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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   33253 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 20, 2023

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I believe OP intended for that passage to describe Donald Trump. Upon reading it, I immediately thought of Trump, though it applies to politicians of all stripes.

WRT Trump, pro wrestling (as Trump once cameo'd in WWE, and Linda McMahon was on his Cabinet, IIRC) is often the comparison made, that Trump is a master of "kayfabe" and being able to sell the audience the image they want to see. Pro wrestling is arguably a right-inflected form of theatre in itself, and probably descended from carnival shows (in fact, much of wrestling terminology is descended from carny-speak), so that thread is definitely there and you aren't just seeing Jesus in toaster marks.

Oh, you are dead-on about Trump, and I pegged him from the second he came down that elevator as a toxic grifter to be avoided at all costs. I do think that for all the ways I’m an odd fit for the Right, the fact that at no point was I ever a run-of-the-mill normie conservative gives me a bit of insight into some of the failure modes to which the Red Tribe is vulnerable, and I knew that Trump would be able to expertly exploit those vulnerabilities while actually doing close to nothing to help the people who voted for him. He is the ur-fabulist, someone so labile and bereft of sincerity that he will say and believe literally anything he thinks he needs to in order to secure adulation and power.

The PMC libs are the inheritors of the elite culture which they claim so conspicuously to hate, and the only conservatives left are the proles. If there is hope, it must lie in the proles, because only there, in those swarming disregarded masses, is there any taste of tradition left. Proles and animals are free.

I mean, what’s the point of all of it if the proles rise up and overthrow their overlords, only to institute a society where the height of artistic culture is Pawn Stars and a NASCAR race? If the destruction of the PMC means the destruction of what’s left of our high culture, I’ve got to say that siding with the elites starts to look like a more attractive prospect. Say whatever you will about the PMC and their schizophrenic relationship to traditional high culture, but like I said, when I go to a classical concert or a ballet or an opera, it’s very obvious who is keeping these traditions alive, and it sure as hell isn’t Trump voters.

I mean, what’s the point of all of it if the proles rise up and overthrow their overlords, only to institute a society where the height of artistic culture is Pawn Stars and a NASCAR race?

Growing up, the only ballet I went to was a Christmas Pageant type, one that included this song in it. It was also sublime, and in the top 5 things I miss about moving away from my childhood home.

The Daily Wire has put out at least a couple movies that are on par with anything Hollywood has put out recently. Run, Fight, Hide was more enjoyable than any Marvel Movie since Winter Soldier.

But to make and patronize high-quality art, there needs to be a certain amount of affluence - either on the part of a wealthy art patron or on the part of a polity that can afford it. If the Red Tribe had more of that, I think they'd surprise you.

That said, I think the orchestra and ballet require a bit more of steely-eyed pragmatism, self-discipline, and respect for the past that befits the red tribe better.

when I go to a classical concert or a ballet or an opera, it’s very obvious who is keeping these traditions alive, and it sure as hell isn’t Trump voters

I'm not as convinced- their version of theater is wildly popular. They don't outright call it that (partially for reactionary reasons), but the term "kayfabe" comes from the way its performers act.

Yes, it's a bit more formulaic since it has to fit within its primary conceit of a sports match, but I really don't see much difference between Shakespeare and WWE- it's just that we consider one high art and the other something else, probably because Shakespeare was 400 years ago and nobody fully understands its memes any more.

Seconding @Hoffmeister25.

I really don't see much difference between Shakespeare and WWE- it's just that we consider one high art and the other something else

What this reminds me of, perhaps because of recent exposure to the china-racial-enemy thread, is reading this old Amren article:

In this context, I recall some remarkable discoveries by the late American linguist, William Stewart, who spent many years in Senegal studying local languages. Whereas Western cultures internalize norms—“Don’t do that!” for a child, eventually becomes “I mustn’t do that” for an adult—African cultures do not. They rely entirely on external controls on behavior from tribal elders and other sources of authority. When Africans were detribalized, these external constraints disappeared, and since there never were internal constraints, the results were crime, drugs, promiscuity, etc. Where there have been other forms of control—as in white-ruled South Africa, colonial Africa, or the segregated American South—this behavior was kept within tolerable limits. But when even these controls disappear there is often unbridled violence.

