site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   33253 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 20, 2023

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.

15
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I cannot escape the impression that these people - mostly women, but not entirely - just never really recovered from the petty traumas of middle school. The jocky white boys were all attracted to the slim white girls with the straight hair, and not to the chubby girls, especially the black ones. And I’m not just taking potshots at my outgroup here; I’m guilty as hell of this in my own life as well. (“We must reimagine masculinity to de-center violence and the domination of others,” says the noodle-armed kid with low testosterone, certain that in the Glorious Future, women will prefer guys like him.)

Have you heard of the Amish concept of Rumspringa? It's a traditional period when Amish youth "hop around" getting into a little bit of trouble, ordinary rules are suspended all together or only lightly enforced, after which the young Amish can choose to be baptized into the community as adults, when rules will be enforced.

That's high school and college for middle-upper-class Americans. Ordinary social and even legal rules aren't enforced, some activities can be done in high school and college that can never be done (for most people) in later life. If you're a 1/500 athlete at 16, you're a star on your high school team and a big deal on campus; if you're a 1/500 athlete at 36, you might have a hobby that you're pretty good at but most people don't care about. If you're a 1/1000 musician at 16, you're in the school band and playing lead roles, or you're in your own band and you're a big deal at parties; if you're a 1/1000 musician at 36 no one cares about your soundcloud.

In college if you're a bright kid, you can spend all night discussing philosophy or history with other bright kids, if you're the brightest you can hold a little court at the Algonquin in your dorm room; if you're a bright guy in your 30s, unless you're bright enough to have a substack no one cares except the other dorks on your message board. In college all I needed for a girl to think I was a romantic was a DVD of Midnight in Paris and a bottle of cheap wine; in my 30s well, I'm married anyway, but if I wanted to impress women it would take time, effort, money. And worst of all, if I wanted any of those things now, I would have to go find actual people. And finding actual people after college is harder for most people: as the quote ran around Twitter "Half the reason folks romanticize college is because it's the last time most folks lived in dense, walkable neighborhoods focused on providing community during plentiful off-hours." When you're in college single women your age are everywhere, other pseudo intellectuals are everywhere, your friends are a short walk away.

You don't get to be an athlete, an intellectual, or a lover after college; not in the same way you do in school, not unless you're really talented. There's room to be above average and feel extraordinary, do extraordinary things. In adult life, for most people, those opportunities are lacking.

In his excellent, and now both old and prescient, Coming Apart Murray argues that Upper and Lower class white Americans are becoming more and more stratified, with upper class Americans being more likely to preach left-wing tolerance while practicing traditional middle class morality; while lower class Americans are more likely to believe in solid family values while practicing dissolute and self-destructive lifestyles. His core thesis isn't as interesting to this argument as his theory that Upper Class/Blue Tribe/PMC Americans basically fail to practice what they preach: marriage is more common among white upper class college educated Blue Tribers than it is among working class white people, yet college is synonymous with hook-up culture and dissolution.

I propose that we can think of high school and college as a kind of Rumspringa in Blue Tribe culture, a period in which ordinary rules are suspended. You can't do the things you do in high school and college after you graduate, when you have to be a good and respectable member of the community. So of course the jealousies of high school and college run deep, run forever, scabs that keep getting torn off again and again. Because it's not that they missed the opportunity to do X in college because of those damn bullies; it's that for some people, rule following people, your hall monitors, they now missed their entire opportunity to do those things. They missed out on the easy parties, fun hook ups, the intellectual and athletic honors, their whole share for their entire lives. They'll never get over that, because they don't have the spirit and agency to do them later.

Because it's not that they missed the opportunity to do X in college because of those damn bullies; it's that for some people, rule following people, your hall monitors, they now missed their entire opportunity to do those things. They missed out on the easy parties, fun hook ups, the intellectual and athletic honors, their whole share for their entire lives. They'll never get over that, because they don't have the spirit and agency to do them later.

