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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   31482 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 7, 2022

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A while ago, @anagast replied to one of my comments with:

(...) My greatest fear of liberalism is that it will in practice turn everything into a samey globalist liberal soup. I'd rather have an archipelago of self-assorted communities, than everything integrated everywhere. (...) source

There was something in that image that made me feel confused. Later, I realized what it was: to me, liberalism and turning everything into samey globalist soup are a non sequitur.

Consider what is probably the epitome of liberal globalization: New York City. Out of the roughly 8.5 million people who live there, 37% are foreign-born. With over 800 languages spoken there, it's also the most linguistically diverse place in the world. And while the city is easy to characterize, and often is, as politically and bureaucratically a American-Democrat stronghold, it's not really how it looks like on the street.

There's a ton of conservatism here. Walk around long enough and you'll bump into a wedding or funeral or some other celebration that's done in a beautiful traditional style. Or, talk with enough people, and you'll learn that while they put on the right face for the DEI training at white collar job, they're against abortion and other markers of leaning right.

It's hard to describe all of it unless you've had a few week to live here. The city is a patchwork quilt of hundreds, maybe thousands, of groups, some taking up a single block while others, like the Chinese or Hasidic Jews, basically run whole neighborhoods. Walking in a straight line for maybe an hour feels like traveling through half a dozen countries.

Now, all these people, at least most of them, enjoy the fruits of globalization. They drink coke. Eat pizza and sushi. Browse reddit. But overall, their primary cultural identity is unaffected. I suspect it's because liberalism creates a free market for ideas, allowing people to pick and choose, which strengthens good ideas and causes weak ones to fade away.

Put another way: if you try to enforce culture in a top-down way, you'll get a lot of "coverage", but most adherents will be on board just because everyone else is. Their identity is weak, ripe for the taking by the next guy who takes over. But if you allow people to sort themselves out on their own, the feeling of ownership creates a much deeper, stronger sense of belonging that's not going to be changed by a coca cola advertisement.

That's how I explain to myself why so many cultures in NYC have integrated but not assimilated. Integrated, because they follow the common, basic set of rules: mind your own business, treat others with respect, do your job. Not assimilated because despite living here for >1 generations, they've not become part of some bland, uniform uberculture. If anything, the need to exist alongside so many other tribes has made them work on distilling the best parts of their culture to make it appealing and strong to outsiders and a source of pride for the insiders.

Also, what I think all these rather conservative immigrants bring to the table in the city is that they keep the politicians and bureaucrats honest. No ooey-gooey feel-good diversity--no, they're gonna get the real thing, they're gonna get respect for the culture and community. In a way, I suspect they're the ones responsible for the success of liberal ideals in the city.

(There's some parallel here between how marrying the state and the Church led to calcification of religion in Europe, whereas the freedom of religion in the USA led to an explosion of it, but I'm not familiar with history enough to use that as an argument).

That's why I think that liberalism and globalization don't lead to creating a samey globalist liberal soup, but just the opposite--they lead to differentiation, fragmentation, and and constant evolution and improvement of culture.

And the reason why both sides of the political spectrum are afraid of this (lefties crying about dying languages and indigenous customs; righting crying about the death of tradition) is because they are afraid of the creative destruction that liberalism brings to bear against their ideas. But in doing so, they are actually restricting the growth and refinement of their cultures.

(cough All hail Tzeentch cough)

I want to approach this from a somewhat different angle. The right echoing a lot of anti-globalization left talking points up until about 2010 seems to me to invoke the trope of "you want to be an individual, just like everyone else"" which has a superficially clever ring to it but is not very compelling.

Ask for immigrant communities maintaining their ways, the right is split. They like the conservatism but they don't like the lack of assimilation. Ideally, Republicans swingers in Florida would move a bit closer to where these first generation immigrants are at, lifestyle-wise, while all the immigrants would start speaking English anywhere native born Americans might hear them and also stop voting Democrat.

Those communities are often first or second generation, though. Little Italy is effectively dead, as are the Irish diaspora communities, and the only Jews who retain their culture have organized themselves as a micro-nation (the Hasids you mention). As your evidence for the patchwork of liberalism, you are looking at the insular communities that are recent arrivals to America, which have yet to be filtered by liberalism. But look elsewhere in America, at the 3rd generations, whether Germans in the Midwest or Chinese in California, and there’s no such patchwork to be found. It’s all some pesticide-ridden GMO monoculture crop, planted and picked and served at a corporation.

