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 -
The left's "empathy" project has never been unlimited and all-encompassing. Only the good people (read the correct newspapers to learn who those are today) deserve empathy, and the bad people deserve nothing but hate. The left can be - and often is - horrendously vicious to those that are considered bad people. And that matters absolutely nothing that they may have held the same ideas or were members of the same movement in the past. Once they are declared the bad people, they are outside the empathy circle, and it is very, very dark on the left outside that circle. Is not the "excess" of empathy, it is very carefully directed allocation of it, deployed along very ideological guidelines.
This isn't true; the original hippies did actually buy into this (LSD and MDMA likely had something to do with this). Less so in the 90s-00s, but the window of "you're okay" was much wider than it has been since SJ congealed. And even SJers very rarely intend massacre as an end*, though that's a very low bar to clear.
*As in, given a sufficient stranglehold on power, the vast, vast majority of SJers do not want to massacre their enemies. Most are willing to fight a civil war (and many are willing to commit terrorism) if that's the only way to get that stranglehold, but that's a means, not an end in itself. Disenfranchisement, re-education, and institutionalised kidnapping to prevent enemy culture transmission all have significant (though in the latter two cases I'm not sure about majority) support as means to ensure permanent victory, but not massacre.
OK, I can't really talk about the hippy times, I wasn't even born yet then. But given by how many leftists terrorists (Weather Underground, RAF, etc.) existed at that time or immediately after, hippies probably weren't exclusively dominating the leftist mainstream. But those times are long gone, and the hippies are nowhere to be seen, and probably already have been denounced as a racist, cisheteropatriarchal movement (I don't know but it sounds so on brand I am pretty sure somebody already wrote a paper on that).
I don't know if they want to massacre their opponents personally, but they are surely A-OK with somebody else doing the job. They are willing to support pretty much any organization that would deploy violence against Western traditional targets or anybody they consider "bad people".
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link