop oral arbortifacients and condoms from coming over the Southern border? How would we stop women from making intellectual salons for teaching college and technical topics - and stop employers from letting these qualified women work for them? How would we stop women from poisoning husbands they can't divorce?
I'm not saying it's absolutely impossible to be brutal and efficient here, but I'm not actually sure the state capacity to do all of this actually exists.
vorpa-glavo
25d ago
My offer to these "the culture war is distraction" people is always the same: you get the economy, or whatever else you find "meaningful", I get total uncontested control over culture - deal?
I think the biggest problem with this proposal is that I don't think there are easy levers to just control culture. That, plus the fact that some cultures might not be able to support some kinds of economic systems. Like can a trad maximalist culture really support a globalist socialist economy, for example?
vorpa-glavo
27d ago
Jumping up and down on the “defect” button is not the kind of humanity I appreciate.
How is this more defect button than Trump pardoning the Blackwater massacerers? I think killing 14 civillians is bad, and I don't want private security firms representing America to do that on the world stage. I definitely don't want the world to get the message, "we'll accept any level of misconduct, and the perpetrators won't even face a tiny amount of justice."
I don't think Joe Biden should have lied about pardoning his son, and if Joe himself was personally involved in corrupt dealings, I want all of that information set before the American people. However, I don't think the mere act of pardoning his son is a bad thing. It is only bad if Joe Biden was personally involved in corrupt dealings, and is now pardoning his son so that Joe's connections are never made public.
vorpa-glavo
27d ago
As president of the United States, JB's duty is to uphold said institutions. As a leader, he's meant to set a moral example for other citizens. Perhaps following his example is most prudent in the present day, but I wouldn't call it moral by any means.
Do presidents try to be moral exemplars any more? I can't think of a president in my lifetime who I've looked up to as a true paragon of morality. Most of them haven't been openly and brazenly corrupt either (at least not in ways that are illegal in the US), but I can't recall thinking even once, "Gee, so-and-so is just the most morally upright and saintly human being I've ever seen. I'm truly glad such a virtuous person represents America to the world."
The Renaisance Humanists might have believed that virtue confers the moral legitimacy to be a ruler, but I feel like modern representative democracies haven't believed that in practice for a long time.
I would build out the model as something like: If there is a genuinely good woke video game with solid mechanics and few competitors, most anti-woke people will still buy them.
I think most slop isn't bought by non-woke normies, let alone wokies themselves. The question is whether "it's woke" is being advanced as the whole reason for the game's marketability, or is just a big part of the story.
Though arguable, video games are already one of the most gender egalitarian artistic mediums. Plenty of strategy games like XCOM make no distinction between male units or female units, and there's plenty of Amazonian protagonists in the medium.
While Japan is an entertainment superpower, and mostly doesn't make woke games, I don't think it's that strange that people want non-woke stuff from American studios. It's not like telling people that India is making a bunch of awesome action movies that aren't woke will suddenly make them feel good about the fact that Star Wars has a Mary Sue as the main character. (Though seriously, people should check out some good South Indian movies like RRR, Karnan or Baahubali. Some of my favorite movies of recent vintage, and very trad.)
vorpa-glavo
1mo ago
There's clearly a market opportunity for non-woke game publishers. But could they get devs?
I think the problem with any endeavor like this is that you end up with the "Christian music sucks" effect. You're hiring from a smaller talent pool, and so the works that get created are going to be, on average, of worse quality, and if a work gets too preachy it can be a turn off to some people.
Just as I'm sure there's not many non-Christians earnestly watching "God's not Dead", I assume that most non-anti-woke people wouldn't line up for an explicity anti-woke game.
vorpa-glavo
1mo ago
Nassim Nicholas Taleb talks about why this happens in Skin in the Game. You can read the relevant chapter here.
Basically, the most intolerant minority tends to win, when there aren't high transaction costs to cater to them. Jews won't drink non-kosher beverages, but gentiles will drink kosher beverages, so most drinks in the United States are kosher. Back when restaurants still had smoking sections, a non-smoker could sit in a smoking section and not smoke, but a smoker couldn't sit in a non-smoking section and smoke. Etc., etc.
Relating this back to woke, anti-woke and non-woke. I suspect most people who are anti-woke will still buy most woke games. They might grumble about female protagonists, unappealing female characters, and every romancable character being Schroedinger's bisexual, but most of them will still buy a triple-A game that has all these features. On the other hand, the woke and non-woke will not buy a game whose explicit purpose is to reinforce anti-woke ideas (anti-trans, anti-cosmopolitan, conservative, trad, anti-LGBT, etc.) As a result, games end up either woke or non-woke, with a vanishingly small contingent of anti-woke games catering to a tiny segment of the market.
vorpa-glavo
1mo ago
I just think the picture is at a bad angle. In this picture, Aloy looks fine. She's not a supermodel or anything, but she looks like a woman.
vorpa-glavo
1mo ago
I think this is why cultural products from the more feminists countries, such as the US, feature mannish-looking women, acting in a masculine manner.
I don't want to get too bogged down in the object level discussion of Aloy, but I think her having peach fuzz is a defensible choice. In our world, there are products to remove such hair. But Aloy is living in a post-apocalyptic world in 3040, isn't she? It's not hard to believe at all that grooming habits have changed, and women with peach fuzz just leave it as is.
Honestly, this kind of thing is something that takes me out of a lot of media. While we know that the Romans were big about hair removal, we also know plenty of ancient societies that weren't, and it's always strange to see "cave man" media where the women look like they stepped out of a modern Instagram photo, with shaved legs and armpits. I think a lot of creators across time have been cowards, unwilling to contend with the fact that humans are all, men and women, hairy apes.
I think this is a good example of the difference between the Goddess of Cancer and the Goddess of Everything Else.
Evolution had one chance to program our values, but it is imperfect and hackish. So instead of optimizing us for "make lots of babies with your own genetic code", it optimized us for the intermediary, "have sex with an attractive member of the opposite sex." For most of human history, those two notions were connected, but then we invented birth control and contraceptives, and we switched from the rule of the Goddess of Cancer (who says "KILL CONSUME MULTIPLY CONQUER") to the rule of the Goddess of Everything Else.
While hanging out in rationalist and pronatalist spaces has helped me to appreciate the appeal of Bloodtopia more, I think my heart is still in Ideastan. I just can't commit to calling childless people like Sir Isaac Newton or George Washington "failures" in some ultimate sense. I think in spite of the fact that they didn't have biological offspring, they altered the future trajectory of humanity so radically that the contribution of some random breeder just can't compare.
I would rather give in to the excitement and mystery of where the Goddess of Everything Else takes us, than stick to the tried and true, but stale world of Bloodtopia.
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