site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 22, 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.

10
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Finance wasn't exclusively upper class in the UK even in the past. During the post-WWII years, I have a grandfather who made it pretty far in finance coming from a family of mid-ranking naval officers. Like a lot of people in finance in those days, his main assets were that he was reliable, risk-averse, sceptical, and disciplined in a relaxed, gentle, unambitious way. He worked in London, but lived in a modest cottage in the Shires, and he got a fair number of clients just because of his reputation from "the War". Ironically, he almost never spoke about the War, because he had lost too many friends and family, and killed too many people himself - not an easy thing to do for a gentle giant.

The shift in the 1980s/1990s period, AFAIK, was that UK finance became more open to working class people, women, non-white people, foreigners, and even Irish people^. Most of all, the big money jobs were increasingly for those who were ambitious, risk-loving, optimistic, and disciplined in an intense, obsessive way. And naturally most people entering finance hadn't even been in a serious fist-fight, let alone built up a reputation in war.

^ This comes up in David Lodge's Nice Work, where the middle class academic woman (the book's main character) is finds out that a seemingly ditzy working class London lass (her brother's girlfriend, as I recall) is earning much more than her in the supposedly reactionary world of Thatcher-era finance. The working class woman comes from a family of bookies, and so thinking fast with numbers is to her like waking up early is to a farmer's daughter.