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 -
A chaplain I knew once credited it as to experience the sublime in a way that changes your perspective afterwards on the world.
'Sublime' is a word that's often used as just another synonym for quality in art, but it can mean more than just 'pretty.' Something sublime is something that strikes one with awe- not simply being impressed, but the much more intense feeling of reverential respect mixed with fear and wonder. Once you experience it, you are forever changed, because while your feeling on the thing may change afterwards, the reverence / respect / fear / wonder changes how you see the relation of things.
This is not, to be clear, a 'solely' religious experience. It's a somewhat common attestation of astronauts who go into space and look down on the earth- seeing how small their home countries are puts the their formerly massive worlds into a new perspective. Astronauts, despite coming from often committed career professional paths of government cultures, often have a reputation for being more post-nationalist/more internationalist, not because they don't care about their countries but because their paradigm is shifted by the scale perception and how they view their homelands. That sense of being taken out of your previous perception paradigm and thrust into another has other analogs as well, often when dealing with items of scale- some people get put into awe by nature, or by mega-engineering, or by diving deep into conceptually massive items.
The point here isn't 'what' causes your perception shift, but rather that you have one, and what that means going forward. Just as an astronaut is never going to look at earth the same way again even when they return, or an environmentalist struck by the grandeur of nature will never be as impressed by industrial output, the very way people connect the world together has changed in a way that is not 'merely' a choice.
You do not choose to undergo the sublime experience (you can go look at something other people say is sublime and feel nothing), but likewise when you do experience the sublime you do not 'choose' to let it change you- instead, you are the one changed, because that is part of what strikes the reverence / respect / fear. And after that sort of experience, well... you can try to argue with a converted environmentalist that industrialization is good, and they might be swayed by specific arguments that industrialization may be a net positive for society despite it's harm to nature, but the underlying paradigms of how they put the world together has changed. You can't really argue people out of that any more than you can argue them out of their own visual perception.
Religion is a broad set of dynamics and relations, but the sublime religious experience is broad enough / shared enough that people who have experienced it can find enough of each other to validate and further the beliefs, in a similar sense that you and I both know what 'love' is as an experience despite not knowing eachother or eachother's experiences. For those touched by the sublime, something similar exists, and through it the sense of solidarity that the sublime experience, rather than being purely personal, is a shared sense of something else- and that something else is God, with all the fear / wonder / awe / reverence that implies.
More options
Context Copy link