Surprising confirmation of Stewart’s ideas can be found in the May/June 2006 issue of the Boston Review, a typically liberal publication. In “Do the Right Thing: Cognitive Science’s Search for a Common Morality,” Rebecca Saxe distinguishes between “conventional” and “moral” rules. Conventional rules are supported by authorities but can be changed; moral rules, on the other hand, are not based on conventional authority and are not subject to change. “Even three-year-old children … distinguish between moral and conventional transgressions,” she writes. The only exception, according to James Blair of the National Institutes of Health, are psychopaths, who exhibit “persistent aggressive behavior.” For them, all rules are based only on external authority, in whose absence “anything is permissible.” The conclusion drawn from this is that “healthy individuals in all cultures respect the distinction between conventional … and moral [rules].”

However, in the same article, another anthropologist argues that “the special status of moral rules cannot be part of human nature, but is … just … an artifact of Western values.” Anita Jacobson-Widding, writing of her experiences among the Manyika of Zimbabwe, says:

“I tried to find a word that would correspond to the English concept of ‘morality.’ I explained what I meant by asking my informants to describe the norms for good behavior toward other people. The answer was unanimous. The word for this was tsika. But when I asked my bilingual informants to translate tsika into English, they said that it was ‘good manners’ …”

She concluded that because good manners are clearly conventional rather than moral rules, the Manyika simply did not have a concept of morality. But how would one explain this absence? Miss Jacobson-Widding’s explanation is the typical nonsense that could come only from a so-called intellectual: “the concept of morality does not exist.” The far more likely explanation is that the concept of morality, while otherwise universal, is enfeebled in cultures that have a deficiency in abstract thinking.

As always, one man's modus ponens is another man's modus tollens. Art exists, and WWE ain't it. Commonality of many building blocks is of no relevance. People can be more or less equipped to notice the totality of intellectual effort and purpose directing it which separates art and pure entertainment.

No doubt WWE could be used to stage actual high art, but its incentives lead to the opposite.

“Even three-year-old children … distinguish between moral and conventional transgressions,” she writes. The only exception, according to James Blair of the National Institutes of Health, are psychopaths, who exhibit “persistent aggressive behavior.” For them, all rules are based only on external authority, in whose absence “anything is permissible.”

Aristotle disagreed in that, according to Laetrus, he thought that most people don't act according to some internal sense of right and wrong, but according to what won't get them into trouble:

I have gained this from philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law.

In his view, most people are what Mr. Blair calls "psychopaths".

This is indeed not so clear-cut. Plato also argued that there does not exist a man so virtuous as to abstain from crime that cannot de discovered, in a passage that I believe has inspired Tolkien (Wiki notes the parallel but says there's no proof of borrowing):

The best is to do injustice without paying the penalty; the worst is to suffer it without being able to take revenge. Justice is in the middle between these two extremes. People love it, not because it is a good thing, but because they are too weak to do injustice with impunity. Someone who has the power to do it, however—someone who is a real man—would not make an agreement with anyone, neither to do injustice nor to suffer it. For him, that would be insanity. That is the nature of justice, according to the argument, Socrates, and those are its natural origins.

We can see most clearly that those who practice it do so unwillingly, because they lack the power to do injustice, if we imagine the following thought-experiment. Suppose we grant to the just and the unjust person the freedom to do whatever they like. We can then follow both of them and see where their appetites would lead. And we will catch the just person red- handed, traveling the same road as the unjust one. The reason for this is the desire to do better than others. This is what every natural being naturally pursues as good. But by law and force, it is made to deviate from this path and honor equality.

They would especially have the freedom I am talking about if they had the power that the ancestor of Gyges of Lydia is said to have possessed. The story goes that he was a shepherd in the service of the ruler of Lydia. [...] There were windowlike openings in it and, peeping in, he saw a corpse, which seemed to be of more than human size, wearing nothing but a gold ring on its finger. He took off the ring and came out of the chasm. He wore the ring at the usual monthly meeting of shepherds that reported to the king on the state of the flocks.And as he was sitting among the others, he happened to turn the setting of the ring toward himself, toward the inside of his hand. When he did this, he became invisible to those sitting near him, and they went on talking as if he had gone. [...] As soon as he realized this, he arranged to become one of the messengers sent to report to the king. On arriving there, he seduced the king’s wife, attacked the king with her help, killed him, and in this way took over the kingdom.

