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 -
I disagree viscerally, but this was very pleasant to read, thank you for making the effort to write and share it
Which part do you disagree with? In what way?
I'm not sure I agree with all of it, I have no tattoos. Though I can't stand the idea of owning sneakers that can't get dirty.
I have a sort-of nuanced view of this. I try to keep my nice things nice, but if they suffer wear in the course of fulfilling their purpose, that is fine, or even ideal.
Eg. I like the fading scar on my right wrist that reminds me of getting swept onto some rocks on a beach in Costa Rica. That was a good time. I dislike the fading scar on my left arm where I carelessly walked into the side of a cabinet when I was tired at work one day. That was stupid. My car looks good (to me) with some nicks and scratches from difficult mountain roads, but I hate the key mark on the side from some asshole in the alley where I park.
At some level though, those things are the same, in that over time the odds add up that some asshole keys your car, or backs into you in a parking lot, or loses his loaded shopping cart at Home Depot and crashes it into your car, or you get caught in a sudden hailstorm, or any number of other mishaps, over time those odds approach 1. The only way to fully prevent those things is to never leave the garage for too long.
Now, given, I park at the back of the parking lot every time, both to reduce the odds of mishaps and out of a sense that I have fewer problems and inconveniences compared to most people so I'd rather walk further.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Oh sweet, I weighed asking if you did but didn't want to be the first response and come off snarky.
I really liked you talking about how life isn't about keeping the china nice in the cabinet so your kids can sell it for pennies at the estate sale, and the part about how you don't like saying no to things because of your outfit. Made me think of Cameron's dad in Ferris Bueller's Day Off that kept his Ferrari propped up in a showroom and neglected his own son. That all spoke to me because once upon a time (long story for a different time) I thought my house burned down and I'd lost everything, so now I treat 'stuff' as just stuff
But oh man, I bemoan the devolution of my volk (I'm using the provocative word on purpose because contemporaries, countrymen, etc would only call it to mind) into childless Naz Reid tattoo'd up redditors with a joint. Life used to be about something more than temporary pleasures, before we relegated our living God to Christmas family dinners and Easter egg hunts for the kids.
Secondarily, on your broader point, if people don't care for their nice things, they won't be nice anymore. I have to clean the pool and add the right chemicals at the right time or it'll start growing moss. Saying "fuck it, we'll do it live" is not the cure to keeping the china unused unto death, there is a via media where stuff is meant to be used, but treated with respect
Question: Do you think people with tattoos on average have more, or fewer, children than people without them? The majority of the drop in birthrates is attributable to the drop in teen birth rates, and increasingly women are delaying their fertility until their 30s, when it might become problematic to get pregnant. What we're seeing with fertility, in short, is a problem of people delaying gratification, thinking too hard about if this is the right time or the right occasion to have a child, rather than people just having a child impulsively, which is associated with higher fertility rates. I certainly know many people with a bevy of tattoos for a bevy of kids, it's one of the classic "lame" normie tattoos I see around these days.
The exact mindset of "Sure, do it, but only if it's meaningful/correct/the perfect combination of thing and time/absolutely certain not to go wrong" that people are talking about with tattoos in this thread when opposing tattoos, those are exactly the attitudes that suppress fertility on a societal level.
I'm re-reading War and Peace, and one of the things that strike me about the characters is how impulsive they are. Natasha wants to run away with Anatole, throw up her entire life for him, in a way that just blows my mind. But Tolstoy wrote her as a normal young Russian noblewoman, not as a particularly impulsive or flighty character.
I agree, I think there is a distinction to be made here between maintenance and preservation, or between appropriate use and inappropriate use. A good pair of leather boots should be regularly cleaned, waterproofed, polished, oiled, resoled, etc. But when you're wearing a pair of leather boots, you should be willing to get in the mud. To do otherwise is, as our holy father says, a bit frociaggine for my taste. This is true for all the boots I own, even the 'dressier' pair of Allen Edmonds boots I wear when my job is more clipboard class but I still want to appear formal. I would never want to own a pair of boots that were so nice, so expensive, so fine, that I would wince walking through the mud. I want to wear my boots through the mud, as they should be used, then cleaned and polished to preserve them.
In terms of my own body, the big area of decision making is working out, rather than tattoos.
No individual workout I do is particularly likely to result in injury, but every workout has some possibility of injury, which could be reduced by doing less. I accept the accumulating risk of degrading my body over time. If one doesn't accept that risk, one can't really do anything worthwhile. To assert ownership of my body, I have to accept the risk of destroying my body. Otherwise all I can do is live in fear of injury.
Now there's some risk of injury I'm not going to take. There's a risk/reward. My workouts are structured around that acceptable risk of injury, for me personally. I barely ever straight-bar deadlift anymore, because dollar-to-donuts within a deadlift training block I will hurt my back. Every time. So I write off that lift, in favor of hex bar deadlift or heavy swings or power cleans. That's an unacceptable risk. I only do some exercises in the morning, and only do others in the evening, because of injury risks. I don't climb in areas that are heavy on pockets.
But eventually, periodically, it's going to catch up with me. That's inevitable. But I have to accept that to live my life.
More options
Context Copy link
Exactly. I'm not anti-tattoos as a concept, but I think they should be tasteful, speak to moments of high personal impact and therefore fairly rare. The random memeification of tattoos shows a fundamentally different life view amongst most people who just shotgun random images onto their skin.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
About tattoos specifically, or the general philosophy of substantive indifference to material possessions?
Mostly tattoos, I guess I'm kind of anti-permanent-body-alteration as a principle. Not in the sense of working out or anything, but like tattoos, scarification, ear-gauges, lip-plugs, etc. It seems...primitive? Isn't quite the right word, but like a regression. Tattoos and the rest of that seem like a self-imposed sign of one's own downward social motility. Maybe we could call it 'leaning in' to the collapse?
But I feel comfortable saying the Naz Reid tattoo crowd isn't doing that, at least on purpose. They just lacked the familial infrastructure and memory to stop them from making bad decisions
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link