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 -
I'll second the comment that this isn't enough meat to justify a top-level comment. But to build on the post, I think this is a part of a larger pattern I see, where some people believe in principles and some people don't.
A personal anecdote I've brought up here in the past is me noticing - and being surprised by - around 10 years ago how common it was for people in my leftist progressive circles to describe ideology and behaviors they disagreed with (usually right-wing and conservative) as "gross." This was immediately after the previous couple decades of us fighting for gay marriage and more broadly gay rights and acceptance under the reasoning that personal disgust reaction was something that ought not to carry any sort of moral weight, and thus all those conservatives who found gay people icky had no ground in refusing to accept gay people just as much as they accept straight people. Yet the exact same people - often the exact same individuals - were using their own personal disgust reaction to something as a way to denigrate it.
Around that time around 10 years ago was also when Atheism+ was formed as an offshoot from the existing atheism/skepticism online community. I believe this was the blog post announcing this intended schism, which I quote:
This was intended as a contrast to the existing community which was really just that last bullet point in its core, though I would actually describe it more as "Atheists as a result of using critical thinking and skepticism." Most of the above bullet points have nothing in principle to do with atheism, but are rather sociopolitical positions that were popular among online atheists at the time (and likely still today). I came to realize that, for many of my fellow online atheists, the reason they had arrived at atheism wasn't so much due to trying to reason about the existence of a god as it was due to being a way to contrast their own beliefs against the religious conservative beliefs they disagreed with.
Going back to the gay acceptance issue, more recently, I had a conversation with someone here (can't recall whom, and this was several months ago) about liberalism and gay acceptance, and I tried to make the point that if someone doesn't viscerally find gay people disgusting or degenerate or whatever, then supporting gay marriage/acceptance doesn't indicate anything about their support for liberal principles (rather than the liberal side of the liberal/conservative sociopolitical divide in the US); it's only by supporting rights and acceptance for something that one finds personally disgusting or otherwise negative that one can actually meaningfully indicate their support for liberal principles. I recall not being able to make an argument that was convincing to that person.
My thinking is that this is partly/largely an influence of postmodern thinking. In a very real sense, the people that I found surprising are stepping one meta level above where I am; I take one step up from the object level and relying on principles, and they're taking one step up from that and picking and choosing the principles that allow them to arrive at their object-level preferences. I haven't thought about this much beyond this and how to resolve the turtles-all-the-way-down problem here, though. I also wonder if this issue is just as common in other sociopolitical circles, since humans have human failings everywhere, but I notice it more among my own circles. But postmodern discourse and way of thinking tends to be more dominant in the leftist world, so maybe not.
You get it. That's exactly what I'm referring to.
I really like your point about atheism. I've noticed something perhaps similar with the rise of being "spiritual". It more strikes me as someone wanting to have their cake and eat it too; they want the palliative benefits of religion without having to suffer from the way religion is regarded culturally. In other words, they want the benefits of religion but they also want to be cool and progressive.
Also a good point about true open mindedness coming from a place of principal and not simple agreeance. I do agree that the tendency to determine one's conclusion and then reverse engineer the argument is all too common. I suppose this has probably been common to some extent throughout human history, but what strikes me as unique is that this psychology has infected institutional thinking as well. It doesn't seem that there are really any adults left in the room on that regard; institution managers who engage in the boring, almost technocratic practice of simply assessing the information and then making the right decision based on that.
More options
Context Copy link
One of Scott's best posts is relevant here
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link