Let’s suppose, then, that there were two such rings, one worn by the just person, the other by the unjust. Now no one, it seems, would be so incorruptible that he would stay on the path of justice, or bring himself to keep away from other people’s possessions and not touch them, when he could take whatever he wanted from the marketplace with impunity, go into people’s houses and have sex with anyone he wished, kill or release from prison anyone he wished, and do all the other things that would make him like a god among humans. And in so behaving, he would do no differently than the unjust person, but both would pursue the same course.

I actually agree both with Greeks and with woke anthropologists that morality does not exist and does not differ from conventional etiquette in some substantial objective sense. The belief that it does is obviously downstream from tenets of (Christian) religion, which insists on there being some supernatural authority that informs one's conscience in a way that's qualitatively superior to mere interiorization of customs. Olympians weren't moral role models or authorities. Even Yahweh isn't much of one, even his old prophets weren't. Crucially, Christianity doesn't give much of a shit for the material world that is a disposable platform for testing the character of an immortal soul, so it can get away with abnormally severe deontology, the good of the entire polity being not worth the abuse of a single child. (it's worth noting that Dost's argument in Karamazovs about «tear of a child» is often misconstued as expressing this sentiment, but it was just the old problem of evil in a world created by a good God). This was important for creating a WEIRD psychotype.

But also, clearly racists-objectivists have a point.

To be more specific, we can say that in this framework «morality» is distinct from etiquette in that it is a) premised on instinctive empathy for your fellow being with moral patienthood (this is admittedly somewhat circular), b) practically consists of general game-theoretical heuristics that are intended to maximize long-term happiness/suffering ratio for the group and its members, and c) affects emotions and behavior even in the absence of external reward.

This still allows for diversity of moral systems. When the racist author says that Kenyans wouldn't have freed Dreyfus because they fail at counterfactual reasoning, he misses this.

Whenever I taught ethics I used the example of Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer in the French Army who was convicted of treason in 1894 even though the authorities knew he was innocent. Admitting their mistake, it was said, would have a disastrous effect on military morale and would cause great social unrest. I would in turn argue that certain things are intrinsically wrong and not just because of their consequences. Even if the results of freeing Dreyfus would be much worse than keeping him in prison, he must be freed, because it is unjust to keep an innocent man in prison. To my amazement, an entire class in Kenya said without hesitation that he should not be freed.

The Chinese, or even Japanese, are obviously capable of thinking about complex counterfactuals, but it may be that they too wouldn't have been persuaded by the deontological reasoning here: «social harmony» is for them a moral heuristic that can very well compete with «justice», and is valued for the same object-level reasons the instinct is derived from. Insults to harmony are received with indignation and outrage of the same nature as acts of abuse directed at individuals in the West. Indeed I think that a typical East Asian would appeal to a deeper counterfactual, that of the plausible uncertainty of Dreyfus' innocence, to justify the court doubling down: unrest in the name of redressing a *merely highly likely injustice is not worth it. And heuristics of Kenyans may be not too different, only baked into common metis and inaccessible to abstract reflection. In fact we could say that empathetic morality is more logically primitive than ethics of conventional behavior, because conventions can account for second-order effects which still resolve to moral benefit.

I do not always believe that what I quote or refer to is better than my own thoughts on the matter – those are just neat illustrations for the topic at hand.

I think morality does exist, and as far as I know I don’t derive it from christianity. Imagine everyone has a ring of gyges. To avoid getting stolen from and killed, we refrain from such things even in the absence of retribution. The analogy holds because people really do occasionally have the opportunity to do evil unseen. Magical, acausal thinking perhaps, but I truly believe that if I act that way, they will too. Well, some of them. But it requires them to understand the defect-defect equilibrium we are heading to without such magical thinking, and trust in an unenforceable contract. I’m sorry to say that for me the moral value of a person has an intelligence component, though obviously intelligence is no guarantee.

I really don't see much difference between Shakespeare and WWE- it's just that we consider one high art and the other something else, probably because Shakespeare was 400 years ago and nobody fully understands its memes any more.

