It’s been pointed out recently that the topics discussed in the Culture War thread have gotten a bit repetitive. While I do think the Motte has a good spread on intellectual discussion, I’m always pushing for a wider range (dare I say diversity?) of viewpoints and topics in the CW thread.
I was a lurker for years, and I know that the barrier between having a thought and writing a top level comment in the CW thread can loom large indeed. Luckily I’m fresh out of inspiration, and would love to hear thoughts from folks about effortposts they want to write but haven’t gotten around to.
This of course applies to regulars who post frequently as well - share any and all topics you wish were discussed in the CW thread!
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I’ve had an effort post on blue/red ethnogenesis floating around in my head for a while, but don’t know where to start. I’ve had another one on conspiracy theories that are simply false, but lead to meaningfully better outcomes, and their role in modern society that’s closer to getting off the ground but still unlikely to happen.
When the pope dies(he is in poor health) or is obviously on his last legs I will write an effort post on the current political situation in the RCC and it’s implications for the path forwards, but I don’t think it will necessarily be a top level comment.
Here’s something to chew on:
Dr. Sharon Megalethery’s RCCX theory.
TL;DR chronically ill formerly high achieving doctor theorizes that epigenetic changes are responsible for (or greatly increase risk of) high-functioning autism, ADHD, mood disorders, eating disorders, autoimmune disorders, Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, and queerness. Also these people are more intelligent than average.
A disproportionate number of autistic and ADHD people are queer; same with being hypermobile. You’ve got a phenotype that is neurodivergent, less straight than average, and worse at manual labor, or at least more likely to be crippled by it. And it runs in families.
So your Red Tribe rural guy that leaves town at 18 to head for the Big City might well have had a father or uncle who had weird things happening with his joints and who’s a bit more fucked up than most from a life of manual labor. Maybe he’s not straight, either. Maybe he’s always been a bit different, and thinks he can find acceptance in the city. Yes, it’s a cliche…but some of that is due to straight-up physiological differences that mean that he’s playing with loaded dice with respect to chronic pain if he becomes a construction worker or something.
Wow. I'm not sure if I completely agree with her perspective. However I am 100% that she is on to something regarding the hyper-mobility. Just going by people I've met at Universities, hyper-mobility seems to correlate a lot with, as the cool kids say, "being weird" and also often actually being smart.
Thank you very much for posting about it!
Yeah, that makes sense. I’m not sure if I completely agree with her perspective either, but “stretchy-skinned weird smart queer” seems like a cluster. So too, these people seem to have a higher rate of autoimmune diseases.
What did that hypermobility look like?
One of the most common ways I've noticed it is that they sit in really odd ways despite never having stretched once in their lives. Also being double-jointed in the arm is something people love to showcase. Physical flexibility -> Mental flexibility? Haha.
LMAO - queer people not being able to sit straight is a meme.
I'd bet that physical flexibility at age 5 correlates with LGBT identification at age 20.
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To add to this, women tend to be more flexible than men.
Given that, it's probably natural that men with that trait would find themselves preferring a posture that women use (since it could naturally be assumed that kind of posture accounts for both that flexibility and the inherent weakness it trades off with).
Maybe flexibility (sits like a girl) drives socialization (mocked for sitting like a girl) drives sexuality (with overclocked sense of pattern-matching, decides he'll just be a girl) more than we want to admit it does, but this is probably also only true for these men.
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