site banner

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
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

What do you actually mean by 'Western society'?

Because yes, Greek influence is the substrate for west Eurasian civilization post-Alexander. But that includes Islamic societies and Indian Societies as well. That is, to say the least, a non-standard use of the term 'western society'.

What is typically meant by western society is societies founded on old Rome and Christianity. I assume you're referring to Rome's fall as the fault of Christianity(a very debatable and not supported by the evidence take; I presume you don't believe Roman mythology was literally true and ancient Rome fell because they didn't stay in the good graces of Iupiter, so I'm curious as to the mechanism for Christianity causing the fall of the Roman empire and the evidence for that mechanism because to all appearances Christianity actually briefly strengthened the Roman empire before it resumed its previous rate of decline), which BTW left a dark age of 300 years at most, not a thousand. But Christian institutions are the reason Roman knowledge was preserved. Christian institutions spread technological advances that lead into the industrial revolution quite directly. Christian institutions were the only thing that kept literacy alive in big parts of Europe.

Roman paganism(and you do know that Roman and Greek paganism were different religions despite the similarities, right?) was a dead man walking at the edict of Milan. An impartial observer in 300 AD probably would have expected Manichaeism or some kind of mystery cult to supplant it as well as Christianity. The fusion between Christianity and Roman culture built the greatest civilization the world has ever, or will ever have, known. Constantine's conversion came at a time when the crisis of the third century had essentially discredited Roman paganism and dealt a mortal blow to the empire. It was Christianity that brought the Germanic tribes into Roman culture; the early scientific texts weren't written in Latin as a tribute to Iupiter, but because of the influence of the Christian church. There's Christian stampings all over this stuff; even timekeeping is due to the Christian church needing to hold religious services at a particular time.

Without Christianity the Germanic tribes would have settled into their conquered Roman territory and acted like Arabs today(and indeed the Arabic golden age had outsize contribution from Christians and a decline in the Christian percentage is at least a reasonable contributing factor).