site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 10, 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.

13
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

So I have some sort of inside information because I was chatting with someone from NW's athletic department at a birthday party over the weekend. He was pretty insistent that the suspension was going to be extended to include at least some of the season. Apparently there was significant pressure from the non-athletic portions of the university to send a message. As context, Northwestern as a semi-elite university has a professorship that is pretty hostile to sports in general, and the football team most as all. They generally, would like to be rid of football, and resent the massive new donation that is going to a stadium that they think, instead, should be going to something that they value.

and resent the massive new donation that is going to a stadium that they think, instead, should be going to something that they value.

I think what they resent the most is that there's nobody who cares about what they value enough to come up with a similar donation. It's that they aren't valued that really galls them, not that someone else values football.

Well it emphasizes the point either way.

That’s a very old university power game which I guess is now playing new social games.

I wander how much NW is going to have to pay out to the victims who spent a couple minutes each rubbing balls with their teammates. I guess if your a former player you might as well declare it rape and asks for a few million each.