site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   32274 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 17, 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.

11
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Why not? Murdering Christians is surely frowned upon. Yet the death of a Christian is not sufficient to end the detente, because there are other factors at play.

So why is that line drawn here, at “screwing with” the Eucharist? Why not at the death penalty? At Roe v. Wade? At every bump and scrape of a religious institution against the world’s competing secular interests?

This is silly.

  1. The assasination of Kennedy was a national tragedy and the killer died before prosecution. Oswald, the 60's equivalent if a tankie, is also wildly unrepresentative of secular America.
  2. Roe v. Wade and other legal decisions Christians don't like are the state making rules for what the state wants to permit. The stated deal with seperation of church and state is that the state and church don't get a privlidged interference in the realm of the other. No established churches, no state telling the faithful how to worship. Christians don't have to get abortions, and its their civil right to protest laws they find unjust. Roe v. Wade fits nicely into the deal.
  3. Curtailing the Eucharist (in Canada, we still can't drink the sacred blood) directly violates the deal. Telling the faithful they can't do a core part of the faith on pain of legal penalty is the state privlidging itself in the realm of the spiritual. The equally unacceptable inverse would be the state establishing a church with mandatory attendence on pain if legal penalty.

Christians have always been murdered. That doesn't in itself delegitimize the state for Christians. If Christian murders were selectively under-prosecuted, perhaps it would.

Forbidding people from worship is altogether different. It proves that the free exercise clause has no weight. No one will be held accountable for violating it, and the state is free to violate it again. Already there's movement to do away with priest-penitent privilege, invading upon another critical sacrament for Catholics.

There are plausible reasons for opinions on the death penalty or abortion that have nothing to do with religion, even if some of them may be insincere. Not allowing gatherings to take the Eucharist while allowing secular gatherings can only be because of hostility to religion.

But Christian denominations oppose those things, sometimes quite forcefully, without ending some mythical detente. Why should this be different? Why is this the case where they are supposed to sharpen the knives and prepare for the tribulation?

I don't begrudge Christians their distaste for such a rule. I'm asking why such distaste is supposed to be unique.

... because of hostility to religion.

Maybe, but I think you need to show more work here for your conclusion? Eucharist involves taking off a mask and eating something that someone hands to you or places directly in your mouth. Even pre-COVID, I remember thinking this was not particularly sanitary. A secular gathering might not involve taking off a mask at all. The risk profiles are different. And while terrible, the pandemic gave people a stake in others' private sanitation habits. (Whether or not you think that stake thereby gives the general public the right to restrict behavior, the stake exists.)

Yeah, but at the time we had "No, you can't go to Mass (or a service) because singing hymns will spread infection" while at the same time "it is a human right to march in unmasked street protests of hundreds of people and racism is a bigger threat than Covid" for the BLM protests.

So, you know: here's the goose, here's the sauce, why is the gander not here too?

There was quite a while where I could show up to a bar without a mask for a drink but couldn't sing or participate in rituals at a church.

Assuming that I am not lying, is that an injustice?

An injustice? Yeah.

Only because of hostility to religion? I don't think so. Apathy is sufficient.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats