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 -
This seems reasonably analogous to circumcision. The somewhat unconvincing justifications, the historical tradition. This is just the way things are done. As a cut dude that isn't all that mad about it I could easily describe the practice in as dehumanizing words as you. It's a pretty fucked up thing they did for centuries and they stopped as far as I can tell, that puts them ahead of us in circumcision and in some sense slavery(is it too absurd if I decide arbitrarily to bound foot binding between these two practices?). I've spent much time in America with first and second generation Chinese people, they are as varied as any other. They understand and are unhappy about being discriminated against by affirmative action. In response to the crime wave some bought guns and I got to be present when one family who bought one was showing it and discussing the issue with another family. The second generation and onwards understands and absorbs our memes as well as any other group of kids I've known. The first generation seems to respect the idea that they've moved to a place with different values and tries to assimilate. These are our people, these are Americans. Some of them have stories reminiscent of my own ancestor's coming to this place, and they got citizenship the proper and legal way. They are ours and no one else's
i can't tell if you meant to imply i was moralizing against a chinese practice, but I was solely interested in bosen's work as anthropology / something to factcheck, as opposed to making a point about how friend or enemy the chinese are. I agree that chinese seem to have a similar set of variation in 'innate' traits that whites do, and culturally adopt values in the same way everyone does*. Plenty of stuff subgroups of white people did in ancient times was as "cruel" as footbinding.
* There probably are racial differences (aside from intelligence) in ... all sorts of things ""behaviorally"", just because individual genetic variation is plentiful, but what they are I (genuinely) have no idea what they might be, and they could be very different from the what one might guess.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link