site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 6, 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.

16
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

All in all, I'm leaning in the direction of these being coordinated hit-pieces than an actual investigation, but time will tell.

I wouldn't go as far as to say as its coordinated. But I do think there's something going on here.

My personal opinion is that this is a huge threat to the kayfabe structure. I.E. the model that essentially the left (or at least parts of the left) are good guys and everybody else is the bad guys. Why do I think that? Because I really do believe once we start drilling down into this, we're going to find that at some level, the current in-favor models of identity and power are simply not healthy for people. And it's not just this one issue, to be clear. I think across the board, I see a real defensiveness when this comes up. That postmodern deconstruction is simply not healthy for individuals or society.

And to make it clear, I'm someone who actually believes in Trans identity. I think that it makes sense that some % of the population is going to have an innate sense of gender dysphoria. And they should be cared for in the best way possible, including transition. But I don't think that's all that's going on. I think there are people being victimized by this postmodern deconstruction. And I also think there are people out there exploiting it.

Your post brings to mind something Jonathan Haidt has been saying for a while, which is that modern SocJus/idpol/wokeness/progressivism/etc. is performing anti-Cognitive Behavioral Therapy on the populace (one contention of his being that this is largely responsible for increase in mental health issues among teenagers and teenage girls in particular). CBT teaches various techniques for dealing with negative experiences, such as decatastrophizing - not jumping to the worst conclusions based on the data - or taking ownership of one's reactions - instead of "this made me feel bad," it's "this happened, and I reacted by feeling bad." These have obvious direct negative counterparts in SocJus, with microaggressions being explicit calls to presume some sort of bigotry from ambiguous behavior, and claims that speech that one deems as hateful are directly responsible for literally harming that person.

From my mostly nonexpert layman perspective, as someone who grew up immersed in the antecedents of modern SocJus, I definitely think there's a lot of truth to this. One example that really struck me happened way back in 2016 after Trump got elected, and a lesbian I knew was literally shaking for fear that it would be at most a couple of years before she would be sent to death camps. I recall being baffled by how absurd a belief that was, and how clearly her suffering was caused by all the people who had actually convinced her that Trump would be the next Hitler, rather than by Trump and his ilk.

Yeah, I saw the anti-CBT stuff. I also noticed that it really set off the anti-anti-woke people that I tend to see around (I.E. the people who are not particularly woke, but have a strong dislike for communities like this). I would agree this is fairly similar.

One example that really struck me happened way back in 2016 after Trump got elected, and a lesbian I knew was literally shaking for fear that it would be at most a couple of years before she would be sent to death camps.

The thing is, some people just don't get the message that you're not supposed to actually believe this, that this is just hyperbole and exaggeration. That's along the same lines of what I'm talking about, which I do think is somewhat narrower than the anti-CBT stuff, but I also think the effects are substantially more drastic. And the other part of it, to be blunt, is that I think there are people who are just "wired" in such a way to take things seriously. I'd identify as that type of person. It's not that I'm overly serious...it's just that I strongly believe you should live whatever beliefs you have. That you should say what you mean and mean what you say.

Down below there's a thread about living rather than professing your values. That assumes that said values/ideology is actually meant to be lived anyway. Which in a lot of these cases, I truly don't believe is the case.

Deteriorating mental health among liberal teen girls in particular. IIRC conservative teen girls are doing better than liberal teen boys on that front.