Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
“In your digital hometown” is the key phrase you excluded. I have large crowds yell at me every time I post anything vaguely controversial. Heck, half a dozen people called me a fascist for this. But “cancellation” and online mob dynamics mostly have any impact when it’s people you care about and have longstanding positive relationships with. They’re the ones who have some degree of power over you. The lesson from it was screamingly obvious: build elsewhere.
It’s not the fundamental differences, either, or not just that. It’s that this place takes them so dreadfully seriously. The same dynamic proceeds in a much more lighthearted way at rdrama, where those fundamental differences obviously exist but everyone just yells at each other until they basically get along regardless.
But yeah, that even here you label me as a “prog” is the sort of thing that makes me inclined to say goodbye and good riddance to all of this. I’m being direct because I do think you’re a good representative of the zeitgeist view that was embraced here; you’re pleasant to chat with and you also remind me regularly of what I began to find insufferable here.
You’ve built your culture, now enjoy it. People who have come from here don’t trumpet their associations with you? Not a lot of people you really disagree with stop by to argue quite so much these days?
Whoopsie.
So it goes.
I can edit it in, it doesn't change much for me.
Sure, which is why I understand why the LoTT affair bothered you so much, and why I explicitly mentioned it. But you said FC's post bothered you just as much, this is the part I quoted, and was responding to. There was no cancellation there, and no yelling. Now you're responding like this was about only the LoTT thing all along?
Oh for the love of... If I took offence at everyone calling me a "trad" we wouldn't get very far. If you don't like being called that, I'm sorry, I take it back. But I'd also like a map of this minefield I'm supposed to be navigating.
If I may briefly interject: there is a reason we tone police here, and it's because words (and their resonance) matter. You are expressing bafflement that @TracingWoodgrains took offense to you calling him a "prog." "What?" you say. "I don't take offense to being called a trad!"
Assuming you're being sincere (probably you are), I will just tell you: the two terms are not equivalent. Some leftists may call trads "trads" in a derogatory fashion, but I have seen it used much more frequently by trads themselves (or if it's being used in a condescending fashion, it's usually by traditional conservatives or DRs). (Leftists are more likely to call you "fascist.") Meanwhile, I almost never see progressives/leftists/wokes call themselves "progs." Everyone knows that's meant as an insult.
Generally speaking, we wouldn't mod someone for calling another poster a "prog," but depending on the tone and the context, it could very easily be read as intended to insult. Whereas while I suppose someone could take offense at being called a "trad," you'd have to be going out of your way to boo the outgroup to make "trad" into an insult.
While you may think this is a semantic argument, it gets to the root of your exchange with @TracingWoodgrains. You casually call him a "prog," which you and he both understand to mean that he is in the enemy camp, a member of your outgroup, one of Those People. He, not even considering himself a proper progressive, finds it indicative of what he's talking about - being put in a mislabeled box by people who don't bother to understand what he actually believes - and you blink in astonishment that he took your label as an act of belligerence.
If someone called me a "prog" I wouldn't take offense, exactly, but I would conclude two things: (1) This person is an idiot who doesn't care what I actually believe and just throws everyone with slightly left-leaning views into the same box; (2) This person meant to offend me (and will probably pretend they didn't and say "What's wrong with being called a prog?" if I call them on it).
Fair enough, I had no idea. I've never even heard the word used before Trace did in the comment directly above mine, and it sounded completely innocuous to me, so I thought I'd borrow it.
Just to be clear: no I didn't. I meant progressive in terms of worldview. That's something I consider beyond political camps. I believe Hlynkaesque alt-right progressives do actually exist.
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Re: the FC thing—that was mostly relevant as a reminder that if that sentiment was broadly shared here, then I should not put my energy into building this space. If the zeitgeist of a space is “we don’t even want to live in a country with you,” it sure isn’t the sort of space I want to put my creative energy into.
As for the map—the map is that I spend the overwhelming majority of my politically relevant time online pushing against prog excesses, I have never self-identified as one and continue not to, and at this point I literally work for a law firm that is overtly anti-prog, but due to a few high-level traits, a loud subset of people cannot help but map me into that category regardless. The map is that after years of watching you and yours form overtly and obviously incorrect models of who I am and what I do, then cling to them after you should very well know better, I prefer to spend my time engaging with people who don’t do that. The broader map is that some form of this sentiment, spread over a hundred excellent former regulars here, is why there are a hundred excellent former regulars here, and the problem is not with them.
