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 -
But from first principles then they wouldn’t be pro-life. Might as well just support abortion if they adopt your beliefs. Like I wouldn’t oppose abortion or euthanasia or a host of things if I didn’t also not believe in birth control.
I don’t think lower Iq or poor people are unable to not have sex. If anything promoting religion would give them simple ideas on abstinence and why they are doing it.
Simple first principles:
(1): Human lives are inherently valuable for their own sake, not just as instrumental value towards some economic or political end.
(2): Human fetuses are human and alive in physical form in a way that satisfies the criteria for (1).
(3): Imaginary hypothetical humans who do not exist in any physical form are not inherently valuable unless and until they come into being
All of these are axiomatically independent: you could form a coherent belief structure out of any combination of them. (1)+(2) implies pro-life. (3) makes abortion meaningfully distinct from preventative birth control. I'm fairly certain that the vast majority of people across political and religious beliefs agree with (3) in practice, which is why they don't advocate that celibate people be treated the same as serial killers. Even religious fundamentalists who are adamantly against birth control and in favor of having lots of children don't think that failing to procreate is literally equivalent to murder. Only weird straw-utilitarians who want to tile the universe with hedonium or literally maximize the number of living humans to the exclusion of all else would reject (3).
So then, conditional on people accepting (3), we can broadly categorize "pro life" people as accepting both (1) and (2), and "pro choice" people as rejecting one or both. Theoretically you could find weird exceptions where someone rejects (2) but is pro life anyway because they want to mysogynistically control women's bodies, or someone who accepts all three but only a weak version of 1 such that the right to bodily autonomy outweighs millions of valuable fetus lives. But in practice most of the contention is in (2): pro-choice people reject the premise that fetuses are meaningfully human in a way that makes them valuable and gives them rights. And to a lesser extent they contest (1), a lot of atheists think that human rights are derived from the State and not inherent to personhood thus non-citizens who the State chooses not to protect and can't advocate for themselves do not have inherent rights, while more religious people think that rights are inherent, inalienable, and God-given. Although the existence of God is neither necessary nor sufficient for human rights to be inherent and inalienable, the beliefs do tend to be strongly correlated, as postulating an objective morality without a higher authority to define it requires some epicycles and philosophical justification.
All this to say... murder and abstinence are incredibly different, and nobody treats them the same, not even you. That's why you aren't panicking about not having unprotected sex right now the same way you would be if you were accidentally killing someone right now.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link