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 -
The problem is that because we’re stepping in all the time, first of all, it’s just expected that every global problem is our responsibility to fix. And it isn’t sustainable to keep doing this. We have finite resources, limited by not only how much we can produce, but how much our own people need.
Secondly, it’s actively working against getting countries to clean up their own messes. Why would Africans demand their government give them better education or health care when Americans show up and do it for them? For that matter, why would Ghanaian government officials bother to not steal education money when we’ve already given them money to build schools and buy books? Why spend money you could put in a Swiss bank account to buy TB drugs when Uncle Joe Biden will just give them to you for the asking?
It doesn’t even give us good will. The programs don’t seem to make other countries respect us or even like us. They see us mostly as the stupid people who give them stuff no strings attached. We’re suckers. Iraq hates us, but despite that, and despite the fact that they don’t like us, don’t like democratic values, we’re going to fund them.
All this is sensible. I'm not trying to debate its merits as a coherent position.
I was specifically complaining about FistfullofCrows' pithy "if it was so important to have these millions for the poor people dying of TB then maybe soros or the whole of the EU can pitch in a few millions to go cure people", which I think is a bad and kind of baffling way to frame the question. It's really the "if it was", as opposed to "if it is", that sticks out to me. It seemed to be saying "we can prove, right now, that all this foreign aid isn't actually important, because the EU & Soros aren't taking up the slack". Which is bonkers and not the point. It can be genuinely important and still not a reasonable burden for the US to shoulder indefinitely, for all the reasons you cite. Or indeed the EU's or Soros's. People's unwillingness to do a hard and costly thing might be circumstantial evidence that it is indeed intractably hard and costly (duh) but it's just not some kind of gotcha that proves that the hard thing was never important. At the end of the day humanity can just collectively and intractably fail at doing an objectively important thing, because it's too hard and coordination problems are a bitch. That's life.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link