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 -
If a poor man wants to live in a rich man's mansion, we don't say "wants a mansion which would otherwise be a rich man's mansion, but which in this one case would be a poor man's mansion since a poor person would hypothetically be living in it".
It's just a semantics question. If you define a luxury belief as "is X for the person believing in it", then technically, it wouldn't be a luxury belief for that person, it would be a "thing which is a luxury belief when believed by other people, and which these people are imitating". But that's pedantry.
"Luxury belief" is not incompatible with honestly believing in something. What makes it a luxury belief is that you are, because you can afford to be, insulated from the bad consequences of that belief. You don't have to say "ha ha, I don't care what happens to poor people" in order for that to be true. You could just as well be sincerely (but incorrectly) generalizing from your own situation. Or you might just not be thinking things through at all.
I'm sure that most people in gated communities who want to abolish the police are sincere about it, and I'm also sure that abolishing the police wouldn't really hurt them.
I think we're talking past each other. For instance, I could just as easily describe "tough-on-crime" as a "luxury belief" because a common talking point of the pro-reform point of view is that doing so increases crime by unnecessarily putting people in prison so they build connections to criminals and pushing them away from the non-criminal economy, and therefore the rich isolated from crime can afford to revel in punishing criminals but the less isolated people in cities can't afford such beliefs. This would be an absurd way of structuring a political argument that is using the term "luxury beliefs" to sneak in an assumption that pro-reform view is correct. But I don't see any difference between that and any other uses of "luxury beliefs" in this thread.
If "tough on crime" was a belief commonly held by rich people and not poor people, that would be fair. I don't think it is.
There's nothing inherently impossible about a right-wing-coded luxury belief, see my example about working Sundays.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link