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 -
The paradise I am referring to is the way that children are socialized and trained into adults. I’m not making a sweeping generalization about civilizational flaws — I understand the fall is irrevocable — though there are probably other ways that HG’s hold insight on maximizing happiness. If certain instincts originated in tandem with the HG lifestyle, then the HG lifestyle gives us a picture on how those instincts are best oriented and satisfied. We can then find their approximate civilizational version. For instance, if HG’s do a lot of things with their hands, then we may ask whether humans today are doing enough with their hands, and indeed studies show that enjoying hand-related hobbies is good for the brain and can be very satisfying. Consider how it works with other animals: were you developing the most pleasant enclosure for wild deer, it would probably just mimic their natural environment but without predators. So it is with Man (plausibly).
But back to the point, the children are raised with something we can call “adaptive boredom”. They get bored, which is a displeasing feeling, but that acts as a springboard to get them to playfully train as adults. Their training is stress-free, natural, and probably cognitively efficient. The phone-y superstimuli is introduced and suddenly their minds are focused on things which are more pleasant than anything around them, which replace boredom with novelty, but which do not lead to effortless adaption to adulthood. Those children now cannot enjoy the most pleasant path toward adulthood, because they have consumed the forbidden Apple product, and as such their mind is preoccupied with otherworldly pleasures. For the children to adapt into adulthood you now need to cajole them, punishment them, incentivize them. All of these are less preferable because they reduce intrinsic enjoyment of the activity. Meanwhile, the phoney stimuli is taking up cognitive real estate that really isn’t for the longterm good. That human instinct to pass by a tree and grab a desirable fruit is being abused by technological moneygrubbers, as the children now grab their phone and consume something pleasing the eye. It would be much better if they felt boredom, because the longterm displeasure from technology outweighs the temporary adaptive pleasure of boredom. (And this isn’t even going into studies on “wakeful rest” and the default mode network where boredom is shown to be healthy to the mind…)
Our civilizations did not always have superstimuli available to young people. You know, if you were growing up somewhere in the 19th century, you may be doing something like what the primitive kids were doing re adaptive boredom. Civilization did introduce unpleasant discipline, but there still would have been a pro-adaptive playfulness component, where the kid would “playfully” read an entertaining book which shaped his ability to read, or would “playfully” act out military drills, etc.
Great post.
In the past children played more often by being outside and interacting with other children which helped them to develop social skills. Of course that had its own trade offs.
Yes, and girls could playfully act like mothers using dolls, which helped adapt them to becoming mothers later on.
Yes, this is the whole dichotomy between hedonism and becoming a slave of one's passions vs greater pleasure issue that as old as the ancient Greeks and probably older has always been a challenge for societies. Now far more so of course. Ideally there is moderation rather than no use of say video games, mobile games. But things are out of hand today, and that does have something to do with technological moneygrubbers.
Steve Sailer sometimes says that modern marketing departments are too effective. Under modern capitalism which is more efficient at getting consumers to buy stuff, the consumer rather than a rational actor, can't compete and is too easily manipulated. Children being even more vulnerable. This can also apply to the food industry where the people's best interest is different and conflicts with their hedonistic desires and the marketing department, developers of food that want to make it hyper palatable. There is also an ideological component to this which is about not only favoring the monetary interests of the "technological moneygrubbers" but also those who prefer the population to be pacified and at such not a threat to the ruling elite.
Technology it self provides more challenges, in addition to issues of ideology. I don't buy into the progressive myth that changes necessarilly improve society. Good things to work well, do so due to a delicate balance requiring various things necessary. Ideally we use technology to only get the good while mitigating the bad, but it doesn't work that way. The problem is that even people like me who want to fix things are not going to make it so society doesn't have the technology that it has now, and is technologically the same to the type of society that resulted in quite different childhoods.
One thing is true. For how much Internet, television, mobile phones give, they also take away things. More so now with Artificial Intelligence which is very woke/progressive intersectionalist, giving much greater power to those who designed it and leading to a more centralized world, unless enough other players like GAB AI start appearing.
Also, this point is directed less towards you but it is obviously possible for a society to be more powerful due to technology and its people living a more depraved existence.
War Communism might in fact be far more powerful way to conduct war than a society that doesn't treat its people like slaves, but it is a very shitty way to live.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link