I don’t think liberalism allows people to pick the best ideas, for many reason: an adolescent does not pick anything, they are stupid and subject to cultural trends; the theory that an individual generally picks the best ideas is not evidenced from anything, and most societies had a specially-chosen group focus on picking the best ideas for everyone (for good reason); the culture that people will cling to is the one that is most pervasive, flashy, and marketed well, just like how they often pick products; Americans are ground down by stressors and obligations that they hardly have time to deliberately pick something as complex as their own culture, let alone assess the competing value schemes which requires understanding moral philosophy and psychology.

Those communities are often first or second generation, though. Little Italy is effectively dead, as are the Irish diaspora communities, and the only Jews who retain their culture have organized themselves as a micro-nation (the Hasids you mention). As your evidence for the patchwork of liberalism, you are looking at the insular communities that are recent arrivals to America, which have yet to be filtered by liberalism.

Are you arguing that culture should not change?

But look elsewhere in America, at the 3rd generations, whether Germans in the Midwest or Chinese in California, and there’s no such patchwork to be found. It’s all some pesticide-ridden GMO monoculture crop, planted and picked and served at a corporation.

Yes, 3rd generation children of Germans or Chinese immigrants are not like native Germans or Chinese, but that's kind of obvious, since they've become American. But, at the same time, they've impressed some of their culture upon the broader American culture. As for the monocolture GMO crop, either I don't understand it, or you're making an appeal to aesthetics. Just as an example, the amount of regional music that the US produces is staggering.

Pretty much my sentiments. The only reason there's any patchwork in NY is because of the 37% foreign born there. The differences you are observing are the chunks that have only just been thrown into the homogenous soup. You are watching them as they dissolve.

Now, all these people, at least most of them, enjoy the fruits of globalization. They drink coke. Eat pizza and sushi. Browse reddit. But overall, their primary cultural identity is unaffected.

See? They're dissolving already. Their primary culture isn't unaffected: every bowl of goyslop they eat is a bowl of lutefisk they don't, becoming less distinct from you one meal at a time.

goyslop

Is this supposed to serve as anything but a dumb tribal indicator?

Yeah. People should rather use prolefeed, e.g. it's not as if Jews are in any way unaffected by the obesity epidemic and lack of food culture.

Case in point, the infamous Trigglypuff is a Jewish student, child of academics. In spite of all that, 300 lbs by early 20's, almost certainly doomed to die childless due to her unfortunate combination of being very physically unattractive and not having a nice personality either.

Prolefeed is media and entertainment, goyslop is food. So says Wiktionary, at least. This is the first time I've encountered the latter term.

Huh, forgot that but now that you remind me of it..

Goyslop - I've seen it around on twitter. It almost certainly originated with the 1488 crowd but as it's catchy and almost everyone hates modern food industry it's spread as a catchy name. Ultra-palatable food that's making everyone fat needs probably another catchy, disparaging designation. Again, not like Jewish health statistics are much better. Jews are even one of the populations highlighting the dangers of 'goyslop' - their heavy use of industrial seed oils led to a heavy cardiac disease burden and is used as an counterexample against the 'saturated fats are the devil' narrative..

These days, especially on the online right and anti-zionist left a lot of people have lost whatever reverence towards Jews the Boomer truth regime indoctrinated them into, and now consider them just another ethnic, if not worse.

No, but it is a funny word that evokes an image of contempt from the people who feed it to you, like a pig farmer or a school lunch lady.

I will defend the opposite view.

Out of the roughly 8.5 million people who live there, 37% are foreign-born. With over 800 languages spoken there, it's also the most linguistically diverse place in the world. [...] Walk around long enough and you'll bump into a wedding or funeral or some other celebration that's done in a beautiful traditional style. [...] The city is a patchwork quilt of hundreds, maybe thousands, of groups, some taking up a single block while others, like the Chinese or Hasidic Jews, basically run whole neighborhoods. Walking in a straight line for maybe an hour feels like traveling through half a dozen countries.