The parallels between this worldview and the "Nice Guy™" narrative of "I'm such a good Male Feminist, why don't women want to date me and instead want to date those braindead gymrat chuds who treat them like dirt?" are impossible to ignore. See also Tony Tulathimutte's marvellous short story/novella "The Feminist".

That was in my mind writing it, but I felt the comment was already too long for the value of the thought.

What a lot of people miss about the Alpha Male/Beta Male or Jerk/Nice Guy distinction is that it is ordinal and contingent, rather than universal and genetic. The Alpha is the Alpha because no one around is better, the Beta is Beta because the Alpha exists and is better. But the Alpha's existence is contingent, he could die or simply never be born or enter that space, in which case a Beta moves up.* Position in society is a contingent occurrence, outside of extremes of perfection there is no such thing as a pretty girl or a strong man. There can only be in any context the "prettiest girl" and the "strongest man;" followed by a succession of relatively prettier/stronger subordinates. It follows that there is no such thing as an ugly girl or a weak man outside of extremes of deformity or disability, only relatively uglier or weaker individuals. The latter identity depends on the existence of the former.

In modern alienated urban capitalist adult life, hierarchy is ersatz, it varies quickly between locations and people; the PUA game is to create the illusion of being the strongest man, even though that is an irrelevant concept.

But in the hothouse of high school, the hierarchy is a little more visible, you know who the strongest are. Speaking personally, I tried out for the basketball team freshman year, as is typical for me I was the last one cut, but I was cut. At some minor level, this lead to identity formation for me: I came to see myself as weak, and I came to identify more by intelligence than physical ability. I came to read stuff like the ancient pre-TRP Ladder Theory website and identify myself with the "nice guy" archetype as distinct from the dumb jock/CHUD. But, I wasn't cut from the team because I was weak or slow or ungainly; I was cut from the team because I was weaker, slower and less graceful than the other players. Eliminate a dozen of them, or just put me at a smaller school, and I'm a varsity basketball player in high school. How would that have affected my identity formation during those years? Would I have identified as a jock if only Bobby and Kyle had decided to take up golf instead of basketball, or if David and Juan's parents had respectively decided to move elsewhere?

The Nice Guy, inasmuch as he exists as an archetype, is only ever a couple of promotions from being a CHUD. Which is why women directly experience that dating the Nice Guy Male Feminist so rarely delivers being with a Nice Guy Male Feminist; getting a girlfriend is the ultimate promotion in status, so as soon as he has one he starts to act like a CHUD. The act of dating the Nice Guy inflates his ego and makes him stop being Nice.

So I guess my critique of The Feminist is that it doesn't matter if his shoulders are narrow or not, it matters that he perceives that they are narrower.

*This is one of those Platonic concepts that stretches from the man to the polity; see the Jews in 1944 in Poland and the Jews in 2023 in Palestine.

Did you mean "Chad" instead of "CHUD"?

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=chud

Nope, second definition.

This one?

A unattractive person whose defining characteristic of their personality is their egotism. Most often used to describe typically one-dimensional preps, chauches, or the like. A particularly mean insult; it should not be taken nor thrown around lightly.

Interesting. I checked Wiktionary before asking.* It has two (relevant) definitions:

  1. (US, slang) A gross, physically unappealing person.

  2. (chiefly US, Internet slang, sometimes derogatory) A person on the political right, and/or who holds socio-political views seen as regressive or bigoted.

The Urban Dictionary definition does say "unattractive", but your usage seemed to be more about personality, so neither of Wiktionary's definitions seems to fit. I guess this is a third meaning.

* "Normal" dictionaries aren't very good when it comes to obscure slang, and Urban Dictionary is sometimes helpful but is often full of completely unrelated nonsense; see e.g. the two entries that define "chud" as, respectively, a kind of poo and a piece of chewing gum. Both of those are on the first page, and there are 30 pages of definitions for "chud".

I hear it as just a vague slur for right wing or mainstream men. It's not really that deep, you could replace it with Chad or jock or whatever, I just used chud to mirror the above comment.

So it is all about old school grudges?

If true, we would observe that home schooled children who completely missed the whole uplifting experience of American education, would be the bitterest and most vengeful woke warriors.

Do we observe it?

Why would that theory predict that observation?

So it is all about old school grudges?

Considering the current culture war lines are drawn on SomethingAwful vs. 4chan I'd be absolutely willing to say that yes, it is.

Among those with Theatre Kids tendencies, or whose parents went too far, and mostly a combination, yes. See, for instance, https://homeschoolersanonymous.wordpress.com/

If true, we would observe that home schooled children who completely missed the whole uplifting experience of American education, would be the bitterest and most vengeful woke warriors.

You'd also want to control for religious conservativism.

Anecdotally, the most relentless and insufferable woke warrior I know was homeschooled in a left-wing religious family, but I suspect that it is hard to find statistically significant samples of such people because they're so rare.

Explaining great and influential social movements as "mere" revenge for schoolday grudges is not new idea.

Robert Nozick, one of leading theoreticians of libertarianism, tried to answer mystery why intellectuals oppose capitalism, when capitalism is the greatest thing ever.

Why Do Intellectuals Oppose Capitalism?

TL;DR of Nozick's argument: smart intellectuals get the best grades from teachers in schools, but not the best rewards from bosses in capitalist marketplace.

Therefore, they are justifiably angry and burn the whole shit down.

And when they still do not get what they deserve, they do it again.

Big if true. Is school is not mere waste of time, but factory producing unstoppable killer robots, the only way out is to shut the whole thing down.

But then, why do smart intellectuals like Nozick support capitalism?

I suspect that the Big Five model can be used to generate a more fine-grained explanation (most modern intellectuals are high in openness, neuroticism, and agreeableness, which inclines them towards libertarian democratic socialism; Nozick seemed to be lower in neuroticism, so ended up as a bleeding heart but free-market libertarian) but I don't have the time or expertise to do it.

Certainly, but e.g. Nozick didn't do those lucrative things. He was sincere to a fault.

it's that for some people, rule following people, your hall monitors, they now missed their entire opportunity to do those things. They missed out on the easy parties, fun hook ups, the intellectual and athletic honors, their whole share for their entire lives. They missed out on the easy parties, fun hook ups, the intellectual and athletic honors, their whole share for their entire lives. They'll never get over that, because they don't have the spirit and agency to do them later.

Correct me if I've got your wrong, but the compulsive rule followers are the people who want to overthrow society in this thesis?

I'm a little confused by what you're saying. Who wants to overthrow society and in what ways? What would overthrowing society constitute? I'm really just talking about why so many modern mass-psychoses seem to be rooted in school-age grudges.

I would guess** that his idea is that yes, ironically enough, they want to overthrow society to create a Just World where rule followers and Hall monitors gets justly rewarded for their superior virtue. This idea has echos of "Wokism as mutant, cancerous Christianity." In the Christian age you suffered the indignity and injustice of being a rule follower in this life in exchange for treasure in the next. But if there's no afterlife, you need to create your utopia on earth so that you can collect your reward before you bite the dust. There are vague parallels in a lot of Enlightenment-descended ideologies actually.

**I'm not sure if I'm fully convinced of the above myself.

That's high school and college for middle-upper-class Americans. Ordinary social and even legal rules aren't enforced, some activities can be done in high school and college that can never be done (for most people) in later life. If you're a 1/500 athlete at 16, you're a star on your high school team and a big deal on campus; if you're a 1/500 athlete at 36, you might have a hobby that you're pretty good at but most people don't care about. If you're a 1/1000 musician at 16, you're in the school band and playing lead roles, or you're in your own band and you're a big deal at parties; if you're a 1/1000 musician at 36 no one cares about your soundcloud.

biggest fish in ocean vs. big pond

This is why some of the alarmism over tuition seems unfounded. The value of college is more than just paying back the loans, it's the network too, especially for good colleges.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats