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 -
Covid lockdowns. Vaccines? Very sensible. Vaccine mandates? Extreme, but I can imagine taking that position on the balance. But the idea of total loss of the most fundamental freedom - in my country, needing an excuse just to leave my house? I find it very hard to have any more sophisticated response than "fuck you and fuck your excuses", and on some deep emotional level that I can't shake it feels like everyone went completely insane at once on just this one issue.
It's especially weird because I'm pretty woke on most things. But in this case the mainstream feels totally insane and its viewpoint feels totally opaque to me, and inspires that kind of rage-and-panic reaction (which is not a pleasant thing to nearly constantly feel for more than a year).
I had pretty mainstream thought on Covid all the way through, so I can give you an example of my thought processes.
From what I remember, the logic (over here) went like so:
1 - We're going to get a vaccine soon, so we're going to do lockdowns and hold out until then. They suck, but we can contain the virus with lockdowns because it's virtually not in Australia.
2 - Once we get the vaccine and everyone takes it, Covid will be over and we'll return to normal life. This sucks, but it is a temporary suck that we will swiftly overcome. During this terrible time everyone needs to band together and accept the shittiness.
I'm not sure I would've supported lockdowns knowing what we know now about the virus. People were talking about a 2% fatality rate (so, what, seven million people dead in the US, 500k or so here) which is much, much larger than what we ended up with. I weighed half a million dead in my mind against a temporary restriction on my civil liberties and thought 'okay, this is the sort of situation where I can accept restricted civil liberties'.
I'm not so sure I would've accepted it in almost any other country in the world. The United States didn't have a choice to not have Covid in its borders, Australia did.
We moved on to getting the vaccine. I think at the time the claim was that vaccines stopped Covid spreading. If the option was 'zero Covid, but you have to get vaccinated' or 'Covid kills ~100,000 people (Australia, so I'm reducing the US numbers tenfold) but we don't enforce vaccines' I am in fact okay with a vaccine mandate. Mostly I'm not okay with mandating stuff like that, and as soon as it turned out that no, we weren't vaccinating ourselves back to a no-Covid world, I changed course pretty rapidly.
Vaccine mandates lagged popular opinion here - they were popular because we thought vaccine mandates would make this all go away. Lockdowns were popular because we thought they were the precursor to getting the vaccine, and, again, making Covid disappear like a bad dream. Your average person doesn't support lockdowns or vaccine mandates now, but that's because they've been proven ineffectual. China is still locking down over Covid and can't seem to accept the reality of the situation.
I think '2% of the population will die if we don't do this thing' is a good reason to consider the temporary suspension of civil liberties, and I think I'm very much a normie in that sense.
NB: I apologise if this reply seems harsh - I've tried to avoid that but see above on why I don't think straight about this.
I think this exemplifies my problem, really: it's all talked about in vague terms that can make the frighteningly insane sound perfectly reasonable.
Never mind "temporary suspension of civil liberties to save lives", which covers almost anything: how long and how bad for how many? If saving those 500000 people costs two weeks of no nightclubs, OK, I'm listening; if it costs a decade of China-style welded-indoors lockdown, no deal, molon labe etc.
But this was just never discussed. It wasn't a matter of "we'll consider these restrictions if they're projected to save at least this many lives", it was "your fundamental civil liberties are gone, you want to know what our cost-benefit analysis is, it's fuck you that's what it is".
And there's certainly no admission of failure now. If as it turns out they were crazy all along, that's critical evidence against them for the future, and I at least reserve the right to say "I told you so, clearly nobody involved in this fiasco should work in their field ever again". But it's just quietly dropped for the next Current Thing like the world didn't go insane for a few years!
I'm not 100% sure about Melbourne, but IIRC it was never banned in the Australian lockdowns or vaccine mandates to walk from your home to the supermarket, buy food, and come home with it (you had to wear a mask in the shopping centre, though, unless you had a medical exemption). This is a rather-important difference with the PRC's policies.
I was unable to go into a store to buy office supplies once because I didn't have my vaccine certificate with me, though.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Seems to me that you just gave your rational justification for being so fiercely activated.
Anyway, to further elaborate on these feelings, lockdowns are a personal threat to you (and to me). Of course people react negatively towards people threatening them. Whether that be "I want to kidnap you" or "I want the government to kidnap you" should make little difference. Wanting to hurt me, but being too cowardly to do it yourself and instead insisting on the government doing it for you, does not impress me. And, of course, being unvaccinated, I also find advocates of vaccine mandates to be making a personal threat to me when they do so. Against my repeated refusal, you insist on inserting your prick into me and squirting genetic material out of it? You just might be a rapist.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link