I’m going to try and indulge this argument, because I used to believe a version of it. I was a pretty diehard cultural relativist at one point, coinciding with my Marxist days, so I understand the appeal of this argument. It also happens to be the case that I have read each and every one of Shakespeare’s plays in their entirety, and have personally performed his work. During the years in which, while studying for my theatre arts degree, Shakespeare was being shoved down my throat, I actually reacted really strongly against the veneration of his plays as the zenith of the English literary tradition. Part of that is my strong natural contrarianism, but I think I was also correct to identify weaknesses in his work and the ways in which a lot of people do just worship Shakespeare because he’s Shakespeare, independently of the value of his specific works.

But like… even his worst and most lowbrow play is not comparable to a WWE event. I’m sorry, but that requires a level of “there is no difference between good things and bad things, everything is socially constructed and mediated by status signaling, beauty is in the eye of the beholder” that just doesn’t hold up to any honest analysis of the works in question.

My good buddy is a huge WWE fan, and I used to watch Wrestlemania and the occasional pay-per-view event with him, and I agree that it’s a fun time, with moments of genuine excitement, but it’s not Shakespeare.

Now that sounds like a fun remix. "Heels get stunnered many times before their pin; faces taste the folding chair but once." "Uneasy lies the waist that bears the Championship belt."

I mean, what’s the point of all of it if the proles rise up and overthrow their overlords, only to institute a society where the height of artistic culture is Pawn Stars and a NASCAR race?

Never considered myself aligned much with lowbrow culture, but if I could have a maximally good society where the only drawback is that entertainment is simple...

I mean, what’s the point of all of it if the proles rise up and overthrow their overlords, only to institute a society where the height of artistic culture is Pawn Stars and a NASCAR race?

I absolutely abhor this line of thinking. I grew up in a red tribe setting and spent most of my adult life around blue tribe people and whenever they say this sort of thing it makes them look so, so bad in my opinion. People who watch Pawn Stars and NASCAR are poor and even if they're not poor have little to no cultural power in their own country, they have been dying by the thousands in drug overdoses, the rust belt has been on a downward spiral for a century, they have a poor quality of life and then have to be degraded by.... "theater kids" who rub their suffering in their faces. Sorry for the rant but it blows my mind when I see the same tribe of people who spend every waking moment trying not to offend BIPOC people flippantly painting Trump voters as people who have chosen not to keep opera alive rather than painting them as people with the cards stacked against them who are more worried about getting their rent paid than trying to attend a ballet to feel a little superior to the people around them.

Actually, I think I've just hit at the crux of the issue of your original post. Theatre kids are, or have been for the past few decades, leftist because it's where elitism and cultural capital lie. Take away that construction and suddenly the creatives are free to switch sides, which I believe is already starting to happen as I've outlined in this post from a few months ago.

Sorry for the rant but it blows my mind when I see the same tribe of people who spend every waking moment trying not to offend BIPOC people flippantly painting Trump voters as people who have chosen not to keep opera alive rather than painting them as people with the cards stacked against them who are more worried about getting their rent paid than trying to attend a ballet to feel a little superior to the people around them.

Leaving aside the fact that I personally am certainly not worried about offending “BIPOC people” - I direct you to peruse my larger body of work on this site, in which I do precisely the opposite - your larger point stands and is valuable. Progressives will contort themselves into pretzels to make excuses for every self-defeating thing a poor minority does, while not only hearing no excuses for similarly self-defeating behavior from downscale whites but actually reveling in it. The pattern you are outlining is real.

However, hypocrisy can be reconciled in two directions. One would be to see all downtrodden and marginalized communities as equally worthy of sympathy and uplift; a populist “champion of the little guy” who gives every bit as help to every unfortunate and exploited person, regardless of race or tribal loyalty or whatever. That appears to be what you’re advocating, and I understand the appeal. However, I can also resolve the hypocrisy by extending the same disdain and feeling of superiority to the “BIPOC people” as I do to the “trailer trash”; this is the elitist position that some people are better than other people, and that generally speaking power and resources are effectively distributed based on the quality, productivity, and value of individuals. This is certainly an oversimplified worldview and does not accurately describe the whole picture; however, I believe that it is directionally correct.

