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 think this is true, but I think it's also very important to be clear exactly why there are the costs there are - I think they're far from inevitable.
From Tanner Greer's piece in Palladium, A School of Strength and Character
"When Alexis de Tocqueville compiled his reports on America for a French readership, he recalled that “In America, there is nothing the human will despairs of attaining through the free action of the combined powers of individuals.” Yankee agency became an object of fascination for him: “Should an obstacle appear on the public highway and the passage of traffic is halted,” Tocqueville told his readers, then “neighbors at once form a group to consider the matter; from this improvised assembly an executive authority appears to remedy the inconvenience before anyone has thought of the possibility of some other authority already in existence before the one they have just formed.” This marked a deep contrast with the French countryside Tocqueville knew best, where the locals left most affairs to the authorities."
The whole piece is worth reading, but I think the case is strong that, in reality, whatever was good and useful about decentralized democratic power, it has been largely drained by the rise of 20th century managerialism going hand-in-hand with the Civil Rights revolution (which in practice has made lots of basic democratic self-government entirely illegal). Or as Greer also states, "The first instinct of the nineteenth-century American was to ask, “How can we make this happen?” Those raised inside the bureaucratic maze have been trained to ask a different question: “How do I get management to take my side?”" I think this stuff also dovetails nicely with James C. Scott's "Seeing Like a State". If you're allowed to solve your problems in tacit, illegible ways, a lot of problems are actually pretty simple to solve, and they respect the Gods of the Copybook Headings too, so you don't get more of it... which I think was the OPs point. But if the entire power of the remote state requires that everything be legible... well. Costs clearly skyrocket, and massive amounts of inertia and veto points kick in. (This also clearly mirrors the experience of working in a motivated, small, mission-focused startup versus working at a giant, wealthy, extremely hierarchical corporation, for similar reasons).
I think after much of the experience of the 20th century, a lot of people in the most "civilized" places have just internalized a massive degree of fatalism about everything. Everyone knows, really, how to solve these problems. It's not like no civilization in the history of the world has figured out how to make safe streets in urban areas, and so we have no models or something. Westerners simply aren't allowed to, that's all.
More options
Context Copy link