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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   33353 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 27, 2023

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You just have to enforce heterosexual monogamy (I am considering hook-ups and excessive serial monogamy to be forms of poly under this framework.)

Based on reading all the discussion in this thread, I don't think that "just" belongs there. It seems like one of those Very Hard things to accomplish, not least because any time someone tries to come up with suggestions on how to do that, lots of others accuse them of using that as camouflage for their actual desire of forcing women back into the kitchen. The normalization of trying to divine someone else's True Intentions by taking the worst possible interpretation of their words and then running with it has been disastrous for the human race, but preventing that also seems like one of those Very Hard things to do, if not outright impossible.

If we seriously wanted to do this it would realistically need to factor power and wealth into the degree of enforcement.

In the same way that crack and powdered cocaine were treated very differently for a long time due to different social strata using one substance over the other you would have to treat a working class aspiring womanizer differently from a successful business owner banging his maid.

If you did that you could have memes around the idea that if you "make it someday" you can have all the sexual freedom/degeneracy that you want. The same way that you get blue collar workers to defend low maximum tax rates, because people like to delude themselves into thinking that they will be winners eventually. Even when there is no evidence to support that.

Naively trying to apply the same restrictive morality on all classes won't go anywhere though. There will always be another Epstein because there will always be demand for...that. So you better factor that into your considerations.

In the same way that crack and powdered cocaine were treated very differently for a long time due to different social strata using one substance over the other

As a complete aside: I keep seeing this story used as an illustration of subtle racism. White cocaine users get off scot-free, black crack users get the crackdown. But aren't poor crack users much, much, much more likely to be a general nuisance to their surroundings an engage in crime to get their fix? Someone who can afford to do cocaine probably doesn't need to rob the closest gas station to get his fix. Granted, the cocaine user might also be more likely to engage in financial fraud, but that seems at least not directly related to the drug.

This is correct, and in fact, black community leaders lobbied for the increased crack penalties, because the black crack users were primarily a menace to their own communities.

From WNYC:

What's less well-known is that early on, many African-American leaders championed those mandatory minimum sentences and other tough-on-crime policies. These efforts could be seen at the federal and state levels, as well as across black communities such as Harlem.

...

Barker and others argue that in the 1960s, residents of black neighborhoods felt constantly under threat from addicts and others associated with the drug trade, and their calls for increased safety measures resonated at community meetings, in the pages of black newspapers like 'The Amsterdam News,' and in churches.

Based on reading all the discussion in this thread, I don't think that "just" belongs there. It seems like one of those Very Hard things to accomplish, not least because any time someone tries to come up with suggestions on how to do that, lots of others accuse them of using that as camouflage for their actual desire of forcing women back into the kitchen.

Case in point: Jordan Peterson, who explicitly used "enforced monogamy" and was accused of basically wanting Islamotheocracy style restrictions.

I think he shot himself in the foot by using that term. I had never heard it before and my first impression was also that it was something extreme. 'Enforced' isn't a word that goes down well in today's liberal world.

There seems to be lots of historical precedent for heterosexual-monogamous cultures (not least of which the West before the sexual revolution). I’m not sure exactly how much “enforcement” would be needed in practice. You don’t need to stamp out adultery entirely, you just need sufficient coercive or cultural pressure to force everyone interested in sex to pair up and have reasonable certainty who the parents of their children are.

There seems to be lots of historical precedent for heterosexual-monogamous cultures (not least of which the West before the sexual revolution).

Sure, but do we have historical precedent for transitioning from a culture similar to the West now - i.e. post-sexual revolution - to a heterosexual-monogamous culture, though? Also while satisfying some other constraints like keeping the current mostly-democratic government structure intact or gender equality (for however one chooses to interpret the term)? When the cat's out of the bag, the knowledge that it used to be in there at one point - and even intimate details about what that looked like - doesn't help us much in figuring out how to put it back in.

Sure, but do we have historical precedent for transitioning from a culture similar to the West now - i.e. post-sexual revolution - to a heterosexual-monogamous culture, though?

I always hear about the Weimar Republic being very decadent, did the Nazis manage to do it?

Sure, but do we have historical precedent for transitioning from a culture similar to the West now - i.e. post-sexual revolution - to a heterosexual-monogamous culture, though?

The fall of Rome?

Technological conditions too different. Industrial-scale manufacturing of synthetic hormone and fertility-control therapies change everything.

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