I have been to the dirt-poor part of Appalachia - I was in eastern Kentucky - and if I were to give one of those people a free ticket to a classical music concert - which, by the way, one can purchase for like $25 at most venues and get decent seats, so this isn’t some massive expense - that individual would probably not appreciate the experience even given the chance. I’m confident that this is the cad because even wealthy or middle-class Red Tribe people - people with no material concerns preventing them from participating in high culture - overwhelmingly do not do so, and prefer lower-brow fare. There’s a cultural/psychological/tribal element here that has nothing to with people just being too poor to afford a ticket to the ballet.

As for your contention that someone would only go to the ballet “to feel a little superior to the people around them”, I can assure you that that’s not the reason I go to the ballet. I go because so genuinely experience it as sublime and beautiful. It makes me feel connected to a larger corpus of important cultural output that represents the absolute pinnacle of what my people have been able to create, during the period when their culture was at its most powerful and dynamic and confident. I have difficulty relating to people who can’t experience the sublimity of something like that. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying lowbrow entertainment - I go to punk rock concerts all the time, which are not intellectually-stimulating or artistically refined - but I think there’s something really limited and unfortunate about someone who hasn’t even been able to cultivate a base-level appreciation for the boundless world of free and instantly-accessible high culture that’s out there at the fingertips of the people for whom you’re making excuses.

Perhaps there is something to ballet that I just don't understand. I have been to at least one, nutcracker, and... it's just people dancing to music. Difficult I'm sure, but sublime? Different people find different things sublime, I love my city, I'm in awe at what our engineers, architects and laborers have built - my culture is more powerful and dynamic today, not in some idealized past where pain stakingly perfecting choreography was the peak of human ambition. Maybe this is what you feel when you see ballet, but it is no universal experience.

For what it's worth, I also like ballet and think it's sublime. I even consider dancing and engineering to be related, because the human body is like a machine. Programming robots to be able to do what humans can do is a cutting edge field of research.

My favorite ballet is the Triadic Ballet, produced out of the Bauhaus school. The costumes worn by the dancers show different aspects of the human body's geometry. The ballet is divided into parts based on various mechanical motions of the body. It's not just a demonstration of painstakingly perfect choreography. It demonstrates ideas and principles that can be generalized to other fields of knowledge.

a classical concert or a ballet or an opera

A miniscule sliver of society enjoys these things. I recall reading that even that sliver is loosing interest and these venues are dying.

Let's not pick political allegiance over this fringe of a past time. In fact, maybe purely entertainment activities such as movies and opera should be viewed as frivolous distractions. Good fun if you like it. But fundamentally unimportant.

Say whatever you will about the PMC and their schizophrenic relationship to traditional high culture, but like I said, when I go to a classical concert or a ballet or an opera, it’s very obvious who is keeping these traditions alive, and it sure as hell isn’t Trump voters.

You would switch allegiances over these trifles? You’re always applauding, I don’t see the point. Let’s all dress up and pretend recording devices haven’t been invented, it's pure signaling. Radio killed the Opera star, just let it go man.

and it sure as hell isn’t Trump voters

Sure as hell isn't Urban Youth either, but this is probably more a function of other common causes, e.g. large urban areas happen to be places that are both highly progressive and support large symphonies, but those two things may not be directly related. I have never encountered any particular disdain for classical music among the red tribe, so much as unfamiliarity and a vague association with NPR preciousness. Symphonic movie scores, though, seem to be broadly popular.

There is a reason that conservative intelligentsia is increasingly dominated by people from ultra-conservative subcultures that separate themselves from mainstream American society- like Matt Walsh and Ben Shapiro.

are walsh or shapiro even the most popular "intelligentsia" at billionaire-backed dailywire?

do people from "ultra conservative subcultures" even dominate at dailywire?

is the reason because they're willing to burn money paying tech platforms to push their content to the front of every "conservative" feed or were you thinking of something else?

Rebecca Mercer and Matt Walsh both go to the same tradcath church, interestingly(other relevant tradcaths in very prominent positions on the right include pat buchanan, Clarence thomas, Michael Brendan Dougherty, Don Huffines, and a bevy of petty functionaries), and Ben Shapiro is (obviously) an Orthodox Jew which is also strongly over represented in the right wing media-activist complex. So are Mormons.

So yes, there’s clearly a noticeable pattern.

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