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 -
Strictly/rhetorically speaking you've caught me slipping, but more colloquially I think you follow my logic. Immutable doesn't mean that we have no free will or our free will is unable to bring about any change, but rather that even if you can lift a rock, when you stop lifting it, it will fall back to the ground. A slightly more meaning example/metaphor may be that, if I'm a monkey, and I don't want to be eaten by a tiger, I could learn to climb trees, or perhaps even set up specialized roles within a communal system with other monkeys so one or two scouts alert the rest of approaching tigers while everyone else create tools to hunt down the tigers. But that only applies to my tribe. If a rival tribe's monkey or antelope gets eaten by a tiger, it really does me very little good to lose sleep over it, especially if the other monkey can easily copy my tribe but chose to nap instead. Except this simple cause-and-effect and reap-what-you-sow system breaks down when the tribe of 20 monkeys grows into an ecosystem of a city of a million that's subject to state oversight at 10 million and federal oversight at 350 million, and even if you are keen to set up a scout against the tiger, others can brazenly defect, and when you get too zealous about shooting a tiger yourself, a pack of mules from a far away forest issues you a consent decree to avoid systemic prejudice against the oppressed tigers.
Fascinating. Thanks for the insight, though I do not fully understand just from the quote.
More options
Context Copy link