Yeah, you have the language, the foods, the music, but those will eventually melt together. Even you provide a constant stream of new immigrants, and they willingly self-segregate, the million small markers of culture will eventually disappear. Only a few larger ones will remain, as a symbol of identity, like some Americans celebrate St. Patrick's day.

Now, all these people, at least most of them, enjoy the fruits of globalization. They drink coke. Eat pizza and sushi. Browse reddit. But overall, their primary cultural identity is unaffected.

Which brings me to my second point. The larger empire will tolerate the harmless and meaningless traits of the constituent cultures, but not anything meaningful. You can keep the foods. You can keep the songs (most of them). You cannot enforce a community with your norms.

While the EU is nominally in favor of cultural diversity, it means they will subsidize folk dresses and bland exhibits with 27 flags. It does not mean they will allow an Eastern European country to be against gay marriage rights. It does not mean they will allow a country to practice eugenics, or protect key industries. You might agree with these decisions, but my point is that the EU and ANZAC allow only surface level diversity.

Because culture is downstream from economics and politics. Japan's building codes make it very easy to make tiny restaurants on the first floor, so their streets are alive with such restaurants. In the Middle East, the climate is dry and the laws forbid alcohol, so they have cuisine with figs and shisha bars everywhere.

Yes, you have a constant stream of immigrants that self-segregate in neighbourhoods, and that slows down the integration. It might take generations to melt them, but it is happening nonetheless, because the laws are the same, the economics are the same for everyone. The first generation will do everything the same as back home, the second will adjust, but their children will eventually meld.

EU is pretty much bound for death.

You can't keep such an organisation based on promises of prosperity going if its policies caused deindustrialization and impoverishment. The insane energy policies based on promoting nonexistent technology that directly lead to increases in natural gas use and present costs are quite important.

Furthermore, it's mostly international treaties that EU loves that its member states cannot stop being party to that have led to the situation where in France, they have 700k people with an expulsion order[1]. One of whom, portrayed as a 'homeless woman' raped and murdered a little girl and tried to sell off her organs for purposese of witchcraft, leading to some amount of acrimony at the moment.

I doubt it's going to last much longer than next 10 years.

[1]: it was a French-language video of a political discussion posted to Twitter. But, if you consider that in 2nd quarter of 2022, France ordered 35k people to leave country, and 3.5k actually left, you can see how the 700k is perfectly plausible.. Wikipedia shows similar amounts of noncompliance.

I doubt it's going to last much longer than next 10 years.

And then what? What do you expect to happen?

It's going to become a vestigial organisation, like e.g. the Holy Roman Empire was.

Interesting points.

Starting from the end, I think you oversimplify the economics & laws angle. If humans were simple optimizers, then yes, they would all behave in a set of uniform, most optimal behaviors. There would be no new businesses, no new music, no new books, etc. Everyone in New York would just run laundromats, irish pubs, and sell hot dogs, to name a few things. But that's not really the case in reality--the laws, in the city and in most places in the US at least, are liberal enough for individuals to tinker, try new ideas, and find new ways of expressing themselves whether it's through commerce or art or whatever.

That's where I see the beauty of liberalism--let it provide a minimal set of laws that ensure more or less stability and... leave the rest up to people. In practice, given zoning and licensing and bureaucracy, this doesn't exist, but even in the much faded, weaker version of it that we have, we still see a ton of creative destruction. Much of it is garbage, but that's the cost of having monkey brains hitting two stones together until they find just the right stones that give sparks. This process, though, is made stronger by a steady stream of immigrants--whether internal or external--even though yes, after some n number of generations, they will likely meld in. However, by then, they will have very likely left a mark on the place.

I'm not sure I get the argument about surface diversity. If I set aside the EU angle, I don't see why it matters for a country to be able to be against gay rights? Like, if you live in Liberaltopia, there's nothing stopping you from not associating with gay people. There's nothing stopping you from forming a group with other people and having each other promise that you will not do gay things or associate with gays. There's also no size limit imposed on your group--it could be just your friends or half the country. Why would you want the state to interfere and set up some laws against gay people's freedoms? Surely, if gayness is in anyway bad, well, then in the free market of ideas, gayness will fade away while your non-gay group will grow and prosper?

