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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   32637 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 5, 2024

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It's a rather bad idea to give wide masses of average people the impression that society will be harsh towards them should they simply have bad fortune. The view that society is merciless and unforgiving incentivizes drug addiction, crime and all sorts of social degeneracy.

What you punish you get less of, what you subsidize you get less more of. If society is merciless and unforgiving towards drug addicts, we will get less drug addiction, not more.

And calling drug addiction obtained through chasing a high "bad fortune" is spitting on those who really have experienced bad fortune.

What I disagree with is the proposition that "harsh views about people who are merely unfortunate is a necessity of having a functional society".

It is, though. The mechanism is that as soon as you decide that it's unacceptable to have hard views about the unfortunate, everyone in a bad spot gets called "unfortunate" because it would be arrogant and rude to say otherwise ("There but for the grace of God go I"). So because you cannot protect "unfortunate" from the creep of inclusion the self-destructive, you must allow harsh views of the unfortunate or people will assume you'll save them from their own self-destruction.

What you punish you get less of, what you subsidize you get less of

That second "less" should be "more" instead, no?

Yes, oops.

That is far from obvious to me. I could see the possibility that falling on harms times sans safety net leads to drug use, but I can’t see the causal mechanism of “if I don’t have a social safety net then bad times will follow so might as well drop out and drug up ensuring bad times”

I’m increasingly aware of just how much suffering and sin is caused by our belief that the world is hard and merciless. This belief—which can express itself as despair, or as the fearful drive to protect oneself above all else—makes it impossible to trust others. It makes social solidarity and even marriage extraordinarily difficult. The belief that we will be brutally punished if we set a foot out of line, that nobody will look out for us or help us or try to understand where we’re coming from, promotes abortion. It fuels addiction, by making us unwilling to admit where we’re needy, weak, or at fault.

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/a-stillborn-child-leads-to-a-murder-charge-with-threat-of-life-in-prison/

"Unforgiving" would imply that society would remain harsh even after you got your act together, and I don't see anyone advocating for that. As for the rest I really don't see how it would incentivize it.

So does the view that society is endlessly tolerant and supportive of destructive behavior, and the view that society owes a debt to each meritless individual and deserves destructive behavior as a sort of retributive justice. And right now I'm fairly certain that various western societies are failing on the side of being excessively tolerant and enabling.

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