site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 16, 2023

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.

13
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

The crybullying only works at an individual level because the Blues have already won at the social level. Institutional rules that reward crybullying are imposed top-down by people who achieved power when the norms did not favour crybullying.

The bottom-up norms of the Blue Tribe treat white women’s tears - i.e. Blue elites and aspirant-elites crybullying each other - as almost as worthy of contempt as men’s tears.

Another way of thinking about it is that crybullying only works if you are a designated Blue client group. (The Red Tribe often try crybullying the Blues, and it doesn’t work). Crybullying culture only appeared when the Blues were powerful enough to have client groups.

The crybullying only works at an individual level because the Blues have already won at the social level.

I disagree. I think it works because it exploits values most people have - like compassion, justice, kindness, sense of belonging, desire to protect the weak - and weaponizes it to goals completely alien to these values. Most people do not have innate immunity for that, at least not yet. It's like the virus getting into the cell - it uses its own resources for the goals that have nothing to do with the goals the cell is for. Most non-tribers and red-tribers do not know what to do if somebody attacks them with "here's some oppressed people and either you do exactly what I say or you're the oppressor" - and most people do not want to be the oppressors. That's where the crybullying gets its power - from the desire of people to be good and fear of people to fail to be good, which is successfully weaponized.

The Red Tribe often try crybullying the Blues, and it doesn’t work

Because Red Tribe's values make for them very hard to weaponize compassion. The tribe that values individual strength, individual responsibility, individual merit and individual freedom would find it hard to convincingly pretend to be a helpless victim of circumstances and evil conspiracies. It's hard for them to pretend to be an innocent victim convincingly enough for the feelings of sympathy to overwhelm logical defenses. They are not ambush predators by nature. So copying a strategy that was not designed for them is not going to work very well. You can't have a spider and a hawk to hunt the same way.