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 -
The issue here is that immigrants and as we see from the article even nations where the immigrants come from are affected by the same demographic issues that afflict the western countries. A young 30 years old immigrant will require pension in a few decades for himself. So at best, you only kick the can down the road - you are not really solving the underlying issue of too few children being born. To the contrary, you are introducing foreign religious and cultural elements into your country, so when the resource scarcity will hit in those 3 or 5 decades later down the road, you will have much more linguistically, religiously and culturally divided country than it is now - all possibly creating tribal blocs to fight for resources.
Now maybe you envision perpetual system where your country is attracting immigrants at the expense of all the other countries that in turn have their natural demographic collapse made worse by economic emigration. But again even at best if you assure 100% perpetual assimilation of this mass foreign immigration into local culture that produces country where people want to move in the first place - this is not a global solution, but rather very localized workaround. If this is what people mean by solving demographic crisis, then my "solution" to Climate Change is to move north to Canada or Scandinavia and live comfortably while the rest of the world boils and descends into Mad Max dystopia. There, climate change solved, it is nobrainer.
More options
Context Copy link