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 -
An Attempt at Bringing Back the User Viewpoint Focus Series
I'm attempting to bring it back, and I'm attempting to bring it back with a template so it isn't just an expectation of writing a ten thousand word essay at the drop of a hat. If you have suggestions, feel free to drop them in a comment.
Self description in motte terms
I'm an actual IRL tradcath with classical conservative political views in the continental tradition rather than the British one. More de Maistre, less Hobbes. I'm inherently skeptical of central planning as a solution for long-running problems; the role of a rightly ordered state is more that of a gardener than an engineer. There might be some planning involved but the government's job is more to promote good things and suppress bad things than to build a mold; nobody and no technology can tell what the end result will be. I'm techno-skeptic and HBD accepting-but-minimalist, with strong utopiaskepticism.
I'm also not rationalist in that I don't think we can reason through our problems all the time. Thinking isn't a bad thing, generally speaking, but it's probably not going to solve our actual problems. There's some we're stuck with and some we haven't figured out the solution for but the solution is generally a doing and not a thinking or talking. And in a lot of cases we're not going to figure out the right doing by sitting around and reasoning through it, we have to go try stuff. Like capitalism- nobody in an ivory tower came up with capitalism from first principles. It developed over time until Adam Smith wrote down how it worked from observation. That's why it works and communism doesn't.
Finally, I'm a western supremacist. The west is the best civilization and that's just factual. But the west has a boom/bust cycle of decline before growth, measured in centuries. This isn't usually a technological decline although it sometimes is; it's a civilizational malaise which drives political fragmentation and lower accomplishment until people rebuild. In other words decadence, but I believe decadence isn't just a feeling, it can be measured(by someone who's better at math than I am). The west in its boom overtakes every civilization; the chinamen will stick to their tea and incense when a western boom spreads to Mars and then the stars, just as the last western boom spread to every corner of the earth. The west is unfortunately in a decadent part of the cycle but we as individuals can build functioning institutions to rebuild it, as our ancestors did in the middle ages to claw themselves back up to greatness. And we do need to learn from the past; tradition is not necessarily a perfect guide but the alternative is fartsniffing until we've figured something out. Recommended Reading
Family and Civilization by Carle Zimmerman- account of the boom and bust cycle of western civilization. Read with Soldiers and Silver by Michael Taylor to read a snapshot of one of his examples(republican Rome overtaking the Hellenistic kingdoms).
The WEIRDest People in the World by Joseph Heinrich- on western institutions and their organic development into the greatest civilizational boom their ever was.
The Case against the Sexual Revolution by Louise Perry- on a failed experiment.
The Hapsburg Way by Edward Hapsburg- on applying traditional lessons to modern life.
Brief Manifesto
Build something. Do something. Make civilization work. Run in the hamster wheel turning the cogs of society- propose to your girlfriend and have babies, raise them right, work hard, if you see problems in your community go and find a way to solve them. Get people to organize, or infiltrate a preexisting institution. Join the Elks or the Lions. Make a mark that isn't digital. You probably can't be president(unless JD Vance actually is on this forum), but you can make a difference in people's lives and you can start building the machinery of a functioning society.
Senators and presidents can do whatever stupid things they're on about, it's not an excuse for not showing up. Us common folk still need to make shit work. Follow the success sequence and make it so your kids can do the same. Set a good example. Listen to your grandparents. Make being a worker bee OK.
Ping me on
I have specific knowledge of: Catholicism and Tradcaths(the real ones, not the twitterati), Texas politics, trades work(I would like to write an effortpost about the trades shortage but think I would need help with research) and blue collar work in general, and the people who do it.
AAQC's I'm proud of/would like to call attention to once more
https://www.themotte.org/post/1287/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/277989?context=8#context
https://www.themotte.org/post/900/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/194609?context=8#context
I nominate @Dean for the next one. If you can't do it, please say so in the comments so someone can replace you.
How do you define western civilization, and what makes it best? Especially in light of the industrial revolution and the shift from >90% of the population working in agriculture to <10%, I don't see us as living in the same civilization as anyone from hundreds of years ago, so talk about centuries-long cycles in a civilization that is barely centuries old doesn't compute. Our way of living, dominant beliefs, our heroes and demons, the way our families are structured, how we relate to those near and far, the dominant languages of the elites, all of that is so different from what came before that it feels a real stretch to call Christendom and Western civilization the same.
More options
Context Copy link
What's the best blue collar job for me?
Current/former programmer. Dad is a carpenter.
Things I don't mind:
Things I do mind:
Maritime bridge systems technician. Always demand for that and the increasing digitization of equipment means you can't just climb the mast and bang on the radar till things align, since the network connections and system settings need to work in concert. Many bridge systems engineers bitch about how turning on one system gimps another system in another part of the bridge, and specialists refuse to learn the capabilities of other departments.
Navigation and comms are the two broad categories that bridge systems fall under, so depending on your future interest for when climbing up and down masts isnt exciting anymore you can transition to some office role.
Another big issue is navigating the unions for work. Federal level unions are basically extortion rackets, and state level affiliates seem to be politicizes shitpiles. Only one I've heard positive news about is Maine, which is generally top tier for anything marine in the USA.
More options
Context Copy link
Don't know how it is 'round your parts, but I found out firsthand that there is approximately one full-time mechanical clock repairer/restorer in my metroplex, who is also well past retirement and cannot meet demand.
More options
Context Copy link
Don’t be a plumber or exterminator, or a welder or pipeline worker.
I generally recommend that men with white collar careers not try to switch to a trade. This is because tradesmen don’t make very much their first year, have to undergo some hazing(gossip is that electricians are the worst about it but they all do it), and usually need to start out getting experience with physical shitty work that goes easier when you’re 20 instead of 30. Yes, even if you live in an environment dominated by illegal immigrants.
If you insist, there’s electrical trades that work more ‘in a power plant’ and less ‘on a customer’s jobsite’ or diesel mechanics. Maybe some high-skill manufacturing jobs as well(very location dependent, but aircraft factories definitely fit here). But, well, prepare to make $17/hr doing crappy low skill work for a little bit first.
More options
Context Copy link
My father has been a glazier for 40 years, and I've worked with him on occasional jobs here and there. He is self-employed, and primarily does storefront windows and doors for restaurants, banks, retail, offices, etc.
Pros:
Cons:
I can say I would be quite happy if children of mine went into it. It's honest work and actually quite deep and interesting.
If I were more optimistic about long term dynamics, I'd quite like this. I've built some large aquariums for fun, with some fish bridges etc. Definitely fun work with potential! May God deliver me from the temptation of becoming a Mormon glazier.
Why didn't you get into this line? Does your dad work with/train others?
I didn't really appreciate what he did when I was a young adult. I was a real whiz kid in school, and it seemed a shame not to use the scholarships and get out into the world that way. In hindsight I might have chosen differently, and now I have a whole mid-level career's worth of sunk cost that would make it probably too challenging to switch.
I think he'd be more than happy to sell all his stuff and his book of business in a few years for a nominal cost, if he knew the right person to take it over; but he's quite solitary and prefers to work alone, so it's unfortunately possible that his knowledge will die with him. Maybe I'll talk to him about trying to find an apprentice.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Maritime. Work on a cargo ship. If you're in the engine room it's hot, you can work for 6 months straight, without leaving the ship, and you probably have to be pretty careful not to mess anything up.
Unfortunately it does involve a lot of travel. Pretty sure there's tugs that aren't away from home for as long, but most of the jobs mean you won't be home for a while. At least you don't have to actually travel anywhere in a car or a plane once you're on the ship.
I think that the cliche is that most ship owners fly whichever flag is cheapest (at least until their ship get captured by pirates, then they don't call for the Panama Navy for help, but suddenly discover that they are EU or US or whatever), and that they employ the cheapest workers, which are likely from some developing country.
Taking a contract according to Panamanian law for what might be a living wage in the Philippines does not seem like a great deal for most US citizens.
A container ship will run on a giant two-stroke diesel engine. Depending on where you stand, this might qualify as "extreme amounts of dirt". The fuel oil these engines use is not like gasoline (which generally evaporates without much residuals). Cold, it is barely liquid, tar-like. And that is before you start burning that stuff in a two-stroke engine, and get all the usual fun stuff from Diesel engines, such as soot or nitric oxides. While you might get away with having the chimney of your oil-heating cleaned once a year, a ship will (in my estimation) require a lot more than that.
Of course, YMMV. If you are a nuclear technician on a US navy aircraft carrier (or sub), then you avoid most of these problems -- and will not even have to learn another language to understand your captain.
For ships that sail between US ports you are required to have a certain number of American crew because of the Jones Act. However that only applies for the US. Not only that, the pay is actually pretty good. At least as far as blue collar work goes.
More options
Context Copy link
The U.S. merchant marine would dodge the whole ‘foreign scabs’ thing.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I regret that most of these jobs involve a certain amount of dirt and bugs in the field, although shit is generally optional unless you're dumb enough to pick my job.
Luckily a lot of trades have the option to go commercial to avoid the worst of what you'll see going to random weirdos' houses. But that has its own set of problems.
More options
Context Copy link
Electrician?
More options
Context Copy link
And while we're at it, how about a trade for someone with the opposite preferences.
Exterminator.
More options
Context Copy link
Plumbing.
Plumbing is rather well-known for having large amounts of poop.
This one was for me, not cjet. I'm ok with poop, but have issues with precision.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I understand that these jobs (sewers, undertaking) are both viscerally off putting to normal people and come with quite good pay. As such they are generally monopolised by semi-hereditary guilds, especially undertaking. I believe @SSCReader has that background?
Not unless we're counting being a senior civil servant as a disgusting job!
I have slaughtered and cleaned animals on my grandfathers farm and mucked out cowsheds and unblocked septic tanks and the like but I was never paid for that. Just part of my upbringing with a mostly rural family.
Ha! You said it, so I don’t have to :P
In all seriousness, I apologise, I was thinking of @AshLael who write a little about it here.
Ahh no harm at all done, it's hard enough keeping track of peoples politics let alone their personal histories!
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Sheep shearer. Run into maggots? Shear right through 'em, don't mind the splash. You'll never do a hundred sheep a run (2hrs) if you worry about stuff like that.
And if you insist on the uncomfortably hot part, there's always Australia.
Oh my god, that does sound awesome! I'm more of a goat person, but sheep are pretty cool too.
When they're first born, you grab them, spray paint their butts and throw them back! Repeat every so often as they grow.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I really look forward to seeing these from some of the real characters around here, who I have in my head so clearly but who never expressed themselves in a biography.
More options
Context Copy link
Great idea!
Quite tangential: We're basically identical in belief. However I believe in pro-social gains by simplifying complex systems. If you e.g. have 100,000 accountants normalizing books to match the law, the ideal
gardenerengineer could change the law and reporting standards, so that work's not necessary (either automatic or performed by only 10,000.) In our theoretical realm, those 90,000 could then create value instead of litigating who captures past value. In practice, I rarely believe this is done (how do you replace legalistic bureaucracies and replace them with trade practitioners who want to replace themselves?)100,000 accountants? Sounds like heaven.
Quick googling says we have 1.6 million accountants and auditors in the US. Which isn't even factoring in all of the southeast Asians they farm work out to.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
"Build something. Do something."
Does it make any difference to you what we do, or is it enough just to have a job? Is the guy selling cigarettes at the same worth as someone making buildings?
There’s an interesting question there which I don’t think I have a very developed answer to. Namely, how socially negative can a job be before we stop being proud to do it.
I tend to see cigarettes as one vice among many but bookmaking as a terrible thing. I may not be entirely consistent.
Cigarettes seriously harm you when used as directed. Most other vices have to be abused to harm you.
Tinfoil hat double feature:
@Jiro I think smoking causes cancer and is genuinely bad for you, but that smoking was intentionally used as a patsy for a lot of cancers caused by commonly used industrial compounds.
@Tree hysteria over premarital sex and teen pregnancy was intentionally induced in religious conservatives in the mid 20th century to reduce their birth rates in an effort to stamp out Christianity in the United States. You’ll notice that it was combined with induced economic and social factors that make early marriage impossible for a lot of people. The punishment in Leviticus for unmarried people caught fornicating was just to get married. Notice that the hysteria over premarital sex (reduced family formation) was also combined with a drive to get religious people to be much more lenient toward adultery/divorce (increases family dissolution), and abortion (reduces birth rates). So you have mind-broken psyopped evangelical boomers who are on their third marriage but are morallly horrified and indignant over the idea that their children might be having premarital sex at the age of 23.
Sometimes they can compound each other; e. g. asbestos fibres will stay in the lungs of a smoker long after they would have been expelled from a non-smoker's lung due to the former having killed off their cilia.
Wait, you can expel asbestos fibres? I thought once you were exposed that was it? (I may have been exposed in my youth so big if true).
They do damage while they are in your lungs, and that damage may or may not be permanent. However, healthy lungs have cilia which will expel foreign material, limiting the total damage that it can do; but if you kill off the cilia, asbestos fibres will linger for far longer, and do much more damage.
Cool, good to know. Thanks :)
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This is great tinfoil. I love it.
Somehow the kids are having less sex and doing less drugs but no one who was upset about the kids having sex or doing drugs is happy about it.
This is simple to understand: it’s because the reason the kids are having less sex and doing less drugs is that they’re less healthy, socially connected, and happy — not because they’re following the social conservative model of being healthy, socially connected, and happy. The ideology of social conservatives is not “the kids must do less drugs, and I don’t care about anything else.”
We could solve drug abuse by just shooting anyone who’s addicted to drugs, but somehow I don’t expect that this would make anyone very happy.
More options
Context Copy link
Oh, don't get them wrong, they were happy about it back when their kid was 12-20. Every conservative parent's dream, really- no sex, no drugs, and otherwise content to be seen-but-not-heard. Just follow the process and your life will surely start eventually.
But now you fast-forward 20 years and they're still in the basement. Encouraging their children to reject the more pleasurable (and riskier) parts of life may have had some unforeseen consequences, but if your judgement as a parent is that the best way to make sure your child isn't living in sin is to encourage them to refuse to live then, uh... mission accomplished, I guess?
The idea that you should find a partner by fucking around through your teens and twenties until you find a girl you want to keep is incredibly recent, though. Basically Europe/Anglo only, between 1960s and now.
What makes conservative sexual policy stupid is trying to reject the Sexual Revolution for people their children’s age while keeping all the related social frameworks and assumptions that underlie it.
So you get ‘sex when you’re young is bad’ combined with ‘arranged/facilitated marriages are evil because they prevent twu wuv, as is anything that even slightly impinges on women’s sexual autonomy’. You can have either position but not really both, especially when you cripple your childrens’ game and then throw them into the tinder meat market at 20.
Yes, the ability to have sex and be more or less guaranteed for that not to result in pregnancy is an incredibly recent development; and the kinds of people who take advantage of that technology (and encourage taking advantage of the same) tend to be somewhat less encumbered than what the past several million years of evolution suggest they should be, to the point that someone closer to that prediction would/should believe that a serious malfunction.
There are two types of conservatives: those who have realized this and ally with the less-encumbered as described above, and those who turn inwards and die (their daughters become progressives immediately after leaving the house and remain that way for the rest of their lives, and their sons don't figure out becoming progressive is a bad move until it's too late for them to ever leave the basement).
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I am happy about the kids having less sex and doing less drugs. I'm not happy about some of the things they're doing instead, ie either end of the OnlyFans transaction.
More options
Context Copy link
This is sort of encouraging, isn’t it? It shows that those people weren’t just ‘ah, damn kids today!’ But actually somewhat care about people having happy and healthy lives.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The religious mind may consider harm and sinfulness to be inversely correlated (smoking vs promiscuity). The latter is particularly unfair to the believers and offensive to the gods precisely because the sinners are having fun without repercussions. The greater the temptation, the stronger the smell of sulfur.
Speaking in generalities, we do not. On the other hand, regardless of what we disapprove of, whether smoking or promiscuity, it seems that the irreligiously-minded are always ready to explain how our disapproval shows us to be terrible people.
It's pretty uncommon to see people commit murder over cigarettes, and yet they commit murder over promiscuity all the time and across a wide variety of cultures. This seems odd to square with claims that promiscuity is "harmless".
Because the harm is attributed to the person who chose to commit murder.
If Alice does $THING (being promiscuous, wearing the 'wrong' clothes for her gender, expressing unpopular opinions, eating rice on Tuesdays, &c., &c.), and Bob chooses to kill or otherwise harm her over it, that does not make $THING responsible for the harm done to Alice; the blame lies on Bob. Otherwise, Bob would have the ability to prevent Alice from doing anything he didn't like. (cf. the Heckler's Veto.)
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Two members of my family were, until recently, dealers at a casino. They were both somewhat clear-eyed about it; they loved how much money it brought in, as well as the opportunities to socially interact with a lot of interesting people, but they understood that their jobs only existed because of a substrate of gambling addicts whose hobby has the potential to destroy lives. I don’t know that I’d describe either of them as “proud” of their jobs, and I certainly was not proud on their behalf when telling people what they did for a living.
I don’t know if real problem gamblers go to casinos. I think casinos at least have the virtue of being bounded in time and space.
The person I knew who destroyed himself gambling did so on horses and on (predictive) markets. We never even knew until he died and we discovered he’d leveraged himself and his wife to the hilt. She became absolutely penniless as a result, though friends and family gave her what help they could so she’s not homeless.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Selling isn't building. Even making cigarettes isn't building. But building machines to build better cigarettes? Now we have a philosophical discussion about socially beneficial economic activity!
I'd say yes, it's good to design and even make better cigarette making machines. And evil to operate them. Just build them as a fun project, then retool for something good.
The funny thing is, in my experience blue-collar construction workers tend to be big fans of cigarettes. So maybe the two things aren't even all that disconnected!
There's also a weird tension. We celebrate the engineers who make better machines, because it makes our lives better. But there's a limit on how far that can go, eventually we run out of things to automate and create so much industrial abundance that it just becomes harder to get a regular job. EG, I'm worried that industrial fishing has become too efficient and without strict regulation it's just going to make more and more fish go extinct. Meanwhile, a normal traditional fisherman can no longer make a living.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
You wrote this as a pretext for asking Dean to finally explain what his ideology is, didn’t you?
More options
Context Copy link
I decline. I shall expect replacement with a suitable sci-fi allusion!
@netstack, are you willing to go next?
Sure, I guess I’ll take over for @Dean’s Zakalwe.
What’s the timeline? Next week? Next month?
I figure doing more than one per culture war roundup gets to be too much and doing less than one per AAQC collection would be pointless, so like a week or two?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Proposal: Everyone else writes their own versions of your viewpoint, complete with what they think you do for a living, asl, etc.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Thanks for bringing this back! I think this last happened when it was on reddit and I was only a lurker (still have no reddit account).
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link