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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   26562 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 3, 2024

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Great post. It's refreshing to read something with some thumos [Greek: spirit] on The Motte. I agree with the critical mass of this, but I am going to focus on the things I don't agree with:

  • I believe that the job of passing down culture falls equally on men and women, but they play different roles by passing down different elements of culture. It is the responsibility of men to live out and pass down the virtues that ensure life goes on. It is the responsibility of women is to live out and pass down the virtues that make life worth living.
  • You wrote, " When people sneer that a corrupt police force is just a gang in blue, they are more correct than they understand." I believe they are profoundly mistaken. No two things are exactly the same, but the degree of difference between different things, and whether or not that difference is categorical or not, depends on one sees the world. The difference between cops and robbers is the difference between fighting to indulge one's carnal desires, and fighting in the line of duty -- and a healthy society regards that difference as night and day.

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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."

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