site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 31, 2022

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.

24
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

This wasn't an attack on your attitude, which if anything is refreshing in its boldness and consistency. Even an explicit Varna system where our neo-Brahmin Judeo-Hapa CEOs are recognized as spiritually (and racially) superior but are also expected to fulfill certain paternalistic prosocial obligations befitting their greater capability would be preferable to the current having-the-cake-and-eating-it-too arrangement, where Whites both underperform and carry the inexhaustible moral burden of transgressions, real and imagined.

Note, however, that in the West you feel noblesse oblige towards, and intend to save, «the West» as an abstraction and a communal cultural legacy. As you have indicated many times in the past, ignorant, wretched lower-to-middle-class Anglos can only inspire an almost-genocidal contempt on your side. You justify this by pointing out their unmerited pretension of equality. Fine. But if we compare values, they are, on average, superior to the median member of your nation (if not your lineage) in all respects one could care about – work ethic, intellect, honesty, fucking cleanliness – except maybe knowing their place; they provide the substrate for your flourishing; and they are not afforded the opportunity to lord over those lesser people in their countries, nor do they seek it – as opposed to their, or rather their upper classes', forefathers of the Colonial era. And indeed both in the US and the UK they calmly accept even the political leadership of your kin; a situation unthinkable in any South Asian nation, no matter the respective merit.

In my eyes this largely redeems their superficial arrogance, and brings the ball back into your court.

they are, on average, superior to the median member of your nation (if not your lineage) in all respects one could care about – work ethic, intellect, honesty, fucking cleanliness – except maybe knowing their place;

Oh absolutely, we've failed to even potty train our lower classes properly...

I have an uncle back home who worked for a few years in the west but went back to take care of my grandparents. He constantly laments the lack of talent and general low performance of the people he can hire compared to what he could get in the West, almost all the competent people basically emigrate and back home we're left with the dregs. It's good for the country as a whole due to remittances but bad for growing successful businesses.

@2rafa says that we should feel deference towards the Anglos at the top and I will freely admit that the superior Anglos are better than the superior South Asians but it is not enough to merely be superior, one has to use it for the benefit of society. A king who does not rule as a king but instead prefers to spend his time slumming it out with the peasants isn't doing them a service, instead he is damaging the realm and in turn the peasants themselves by leaving it headless. Western elites losing the desire to take their natural place and rule justly over society is not something to credit them with, but rather it's a mark on their character.

Modern western elites have very conveniently dropped all the noblesse oblige that required them to put effort into providing direction to society, while adopting all the worst hedonistic impulses that allowed them to focus on putting themselves first over the rest of society. Sure, they spun up a welfare state that now takes up a huge portion of their (and my) taxes and uses them to try and fix the problems they themselves have created but these people by and large are already rich enough to live a good life because of their assets. Instead of earning say £1,000,000 a year and living life according to norms that provide a good role model for others they have chosen the path of earning £500,000 (after taxes) and giving in to personal hedonism where because of their support structures they still do well, nay better than the first case, in the end, while setting fire to what remains of society.

I think your accusation of my "almost-genocidal contempt" towards the lower classes is unfounded. What I dislike about the western lower classes is their insubordination, this doesn't merit their (or anybody's) genocide, other than that I think they are probably the best lower classes you can find anywhere in the world. They are not to blame for the degenerate culture they have adopted, in a functioning society culture is set by the elite, and it is modern western elites who have failed to articulate and indoctrinate a good and successful way of life/vision of society to the lower classes.

If I were to have "almost-genocidal contempt" towards anybody it would be towards the memes of the modern Western upper class. It is their dereliction of duty that has led to the current state of affairs, I would classify it as a sin towards their own lower classes, and as we all know, the wages of sin is death. This dereliction of duty is not something I am thankful to the western upper classes for, they have chosen the path of easy hedonism for themselves over their ordained role of ruling wisely over the rest of us. And for this they deserve to be at the very least memetically replaced.

Indeed I lay the blame at the feet of western elites not only for the modern state of the West but also the subcontinent as a whole. There is a saying, said half jokingly, back home that in 1947 the white man took his independence from us and left. After plundering India for a hundred years once the concept of universal human rights had developed to the point where taking care of us as our master and leader was about to become more of a burden than a boon the white man very craftily packed his bags, sowed in us the seeds of "freedom" and left us to our own devices, whereupon the local elites who were less competent in almost every way and more corrupt etc. were forced to try and make a go of things. Naturally this led to worse outcomes than one where the white man would still be ruling over us justly and fairly. Well many of us weren't having it and instead of consigning ourselves to be ruled over by our own incompetents we sought our way to the home of the white man, where he was still in charge and things were better. A friend of mine once told a white person he was talking to that the reason there are so many of us now in the UK is that because "you were there, so now we are here".

These days though the white man doesn't even want to rule over his own lands and tries to pass off shirking his duty to enjoy the hedonistic life as being the morally "right" and "just" thing to do, how far has he fallen...

Nobility, as far as I understand it, is about owning land, developing it and those who dwell on it and protecting it and them from harm. (Whatever "bloodline" and "good stock" are, they only contribute to nobility as much as they contribute to what nobles do). Perhaps Burdensome has neglected to mention everything he does that makes him, as he puts it, "better", but from what I gathered from his post he moves money around the Western market and earns a premium based on how much of it ends up in his employers' hands. Hardly evokes an image of a noble patriarch, that.

Right, the devil is very much in the details as far as @BurdensomeCount’s account of his noblesse oblige. The nobility of medieval Europe were expected to actually materially improve the lives of the people living under them, and to provide military protection for them. They were warlords - warlords with culture and at least the trappings of a genteel bearing, to be sure, but we’re talking about a network of guys who were expected to raise and lead armies in brutal combat.

I’m sure that @BurdensomeCount would say that he’d be happy to be a benevolent patriarch to the Western proles, and to provide for and protect them, if only they hadn’t pre-emptively spurned his noblesse with their gross insubordination. But could it be that he has gotten the causation backwards? Maybe the Western proles hate him and revolt against him because they are fully aware that he is in their country specifically to do something parasitic which produces zero actual value for anyone who isn’t a mega-wealthy vulture capitalist, and they don’t believe that he has anything remotely useful or beneficial to offer them.

A shake-up a few years ago in the executive suite of the multi-billion-dollar corporation with which I’m employed led to the ascension of an Indian Brahmin CEO, who then hired a few of his co-ethnics to major positions in the company. I’m sure that this guy probably sees himself precisely the way that Burdensome sees himself; as a paragon of superior breeding, here to rescue a flagging company with his immense and visually-obvious inborn talents. What most of us proles see, though, is a painfully awkward empty suit with not one iota of integrity or love for the common man in his bones. A parasite, here to bleed the company dry, dither about wage increases, and give a leg-up to other immigrants from his caste. A massively well-compensated parasite, and almost certainly a profoundly intelligent and numerate man, but someone I wouldn’t let into my home.

I would actually be fine with an immigrant overclass who displayed a genuine noblesse oblige. I agree with Burdensome that Anglosphere proles - I can’t speak to the state of Western proles more broadly - are degenerated and unworthy of the mantle of self-rule. They are crying out for someone to be their champion, but their shitty tastes and miscalibrated instincts keep leading them to elevate what, to the rest of us, are obvious grifters and charlatans. A ruling class with a combination of genuine erudition, hyper-competence, and noblesse oblige is exactly what these people need, and while I’m far from convinced that we’re past the point that we could construct such a class entirely from native-born talent, it’s at least plausible. The problem is that we can sense, with zero difficulty, that the overclass we’re actually importing are soulless sycophants and parasitic quants, saying whatever they need to say to get ahead while privately undermining and bleeding dry the people they’re ostensibly supposed to be protecting. Until the proles see concrete changes, of course they’re going to be insubordinate. You can play chicken-and-egg games all day, but from my perspective the ball is in your court to earn their deference.