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 -
This piece has some interesting and well-written and well thought out passages, but I can't help thinking the conclusion is just too extreme. Trump and his political equals or coalition members obviously represent reactionary push backs against a lot of the left-wing political and social overreach, but claiming that it's an end of the open society, liberal personal focus, global interconnectedness, forbidding to forbid, when that Trump coalition embodies a lot of them just to a slightly lesser degree than the most progressive 'liberal' forces in society reminds me of how any curtailing of Christian social pre-eminence is met with cries that they're banning religion in society, when opponents on the other side would claim that they're just slightly removing some of their domination.
Obviously it's possible that this only began 5-10 years ago and the author is exactly right, and that Trump not embodying every single idea of where we're ending up doesn't prove we aren't in that direction - and credit to the author for trying to write some history in the middle of it happening (a difficult thing to get correctly) but I remain skeptical for the above reasons.
Yeah, the track record of these types of works is bad. Prediction is hard, and authors who would write grand explanations of human history are almost always recency biased. Relevant examples include "The End of History" and "The Population Bomb" but you could pick pretty much any book in this category and it's the same.
That's not that these authors are uniquely wrong, only they don't have any explanatory power. They reflect the biases and thoughts of our current time, and will inevitably look silly in 10 or 20 years.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link