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 -
I started noticing that wokeism (or rather, SJW as it was called back then) was a religion back around 2015-2016, and since then I came to realize that its great innovation over other religions was in convincing its followers and proponents that it wasn't a religion. An Evangelical Christian might be just as passionate and devout in her beliefs as any idpol activist, but she would almost certainly not deny that she is religious and fighting for her religious beliefs, and acknowledging that fact necessarily places certain boundaries around her arguments. But a devout follower of idpol would likely refuse to acknowledge the religious nature of her beliefs and arguments and thus she would have no compunction about running roughshod over boundaries placed around religion in our society.
It's really an ingenious adaptation to an environment that has placed restrictions around how religious beliefs can affect public policy. By laundering religious beliefs this way, they get to enjoy the dogmatic fervor that religion is known for and the overt sociopolitical influence that religion is at least ostensibly restricted away from. It's having your cake and eating it too, and even though I didn't see progressivism going this way back in the 90s and 2000s, in retrospect, it's almost obvious.
This is new but it isn't an innovation. Scientology did the same, early on. They still tell their newcomers that it doesn't make transcendental claims and it is completely fine to be christian and a scientologist. I think one of their big mistakes was to claim to be a religion for tax exemption, they would have made more money if they had kept paying taxes.
If you include strong ideologies, then communism did the same more than a century ago.
I think the great innovation of SJWs is to deny its own existence, it doesn't give itself a name and any name that is ascribed to it gets rejected as inaccurate or as a slur.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link