site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 5, 2024

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.

8
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Our modern world order vastly overweighs 'rational,' left-brained, rules-following, logical types of intelligence. While at the same time totally disregarding and not rewarding intuition, vibes-fluency, social skills, grasping of the gestalt, right-brained thinking, religious thinking, et cetera.

Really? I've always thought the opposite. We generally reward those who are likeable, who are able to get other people on their side. Anyone in a leadership role, for example, needs to have people skills, not the sharpest analytical mind. Isn't it the perennial complaint of the wage slave that those at the top only got there by being smooth talkers or getting chummy with the powerful?

Also you seem to conflate right-brained thinking with being "virtuous", which I find odd. The two seem unrelated.

I think virtue is a balance of the two, or at least a balance is necessary to become virtuous. Therefore if someone is more right-brained in a left-brained society, they are likely closer to virtue.

That being said just being right-brained on it's own isn't virtuous.

In terms of historical human life, we are skewed far towards rationality. We aren't, in fact, entirely left-brained because as you point out, we tend to make decisions in a right-brained way anyway. Ian McGilchrist's book The Master and His Emissary talks about this, but basically the right brain is the more emotional center, and emotions tend to control our decision making no matter how rational we think we're being.

But when you try to force everything into a rational lens, you end up with a lot of problems.