site banner
PaperclipPerfector  12d ago (text post)   30508 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 9, 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
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Interesting, Can you elaborate on your perspective? Others have commented on this, but id like your POV as well

You've obviously heard you're marrying someone's family along with them. Very much so here.

Anyone in your situation will always wonder where to draw the line regarding when you help. If your post is any indication, you may struggle to define that line at an appropriate place, even if you figure out the best way to help from this thread.

Are you going to be able to stomach the physical abuse of your nieces and nephews? Endure holidays with disgusting food prepared with questionable food safety by your in-laws? Deal with your children being influenced by their traumatized cousins?

You will have to constantly watch people just one degree separate from you be some variant of miserable or even a little evil. I have to deal with this situation ~2.5 degrees removed, and it's a fucking drag. I can't imagine it being any closer.

Maybe this girl is worth it. Many fantastic crabs are willing and able to get out of buckets in the backwater places of America. But supreme caution is warranted here.

I feel obligated by existing to respond, but all I've got is "my dad is the exception in his family. We were not dragged down by the others." Which just feels weak.

Also, whenever a cousin wants a path out, either for themselves or their children, they've historically tended to go to my dad in some capacity, be it hiring (on condition of not committing any drug-related crimes recently), or assuming custody of his nephews when their parents wound up in prison. The wider clan has basically fallen apart with the death of Grandma ~18.5y ago.

And while I expect my dad would have found a way to thrive regardless, getting involved in his father-in-law's business made a huge impact. I'd also note that this had nothing to do with the reasoning behind the marriage; my dad was trying to get into white-collar work until my sister was born, and FIL offerred him a job as an electrician. At no point did he want to turn that into a career, but it turns out that it's reliable, pays well, is less depressing than paper-pushing, and being able to spot a building he personally empowered on every other street is worth something. Also, the magic of giving a damn and taking whatever work he does seriously made him the obvious one to take over when FIL retired.

I kinda think demonstrably overcoming the background disadvantages of one's origins or condition can be attractive all its own. Of course, you then have to worry about regression to the mean, children getting lured into the life of the extended family, etc. FWICT, of the four of us (his two bio children and the two nephews), only one seems to be on that path, and it took until adulthood to get there.

I love the story and see people elevate themselves regularly. I would never say that everyone is beyond help, even in a large family.

I kinda think demonstrably overcoming the background disadvantages of one's origins or condition can be attractive all its own.

Agreed here. I have found that hiring people with food service and military experience for the white-collar work I do is almost always a good move, and the people I know who have successfully elevated themselves are more enjoyable as friends (as a group) than those who haven't.

Another person mentioned (according to JD Vance) that there's no silver bullet to lifting people out of poverty and dysfunction, even at the scale of personal relationships. Offering your hand to the proverbial crabs to lift themselves up is admirable, but your dad and OP should generally be prepared for some of them to fall back in. Regardless of how much you help.

Can I just tell you something about marriage that I heard, and has had a massive positive effect on it?

Something the Catholics get right is that young men are told, basically: you have two options for a job as a man. 1) You can be a priest (a spiritual father), or 2) you can be a husband and a father. Both of these are really difficult, at times you're going to hate them and at times you're going to feel like you fucked up.

But your job is to do them well. You chose the "be a husband and a father" route, and you have to look at this as your life's calling. Your wife, due to her background, will present you with some things that are going to be extremely difficult to endure, but you have to. Your marriage is your "burn the ships" moment, you do not have a choice.

There's an idea that life is suffering, and the only way to endure that suffering is to find a meaning to makes it worthwhile. Your marriage is that meaning.

Your wife, and by extension your family, is your life's work. Be good at it.

Something the Catholics get right is that young men are told, basically: you have two options for a job as a man. 1) You can be a priest (a spiritual father), or 2) you can be a husband and a father.

Meanwhile, I'm sitting here, unsuited for one and unable to become the other.

There's an idea that life is suffering, and the only way to endure that suffering is to find a meaning to makes it worthwhile.

Agreed. Now try finding that meaning when you're a 43-year-old unemployed man who's never managed to go on a date and lacks the capacity for religious belief.

lacks the capacity for religious belief.

If you simply edit your /etc/hosts file you can add the following lines:

127.0.0.1 www.reddit.com

127.0.0.1 old.reddit.com

127.0.0.1 reddit.com

And the problem will likely go away after a short time.

Okay but joking aside, what do you mean by this? You don't have the capacity for religious belief? Do you believe that you are the most powerful creature in the universe? Surely not.

Now try finding that meaning when you're a 43-year-old unemployed man who's never managed to go on a date

Your purpose is to fix this. Are you sure there's nothing else you could be doing to improve your standing with regards to these problems? Truly nothing?