Well, it all feels a bit out of left field to me. I never asked for putting your creative energy into here, and where you decide to put it doesn't even require justification.
I thought we were talking about the general sense of betrayal you feel with this community, and I thought this was supposed to be an example of what makes you feel this way. If it isn't - my bad. If it is - I have trouble seeing anything hurtful about that statement. It's normal for people to live in a country where there fundamental values are respected. I'm pretty sure you expressed such a sentiment yourself.
You don't think you might be reading just a little bit too much into a single word? I never attributed the excesses of progressivism to you, or dismissed your work against them. It was a shorthand, and it's a relative term, and I distinctly remember you playing it for a joke, that a gay furry is the most conservative person at your law school. Is it really so wild you still look progressive to someone from a different background?
It is a reflection of that sense of betrayal. I'm not sure what's odd about feeling betrayed by a large chunk of your online community rallying behind the idea that they don't want to share a country with you. That you would struggle to understand it is a bit baffling.
Like, c'mon: "I don't even want to live in a group of hundreds of millions of people that includes both me and you. Your ideals disgust me on a fundamental level. But hey, now that you've broken out, where's the promotion for us hometown lads?" Surely you can see why I'd find that a bit rich. You cannot at once reject someone as unworthy to share a polis with you and expect them to treat your companionship as meaningful.
The friend-enemy distinction matters. Put bluntly, I see you personally as wanting to put me on the enemy side of the friend-enemy distinction, repeatedly defend that choice, and then post in resentment about a lack of friendship resulting from that. Choose one.
I don't at all think I'm reading too much into a single word, no. It's obnoxious for people to treat me as a representative of a coalition that rejects me and that I reject, and it is a specific coalition, not simply a relative term. Using it suggests neither understanding nor a wish to understand, and I find it much easier to simply build elsewhere than to bridge a determinedly unbridgeable gap.
Well again, I'm not struggling to understand, I just disagree.
No? I don't know what to tell you... You can find me as disgusting as you want, but If I find some interesting bit of info at your Substack, I'll drop a link to it when sharing it with others. If I forget to do so, and rake in a million views from it, I'll probably feel pretty shitty about it.
I don't really expect anything from how your treatment of my companionship. I'm just trying to figure out what your grievances are, and figure out what I can learn from them, and if I can improve. But this particular one... like I said I'm not sure on what grounds you're expecting anything more than "sorry to hear that, bro". Like I said I consider it 100% normal to want to live in a country that respects your fundamental values, so if you're going to get sufficiently values-diverse group together, you will inevitably end up with people not wanting to share a country with each other. It is again quite strange for me to see you insist on this, since like I said you expressed the same sentiment yourself, or at least I don't know how else to understand "I want to live in a culture where my family and I can live according to our values and build alongside people who share those values". Maybe there's supposed to be a difference between "country" and "culture", but no matter how I slice it, it sounds at most like the same thing with extra steps.
It matters when you're doing political activism. This place is very explicitly not a place for that, so I don't see the issue.
Quite frankly it's not even about friendship. I saw what you did as akin to meme accounts on Twitter reposting some webcomic or another, but diligently removing the artist's signature. The analogy doesn't quite fit since the post in question wasn't written here, but I can't help but parse the situation this way. It's not even that much of a big deal as far as I'm concerned, so I don't get why you insist on portraying me as making unreasonable demands.
If you want to tell me how it came off to you that's fair enough, but you can't tell me how I meant it.
That's a bit ironic, given the above.
Compare it to individual houses in a neighborhood. A family's rules reign supreme in their own home, no one can demand they do something. But outside that house, they don't hold that power and have to negotiate if they want anything done.
The issue is the misuse of "country" because it implies a certain level of being able to make moral demands of others. We don't live in such an age. If a man from Kansas approached one from New York, the idea that the former could demand the latter change their behavior or views to align with a different morality would be considered absurd by most people.
But that's why it's a bad analogy. There can be subcultures, or countries that contain different cultures by region, but these days there usually is a common culture uniting the entire country, so it's not something confined like a household vs/ a neighborhood. It's also not something based solely on negotiation, and can be quite oppressive. Progressives are usually the first to point this out with things like homophobia, strict gender roles, etc.
For me, I'd much rather hear "I don't want to be a part of your country / culture! Leave me alone, I'll make my own with like-minded people", than to hear demands of being in the same polity from someone with completely incompatible values. Same energy as having a stalker that deluded themselves they're in a relationship with you.
It's hardly common if it's oppressing certain groups, right? That's a sign one group's beliefs are dominating other groups.
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Or, if we're looking to 2020:
Sorry, I'm trying to not to take out a bad mood and what I see as a repudiation of Trace's entire ethos on him, and I get the distinction TW's trying to move around ("I'm not going to write off the half of the country who supported him"). But it's hard to read this conversation and not see my (and I guess @drmanhattan16 's?) participation in TheSchism (and TW's twitter sphere) as part of the problem.
Sorry, what? I'm not clear on why I was referenced.
Trace said earlier that :
Of writers that could be plausibly described as outside of progressive monoculture (or at least outside of the ethos that formed theSchism, you and I (and I guess DuplexFields?) seem the only current significant overlap between TheSchism and TheMotte, and I'm marginal. Lykurg480 stopped posting here about seven months ago, professorgerm/desolation set their motte account private, ymeskhout and ChrisPratt haven't posted in the schism for years and what they did post were pretty mainstream progressive stuff.
I'll disclose that I upvoted FCFromSSC's "I do not think I share a common understanding of peace and justice with you." I'd be interested to know if you read, upvoted, and/or downvoted it, but it's probably best that I don't know, and ultimately it doesn't really matter if you and Numbers never had similar discussions on the schism by accident, or by plan.
If the overlap between here and theschism were a success story in the sense that we disagreed on matters but could still have serious conversations, than it'd be part of the solution. If it's just a race between those who don't want to bring up the disagreements and those who know they can't, then it's just a top hat and monocle on top of the problem.
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I want to live in a culture where I can build alongside people who share my values. That certainly does not preclude sharing that broader culture with others who have radically different values; I have not told my political opponents I don't wish to share a country with them, nor would I. I'm perfectly happy to share countries and forums alike with people I have wide-ranging disagreements with. Yes, it's horrifying when your tribe demonstrates adherence to values you didn't anticipate and that feel like a repudiation of your expectations! That doesn't entail wanting them to leave your country! The very comment you link emphasizes not writing them off and being happy to bury the hatchet.
It's risible to compare a sentiment of wanting to build alongside people who want to build alongside you to one of telling people you don't want them in your country. Nobody should struggle to tell the difference.
As for your participation in my spheres, I appreciate many of your contributions and am happy for people to participate where they'd like. Participate if you want, don't if you don't want. The whole point of planting a flag and letting people find it or not as they will is allowing people like you to decide whether what's under that flag is worthwhile enough to spend time around.
Yes, I've edited to note you find a big distinction between just feeling betrayed by people voting for someone you hate, and not wanting to share a country or be ruled by "Would they have killed him? From a probabilistic standpoint, I'd give it maybe 1-2% odds at most assuming he was passive/compliant."
There's an obvious difference, but as always the problem is and remains why the distinction matters. Clearly you care, and there's no small number of people who feel very strongly the exact opposite direction. I'm willing and happy to engage, to the extent that I'm allowed to engage, with questions like that at TheSchism if there's a chance of exploring the deeper disagreement.
This discussion, and that you find the current state of the subreddit a success, sounds very much like that's not the point of "the thoughtful discussion space" you hoped theschism would be.
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I post attribution to the things I link. In that specific case, what I linked was a Substack post that someone else had linked here, and I attributed it to the original post and told people where I found it as it was relevant. Inasmuch as you have a grievance against those who have left here with bitter feelings, turn inwards and accept that this place could have been the incubator you envision, and you and yours fumbled that. It will not be what it could have been, your own choices and efforts at culture-building contributed to that, and you can resent those who left if you'd like but you can't rebuild lost goodwill by wishing it were otherwise.
That's all I have remaining to say to you on any of this. I wish you the best of luck finding more people who want to spend time around you.
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