site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 23, 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.

6
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I’m not sure how deliberate it is, but I find it kinda weird just how often the values of the elite just so happen to be things that are absurdly destructive when practiced by lower class people. Not getting and staying married, not working hard and striving at every chance, not avoiding drugs and alcohol, behaving wildly in general, and so on — all of these things will make it much harder for a poor person to gain wealth.

I’m not sure how deliberate it is, but I find it kinda weird just how often the values of the elite just so happen to be things that are absurdly destructive when practiced by lower class people. Not getting and staying married, not working hard and striving at every chance, not avoiding drugs and alcohol, behaving wildly in general, and so on — all of these things will make it much harder for a poor person to gain wealth.

Its not weird at all. First off, money is a great insulator against the consequences of poor behaviour. Secondly, those aren't really the values of the elite. The higher your class the higher the likelihood that you stay married, people don't strive at every opportunity and people in over-consume drugs less.

Finally the things listed makes it harder for everyone to gain wealth (except striving), but the already wealthy do not need to, which is another reason why they can have a degenerate lifestyle without as disastrous consequences.

The elite value the freedom to do what they want and don't care about what happens to other people (or rationalise their preference as an improvement for everyone, damn observable reality), unfortunately if you're poor and without strong willpower you're more more vulnerable to the available vices than the elite. Which of course doesn't make things better, it's arguably even worse.

There's some truth to this, but it's overstated. The cathedral's message to poor women isn't "have your kids out of wedlock" it's "don't have kids, focus on your career and education". This is dumb because poor people are usually not good at school and have careers they are indifferent to at best, so they won't focus on those things. Likewise the message to the poor is, literally, don't do drugs- and this works about as well as the just say no campaign as a whole, but the media pushing back on that message is invented by poor people!

don't have kids, focus on your career and education

Isn't this the message to all women, and the poor are just poor responders?

The ladies that respond the best to this message and spend years in rigorous study are likely the women it would be best for our civilization to marry while young enough to maximize their fertility.

Kind of. Pop-country has the opposite message and it’s eleventy-bajillion times as Astro turfed and corporatized as anything else coming out of the entertainment industry- it’s just not aimed at the actual poor. Likewise public schools push birth control hardest in dirt poor urban districts.

Pop-country isn't a genre I've much experience with. Any recommendations of songs or artists that encourage young women to ditch school, marry young and have children? Or that are popular amongst the cohort of women that do?

I'd expect schools to need to push hard amongst non-responders.

As someone who once unwittingly had all his car radio stations tuned to country FM stations, I am surprised that more of The Motte hasn't embraced its "be like my elders: buy some land, marry someone you love, raise some hell, then some kids, and go to church" aesthetic.

As for me, I would describe it like root beer: "insidious, just like The Federation".

I hadn't considered that it was the Classic / New Country mix of 105.1 FM in the 80's that led me to marriage, family and church ~30 years later. I owe a debt to Uncle Dave and Lisa K in the mornings.