Now try finding that meaning when you're a 43-year-old unemployed man who's never managed to go on a date

Your purpose is to fix this. Are you sure there's nothing else you could be doing to improve your standing with regards to these problems? Truly nothing?

Gotta be frank. If he's going to be Catholic, he can't marry divorced women, or any non-Catholic (EDIT: you can get bishop permission), and the lower end of his strike zone is about 32 as of today. It may be joever for the married vocation.

There are plenty of desperate 30 something single women in Catholic circles.

There are plenty of desperate 30 something single women in Catholic circles.

Single, and honest-to-God never married despite being Catholic all that time? Huh. I suppose I'll believe you, but it seems wild. My thoughts were that @Capital_Room's best bet would be to date a secular woman marrying late, then either convert or get special permission. But given he's not actually Catholic I suppose these concerns are moot.

Yes. There’s lots of very introverted women who had unrealistically high standards/toyed with becoming a nun but never made the jump for most of their twenties.

and the lower end of his strike zone is about 32 as of today.

Yeah, that's a big point I have to keep reiterating and try to get people to understand, whenever they come at me with the "you're a man, you're never biologically too old to become a father the way a woman ends up being" bit.

You don't have the capacity for religious belief?

I am an atheist materialist. There is no God, no "soul," no afterlife; just spacetime, quantum fields, etc. And none of the apologetics I've read, nor religious people I've talked to, have ever convinced me otherwise. I'm saying I'm not capable of perceiving the universe in any other way.

Kind of rules out any religion I've ever heard of, no?

Your purpose is to fix this. Are you sure there's nothing else you could be doing to improve your standing with regards to these problems?

This is something I've gone over in this forum plenty of times, and I'm sure the regulars are all pretty tired of it.

If you want you can try Bostromian Simulation Argument big-tent syncretism: 'your God is a shadow of the Supreme Being, the true creator of our universe'. It's not really a religion, since it has no significant moral teachings. But it does bring a lot of intellectual firepower to the Deist side of things.

If you want you can try Bostromian Simulation Argument big-tent syncretism

Even more ridiculous than classical theism, and more useless than classical Deism, which, IIRC, a number of 18-19th century thinkers pointed out was a sort of "gateway religion" to outright atheism (because a god who doesn't answer prayers might as well not exist).

But the logic does hold. If you're an atheist materialist, why don't you believe that we are in a simulation? That's a perfectly materialist conclusion based on principles we can observe. Bostrom's a pretty smart guy.

Deep down Christians know that their prayers aren't being answered, they can tell that prayer alone won't get them what they want and produce all this cope about how you should be praying to be a better person rather than any concrete outcome. Nor are they using telescopes to look for heaven, somehow they know they won't find it. Still they find some reassurance in the rehashed schizo-prophecies surrounding a 2000-year dead Jew and hope that some day, their prophecies might be resolved and good things will happen. After they die good things they hope good things will happen. And singing hymns is fun.

Well, simulationists can also hope that good things might happen. We might die and wake up from this dream as transcendent, posthuman beings. It's not a hard kind of knowledge, we could be NPCs and be deleted. But there is more weight behind this abstract hope than in theirs, for a certain kind of rational person.

Unfortunately, your beliefs are wrong. There's probably nothing I can do to convince you, except to say I have direct experiential evidence that I cannot square with nonexistence of god.

I did get to this point starting from agnostic materialism. Assume there are no souls. Assume there is nothing special about human brains. You're having an experience right now, how does that work? As far as I can tell, something to do with information processing... why would that be unique to human brains? What is it like to be a bat? Why unique to brains at all? What is it like to be a tree? What is it like to be an interconnected global financial system? Connect two or more "conscious" information systems, is the resulting system conscious? What if you connect ALL information systems?

What is it like to be a bat? Why unique to brains at all? What is it like to be a tree?

Impossible to know. We cannot ever know the experience of being any sort of thing other than our particular selves.

Connect two or more "conscious" information systems

The only known "conscious" information systems are human minds, and there's no real way to "connect" them — except imperfect channels like language — such as to form a "resulting system."

And none of this undermines materialism or points to the existence of any kind of higher power, nor any kind of afterlife.

Is there anything stopping you from passably faking a Christian reawakening?

Is there anything stopping you from passably faking a Christian reawakening?

Well, first, it would need to be a "Christian awakening" that I'd need to fake, not a "reawakening."

But more directly, the same thing that kept me from passably faking being left-wing, no matter how much it might have improved various prospects in my life — being too much on the autism spectrum to believably fake feelings and conceal my true beliefs. That and integrity, like @KingOfTheBailey says.

I think my mind runs in similar grooves, and the answer is: integrity. Integrity matters: would you want to date or marry someone who is lying about something so fundamental? Would you want to carry a lie like that for years, knowing what would happen if the secret got out?

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats