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PaperclipPerfector  18d ago (text post)   35131 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 3, 2025

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Interesting! Mayhaps the Alt-Right (2016-2020) was three-foundationers who left the Left because they were getting too six-foundation Holier Than Thou? This would be a fantastic look at the Culture War in a longer write-up.

This would be a fantastic look at the Culture War in a longer write-up.

This is the thesis statement of "right is the new left", and beyond Scott's writeup of it, I'm pretty sure every liberal on the Motte has penned at least one comment on this subject. The people who are on the right because they are traditionalists tend not to speak so much about this, for reasons that tend to be embarrassing to them; in 50 years, the people who are progressives right now will, hopefully, speak of us in the same way, for the same reasons.

This is why I use "traditional-[classic] liberal-progressive" and not "liberal-conservative", because the latter has always kind of been a lie that basically everyone on the political spectrum has, outside of the last 15 years or so, told if not outright believed. It's also why I find Haidt's Six Foundations to be useless at describing the differences between these people; while it's still informative, it's harmful to one's understanding of the problem[1].

The seismic shift happening right now is one where liberals turn away from progressivism because they've stopped being a net positive to support. Granted, the writing was on the wall for this since the late '70s (which was, objectively, the high water mark of liberal power in the Western world[2]), though the temporary resurgence of the traditionalists in the '80s, and then the economic boom from 1992 through 2008, covered up the forming schism for a while. But now the social issues that germinated in the 1920s and 30s have all come back, all at once.

It's probably worth noting that of {care/harm, liberty/oppression, fairness/cheating, loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, sanctity/degradation}, the first three have a lot to do with exercising short-term unsustainable power over reality, and the last three have a lot to do with exercising long-term sustainable power over other human beings. Therefore, combined with the kinds of people who fit into the former and latter categories, we should expect liberals to care more about the first three, and it's why traditionalists/progressives care more about the last three. Liberals are the "annoying aspie kid asking why not 5000 times a day" political philosophy writ large; traditionalists are "angry dad", progressives are "angry mom" [3].

[1] Haidt's own methodology betrays this: caremaxxing is natural for one who serves "caring" as a God. If there were a moral foundation for "atheist/Christian", and you polled the Moral Majoritarians/traditionalists of the 1980s, it's natural they would have maxed out the Jesus-meter.

[2] Free love as iconoclasm, powering society with unlimited amounts of nuclear power Hell Energy, a general cultural attitude of shocking the squares, rejecting the country's justification for war halfway around the world, miscegenation, actual pedophilia, etc.- all gone by the mid-80s. The cultural power of those with the {loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, sanctity/degradation} moral frameworks was completely helpless in the face of all this, and it's something today's traditionalists are still butthurt about, and still insist is true of the progressives even though progressive thought inherently rejects all of those things in much the same ways (covered up by the universally-accepted untruth that liberal and progressive are synonyms).

[3] Given equality, traditionalist strategy is centered around subjugating young women, progressive strategy is centered around subjugating young men, and liberal strategy is centered around devaluing the contributions of the old. It's a natural consequence of how they work.

Granted, the writing was on the wall for this since the late '70s (which was, objectively, the high water mark of liberal power in the Western world[2])

Now you have me wondering if LSD had something to do with this. (#people who've ever used LSD) would have had a meteoric rise in the 60s and then a slow decline from then on, and we know it has permanent effects in the right direction.

Maybe- the people into LSD in the 60s would be 70-80 now, which means that they're rapidly walking out of power into their graves now, and replaced by those who were instead high on the Righteous Anger of the 1980s.

I still don't understand why the average person would take that stuff, though; the equivalent of having weird geometric CRT burn-in on my field of vision and risking breaking the pattern-matching machinery inside my head is just not something I'm interested in.

I've never taken LSD myself, and am not interested in doing so. I'm just noticing this, particularly since it implies that if one wants liberalism, "re-legalise LSD" is an unusually-important issue.

Replying to some of your points upthread:

The people who are on the right because they are traditionalists tend not to speak so much about this, for reasons that tend to be embarrassing to them; in 50 years, the people who are progressives right now will, hopefully, speak of us in the same way, for the same reasons.

I'm not sure I've parsed this correctly; are you identifying as a traditionalist and saying that progressives of today will think of resurgent traditionalism as "what happens when you shove alt-right liberalism down the throats of six-foundations who'd [now] have become progressives"?

It's probably worth noting that of {care/harm, liberty/oppression, fairness/cheating, loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, sanctity/degradation}, the first three have a lot to do with exercising short-term unsustainable power over reality, and the last three have a lot to do with exercising long-term sustainable power over other human beings.

This seems non-obvious to me. Certainly, care/harm and fairness/cheating are reality-based and loyalty/betrayal and authority/subversion are socially-based, but I'd put liberty/oppression as "socially-based" and sanctity/degradation as "reality-based", and am not sure what you're pointing at with "sustainable"/"unsustainable". Mind elucidating?

are you identifying as a traditionalist

No.

saying that progressives of today will think of resurgent [neo]traditionalism as "what happens when you shove alt-right liberalism down the throats of six-foundations who'd [now] have become progressives"?

With any luck, yes.

and am not sure what you're pointing at with "sustainable"/"unsustainable"

Let's say I'm a young man and have the ability to work for a few years and be set for life by answering a particular question. Of the set of things that could prevent me from doing that:

  • care/harm: is answering this question actually productive (will people give me profit for answering it)?
  • liberty/oppression: am I allowed to marshal my resources to take advantage of the answer?
  • fairness/cheating: is corruption going to drain resources I need to take advantage of this question's answer, or steal it entirely?
  • loyalty/betrayal: if I find someone willing to work under market value, how much am I permitted to take advantage of that?
  • authority/subversion: am I unable to consider the result of this question because old men or women worked against it in the past?
  • sanctity/degradation: am I unable to take advantage of the answer to this question because it's a repugnant conclusion?

From the perspective of the question-answerers (or people who believe themselves temporarily-embarrassed millionaires question-answerers), the last three are a damping force- a conservative force, if you will. They tend to be frustrated by damping forces simply by being someone who fancies themselves able to be correct more often than the average person, and from that perspective that's theft taxation parasitism.

As your mindset drifts further and further away from zero-sum it becomes easier and easier to see those people that way; as your mindset drifts closer to zero-sum, enforcing those last three things are what will make sure you get yours.

The trick is that parasitism is a valid evolutionary strategy- in the eyes of the unproductive, it's no less inherently wrong or right than productivity in terms of "mechanisms that mean I won't starve to death". And people can switch from productive to unproductive in the blink of an eye, too- you can be automated into uselessness, you can lose a limb, changing conditions of reality can destroy your niche- so... how many social taxes do you think is the correct amount?

I've discussed this at slightly-greater length here and here (in the latter case I explain further in the replies).

I'm not very good at writing extensive monologues.

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