This applies to other topics around enforcing culture.

There would be no new businesses, no new music, no new books, etc.

I don't know how you made that jump.

Like, if you live in Liberaltopia, there's nothing stopping you from not associating with gay people. There's nothing stopping you from forming a group with other people and having each other promise that you will not do gay things or associate with gays. There's also no size limit imposed on your group--it could be just your friends or half the country.

There are no ways to enforce these shared norms. Imagine you live in an imaginary, hypothetical world where heroin, or murder, or dumping your garbage from the balcony is legal and normal. You and a group of friends agree that this should change, and you "form a group" and "promise" not to do that. So what? Your kids are still hooked on heroin, there is still garbage on the streets, and there is still a chance of getting murdered, because there are others who didn't agree and defectors.

You need a method to enforce that new norm. "Form a group" and "promise" is insufficient.

Surely, if gayness is in anyway bad, well, then in the free market of ideas, gayness will fade away while your non-gay group will grow and prosper?

Gayness, specifically, was an example, of something the larger culture will impose on the sub-communities. You don't need to argue if it's good or bad.

I don't know how you made that jump.

I made it from this argument: " It might take generations to melt them, but it is happening nonetheless, because the laws are the same, the economics are the same for everyone."

In other words, if everyone is influenced by the same economic and political forces, then everyone is being pushed toward the same set of outcomes. If you leave that process going for a while, then humans become grey uniform goo that settled into some local maximum, hence no "new" or "different" things can be made.

There are no ways to enforce these shared norms. Imagine you live in an imaginary, hypothetical world where heroin, or murder, or dumping your garbage from the balcony is legal and normal. You and a group of friends agree that this should change, and you "form a group" and "promise" not to do that. So what? Your kids are still hooked on heroin, there is still garbage on the streets, and there is still a chance of getting murdered, because there are others who didn't agree and defectors.

Ah, you see, I am not arguing for not enforcing norms, but for a minimal set of open norms that allow individuals to express themselves, whether it be owning guns, being gay, partaking of the shrooms, etc. But I'm afraid that it's easy to misconstrue this as a call for post-modern, "reality is subjective" free-for-all, but allow me the benefit for the doubt. I am against that.

I feel like we're talking about two side of freedom. You're talking about "freedom from" as in: freedom from rotting in thy neighbor's garbage, freedom from having your kids being sold heroin, etc. I'm talking about "freedom to": freedom to stick your penis into another man's asshole, freedom to inhale smoke containing nicotine or THC, freedom to worship whatever deity/ies you wish, etc. Would you agree that this is the case?

The way I see it, the latter form of freedom requires the first one. But, for the latter form to truly blossom, the first one must be kept to a minimum. So yes, murder, rape, harming children* and other unilateral infringements of individual freedom must be outlawed. Totally agreed here. But not much more than that. Otherwise, you would increasingly stifle human expression.

This is where I see the beauty of a place like NYC. A basic set of laws ensures that people are not murdered (at least frequently) and that the garbage is (more or less; recently, sadly, it's less) taken care of. But because there is not much more than that, people can live in any weird way they want to, whether it's being a drag queen or an ultra-conservative jew. This, I believe, is core to "globalist liberalism", and something that is well expressed in the Bill or Rights, which I'm not bringing up for its legal standing but for its spirit, the spirit of freedom of expression as long as that expression isn't about yelling fire in a crowded theater or stoning unbelievers.

So, going back to the example you gave, the one about the EU and gay rights in an Eastern European country, let's first take away the label of gay rights, because that's just the outer layer that's not important. It could be anything else like ethnicity or abortion stance, or whatever. We basically have two minorities, the one that is arguing that a norm against X should instituted as law, and one arguing that X should be permitted. This might be the crux of the matter: X does not damage the commons. It is not a unilateral infringement of others' rights. Thus, I am against instituting a ban on X and for allowing to people to segregate into cultural groups aligned with what they think about X.

Now, aside from that, which Eastern European country are you thinking of? I happen to be from that part of the world and a little bit of the various cultures that people it.

  • Children are a special case. They are human, but not fully so for many years since they need that much time to exercise and perfect their ability to reason and judge. So they cannot be treated as equal adults in society. But that leaves them to the mercy of their parents, some of which are far from adults themselves. How much should the state be allowed to here? I weakly lean toward "more", but I'm not sure if the benefits outweigh the costs of state mismanagement.

Insofar as I’m concerned, some of the key elements of the Finnish culture are being silent on public transport, staying at extreme distances (comparatively) from each other while speaking, and not looking at each other in the eye while speaking. Despite some attempts by the Finnish cosmopolitan class to change these (starting from before Finnish EU membership), these don’t seem to be changing; the national characteristic of comfortable semi-autism is staying.

Cultures aren’t just colorful dresses and spicy foods, but they aren’t just politically charged culture war issues, either. There’s a lot of facets, some more and some less potent for change due to international exposure.

the national characteristic of comfortable semi-autism is staying.

Is this where the Gondola meme comes from?

I think Finland Män is the best summary of the Finnish culture.

This makes me wonder how easily an English-speaker can read Aittokoski's phonetic Finnish-accent written English.

For what it's worth, I started cracking up as I read that copypasta thing out loud to myself.

It does not mean they will allow an Eastern European country to be against gay marriage.

It looks to me as though most Eastern European countries are in fact against gay marriage. The EU has no problem with this as long as allow gay-married EU citizens to move freely through the EU. The European Court of Human Rights (which is not an EU body) has said that countries which grant rights to unmarried cohabiting straight couples (either automatically or through some kind of registered civil partnership) should extend them to unmarried cohabiting gay couples, but has explicitly not required gay marriage.

The EU is not run by American lefties.

you're right, I overextended with 'marriage'. Changed it to gay rights.

Though the ECJ does not care a lot about Romania's definition of marriage

While the EU is nominally in favor of cultural diversity, it means they will subsidize folk dresses and bland exhibits with 27 flags. It does not mean they will allow an Eastern European country to be against gay marriage.

A bizarre assertion, given that, according to my count, 13 of the EU's 27 members don't allow gay marriage.

It does not mean they will allow a country to practice eugenics

Eugenics is not part of the traditional culture of any country. The reason it's not implemented anywhere is a lack of popular support; it has nothing to do with the EU.

or protect key industries.

This has moved well beyond preserving culture and into plain economics. The EU does in fact protect traditional products. What the EU doesn't allow is protectionist restrictions that are meant to benefit one country's companies over those of another.

Eugenics is not part of the traditional culture of any country. The reason it's not implemented anywhere is a lack of popular support; it has nothing to do with the EU.

In Denmark, the Danish Cytogenetic Central Register, shows an average of 98% of babies diagnosed with Down syndrome before birth are aborted each year.

Denmark is also famous for exporting tall blue-eyed babies via sperm donation catalogues

So, examples of currently active positive and negative eugenics going on there.

And has the EU interfered in any of this?

And has the EU interfered in any of this?

Presumably not, but that's because both of these examples are poor ones, in each case coupling a small dose of what globohomo hates with a large dose of what globohomo likes, making it an aggregate win for the globalist homogenisers.

Abort disabled people? This is not globohomo. But look at it from the other side: abort disabled people, and we see that it is in fact smack in line with the no-questions-asked abortifactants on demand that the cosmopolitan class loves.

Encourage single mothers to have blonde blue eyed babies? Bad. Encourage single mothers to have blonde blue eyed babies? Good, smash the patriarchy, children don't need fathers anyway.

You're assuming certain modes of thinking from your outgroup to the point where you have to massage the assumed framing of those situations into quite tortured angles.

Compare: "Genocide white people? Bad. Genocide white people? Good, everyone knows white right-wingers love genocide. Now you see how anti-white tendencies in the West are an aggregate win for the white supremacists".

You're assuming certain modes of thinking from your outgroup to the point where you have to massage the assumed framing of those situations into quite tortured angles.

I don't think it's tortured at all. Furthermore, my proposal actually serves to resolve the contradictions of a brown-scare hegemony thumbs-up-ing eugenic abortions/inseminations. Where's your explanation?

Compare: Genocide "white people"? Bad. "Genocide" white people? Good

Characterising my argument as

"Xy Bad, xY Good" is always true

has to be some sort of strawmanning record. To speak plainly: I am suggesting that, in the cases I proposed, the noncentral effects (preservation of pro-choice norms, increasing the proportion of (biological) fatherless households) really do serve the homogenisers' purpose more than the central effects (anti-dysgenic abortions, pro-eugenic inseminations) harm it. You're going to have a difficult time arguing that a normalisation of genocide improves right-winger's chances more than literally committing white genocide harms it.

my proposal actually serves to resolve the contradictions of a brown-scare hegemony thumbs-up-ing eugenic abortions/inseminations. Where's your explanation?

Admitting one doesn't have a good answer to a contradiction is strictly better for light-making purposes than throwing out a bad answer. And when one's best solution is "group X likes measure xY despite Y because x", I must assume they haven't looked very hard. For the record, my first assumption would be "the group is less X and more Y than Butlerian thinks if they like xY".

The so-called "globohomo" ideology has shown itself to be extremely intolerant of eugenics for the purposes of producing white blond blue-eyed children, so I hope you can see why I highly doubt tacking on "single mothers" suddenly makes it worth it.

Didn't say it did, I was just pointing out that it was implemented somewhere, and is popular

A bizarre assertion, given that, according to my count, 13 of the EU's 27 members don't allow gay marriage.

you're right. I changed it to 'gay rights'.

Eugenics is not part of the traditional culture of any country. The reason it's not implemented anywhere is a lack of popular support; it has nothing to do with the EU.

It's an example of an edgy policy that would never be allowed by the EU. It illustrates that the allowed diversity is only surface level.

You're needlessly adversarial.

What the EU doesn't allow is protectionist restrictions that are meant to benefit one country's companies over those of another.

Which is exactly what I meant (and said). Your point about protecting local cheeses kind of proves my thesis.

Finally - why are you doing this?

you're right. I changed it to 'gay rights'.

"Gay rights" is vague. What specifically does the EU prohibit, and how does it enforce the prohibition?

It's an example of an edgy policy that would never be allowed by the EU. It illustrates that the allowed diversity is only surface level.

May I ask for a more realistic example? Something that a significant number of people in an EU country might actually support?

Which is exactly what I meant (and said). Your point about protecting local cheeses kind of proves my thesis.

Yes, a trade bloc works to facilitate trade between its members. I am glad we agree. But what does this have to do with protecting cultural diversity?

Finally - why are you doing this?

I am from one of the newer EU member countries, and I don't think the EU is harming my country's traditions and culture. I feel like the EU is being misrepresented here, and I wanted to provide another perspective, lest this forum's mostly American readers get the wrong impression.

May I ask for a more realistic example? Something that a significant number of people in an EU country might actually support?

Death penalty/life imprisonment without parole. CoE deems both illegal and membership in it, and thus acceptance of ECHR authority,. is required to join the EU.

Yet at least in France more than 54% of the population is in favour of allowing the state to have the option to take someones life.

Which brings me to my second point. The larger empire will tolerate the harmless and meaningless traits of the constituent cultures, but not anything meaningful. You can keep the foods. You can keep the songs (most of them). You cannot enforce a community with your norms.

That's the part that I tend to fear.

For our purposes I'd call it the "Disneyfication" of culture.

Disney will make a movie celebrating a few notable aspects of your culture.

Disney will add a ride/attraction/performance at EPCOT celebrating said aspects.

If you're lucky, Disney will build a whole resort complex somewhere that tries very diligently to emulate your culture and let people experience a glamorized version of it.

But once that's done, suddenly those are the only aspects of your culture that anyone knows about, and, arguably, are 'allowed' to care about. You've been very carefully and slowly hemmed in to a sanitized, corporatized, and, yes, homogenized version of your own history, which will be largely defined by food, language, and maybe some particular myth from your people's history, and you will be allowed to take pride in that aspect of it, but if you protest that there's actually more to it than that and that you want to be allowed to live your culture in its full richness, at best that will fall on deaf ears. Nope, we aren't going to acknowledge any of the more controversial aspects of your people's history, but you can always visit Disney World and have your culture sold to you in pieces!

Is that so bad? Maybe not. But once your culture is so contained, you can expect to see all 'authentic' vestiges of it eventually washed away and then... suddenly... the Disney version is ALL THAT WILL BE LEFT.

Can you give an example of this happening?

This is exactly what I'm arguing is not happening.

Disney and other popculture factory farms can produce a steady stream of easily digested drivel, but I cannot see it as something that would actually eat away real culture.

But once that's done, suddenly those are the only aspects of your culture that anyone knows about, and, arguably, are 'allowed' to care about. You've been very carefully and slowly hemmed in to a sanitized, corporatized, and, yes, homogenized version of your own history

Who is doing the "allowing"? Who is doing the "hemming in"?

I can somewhat see your point working in a world that's very top down, where there is one or a handful of extremely powerful actors that does the allowing and hemming in. But I don't think that describes our world. Even within a monolithic industry like Hollywood, there are multiple actors vying for dominance, which tends to produce variety instead of destroying it.

Yes, I have experienced the sadness of seeing my friends and colleagues willingly abandoning their own reason and plugging into the pre-made stream of drivel produced by giant media outlets. But I have also experienced the joy of meeting individuals happily having their own original thoughts. (It's why I love themotte and the larger rationalist sphere).

"Your culture sold to you..."

That's a sentiment that understands precisely where the woke are coming from, incidentally. Mentioning this because it comes up a whole hell of a lot in this forum.

Culture can belong to a whole people. "Cultural appropriation" is a real and troubling phenomenon.

Yes, but my issue is that a few people dressing up in a costume doesn't really rise to the level of appreciable threat.

I'm not nearly in favor of cultural segregation.

Have you seen Muana? The producers went to great lengths to involve the relevant ethnicity in the production. But the story is about a young woman who feels compelled to shirk her duties to her tribe, then questions authority, and goes on a mostly solo adventure to save the environment. The main character is basically Greta Thunberg.

To the extent that these different people actually have a different worldview, this must seem really subversive. Imagine a high-budget movie full of American celebrity actors, shot in America, with pitch-perfect cultural references, about how fulfilling it was to serve the state, written by the Chinese government.

Imagine a high-budget movie full of American celebrity actors, shot in America, with pitch-perfect cultural references, about how fulfilling it was to serve the state, written by the Chinese government.

So this but played dead straight? I'd kinda love it.

Have you seen Muana? The producers went to great lengths to involve the relevant ethnicity in the production. But the story is about a young woman who feels compelled to shirk her duties to her tribe, then questions authority, and goes on a mostly solo adventure to save the environment. The main character is basically Greta Thunberg.

Are you referencing the Disney movie Moana? There's a much more conservative interpretation of that. It could be seen that recent generations ignored their traditions of seafaring and exploration in favor of living in a closed and confined space on their island. By restarting sea exploration, Moana is honoring her ancestors and continuing their culture over her parents.

Yes, I meant Disney's Moana, thanks for the correction. Good point about the "the radicals are the real traditionalists" interpretation. The movie could certainly have been more unambiguously pro-modernity, i.e. if Moana had taught the tribe to accept electrification or homosexuality.

I guess I'd still say that the important thing is that outsiders are writing a story in which the current way of life of the tribe is presented as wrong and in need of change (even if it's back to the past). However, maybe Polynesians tell similar stories about the dangers of stagnation and giving up seafaring. So, you made me realize that the story could plausibly not be very subversive, depending on the details of Polynesian's self-conception, which I know nothing about. But it just seems to hit the favorite beats of Western progressivism in such a cliched and recognizable way that I doubt that that's the case.

Have you seen Muana?

That's actually the EXACT example I was thinking of when I wrote this. That and Coco.

Samoan/Polynesian culture proudly featured on screen... except, you know, no mention of the constant warfare and the patriarchal social structure this necessitates.

You get the Rock as a big and brash and ultimately nonthreatening cultural ambassador, and if you want to get the facial tattoos, that's just fine.

But don't ask what those giant studded clubs were for, nosiree.

I think Vikings are a bit of a counter-example to your thesis. It's well-known how destructive they were (in some time periods). Maybe it's because they're white, so no one feels the need to sanitize their history. And, the Icelandic sagas also let them speak in their own words, to some extent. Those stories are pretty much all about blood feuds and legal drama.

Maybe it's because they're white, so no one feels the need to sanitize their history.

But they do, at least in media where the Vikings are put front and center. Here's a discussion of how Assassins Creed: Valhalla does exactly this:

My more substantive issues go to the overall tone of the narrative and the society that is described here. And I think the problem can be neatly summed up in just one thing about the game: the game will ‘desyncronize’ you (meaning produce a game over) if your [viking] character kills civilians, including if, while raiding a monastery, you kill the monks. You are a viking (one thing they do right: viking is a job description, meaning ‘raider,’ not an ethnic identity) who does not kill non-combatants. This is akin to the famous joke about the pirates who don’t steal anything.

We should be clear about what is happening in England in c. 875 when the game takes place...they were slave raids...

The England of the game is suspiciously both resource rich and surprisingly empty. The player’s clan settles, with a minimum of fuss, in unoccupied (save for ‘bandits’) high value land directly on a river – prime real estate that one supposes the English just forgot about...your raiding doesn’t so much as inconvenience the civilian population.

Norse and Danish rituals are shown to be positively effective: berserker brews work, potions to induce hallucinations produce true prophecies and visions which provide tangible benefits, and Odin straight up talks to you. The narrative repeatedly presents Norse religious responses as correct, right and effective (but, you know, leaves out a lot of the slavery and ritual murder from them). On the other hand, the environmental experience of Christian sites, beyond the looting, was one ruined church in which a woman in religious garb told me that God had commanded her to knife a bunch of people, including me, which then turned into a combat encounter.

Now look, I get it, Christianity in 9th century England was an intolerant, hegemonic religion. But you are a foreign colonizing invader rolling in wrecking their holy sites, (not) killing their religious practitioners and toppling their governments: you are intolerant and hegemonic too!

Unlike in the actual historical event, there is no sign that your warriors are rapidly becoming Christianity-curious (the actual Great Heathen Army was converting en masse within a generation; arriving in 865, Guthram converts to Christianity in 878, a little over a decade later. You are arriving in England around 874, just four years from this event – there should already be a fair number of Christian Danes).

https://acoup.blog/2020/11/20/miscellanea-my-thoughts-on-assassins-creed-valhalla/comment-page-1/

I don't think that example shows what it's being made out to show here.

I haven't played Valhalla, but the characters in the Assassin's Creed games are Assassins, a group engaged in a 2000 year old struggle with the Templars to decide the destiny of humanity, and whose creed involves the tenet "Stay your blade from the flesh of an innocent".

The goal isn't to accurately represent Vikings, it's to tell the story of Assassin's Creed, and one Viking protagonist not killing civilians (though in my Assassin's Creed runs plenty of innocent guardsmen get killed too) is just the history bending required to make the story fit.

The author addresses that criticism here: https://acoup.blog/2020/11/27/fireside-friday-november-27-2020/

The tl;dr; is that the majority of players only discover the historical fiction, and never meet the scifi aliens/templars/etc part of the game.

But from how he describes AC: Valhalla, it doesn't sound like it's just the protagonist who doesn't kill innocents. It's all the vikings. They come, build infrastructure, overthrow corrupt Saxons, and teach the locals how stupid Christianity is. (In real history the Vikings all learned how awesome Jesus is.)

Moreover, the complete whitewashing of historical scenarios is not something the Assassin's Creed franchise does in other circumstances. Black Flag (pirates!) does not gloss over the fact that most of the Carribean economy was based on slavery and the expansion pack has a former slave as the main playable character.

Here's an article about how much work Ubisoft put into correctly portraying the Mohawk and colonialism in AC3: https://techland.time.com/2012/09/05/assassins-creed-iiis-connor-how-ubisoft-avoided-stereotypes-and-made-a-real-character/

I haven't played AC3 either, but I'm willing to gamble that attempts by the colonialists to forcefully convert the Mohawk from their own religion to Christianity are not portrayed favorably (if portrayed at all).

Perhaps that and the present-day descendants of said vikings, including their historical nations, are pretty well suborned to the successor ideology, not a huge amount of risk that they'll start forging an identity centered around their Viking heritage.

I don't think the Disney EPCOT version of Norway features much pillaging, though.

Also look at what Disney has done to Thor.

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