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 -
I don't really know what to make of him. He's extremely rhetorically gifted and whenever he writes about something I'm not familiar with he sounds super convincing. When he writes about things I do know about he makes bizarre errors like the ones you noted, like claiming Zbigniew Brzezinski was the Secretary of State, or dramatic, unsourced assertions, like that exporting to global markets is bad for farmers in the global south (if anything the opposite argument that it increased farming sector dependency is more common)
The only time I've seen him called out for playing fast and loose with his claims, he didn't respond in a way that built confidence in his research process. It was from an essay on the history of mythology that to a large extent revolved around the claim that the central religion of the early Bronze Age was a belief in a universal Mother Goddess. One of the commenters pointed out that the Great Goddess theory has decreased in popularity, and he responded that he flat out didn't read anything on mythology written after 1950, and was wary of most things written after 1850.
1850 onward would of course include the Great Goddess hypothesis he's writing about, and as far as I can tell we just found a bunch of ancient female figurines and filled in the rest of the narrative ourselves. I don't know much about ancient religions so I have to trust authors here when they don't provide sources, which he didn't. Authoritatively claiming the existence of continent spanning religious traditions while openly saying you didn't even do a google search to check if we've found evidence they're real is not the kind of stuff that builds that trust for me.
This is nothing compared to his twitter, where I've just seen him sharing the laziest of disinformation, like videos splicing together separate clips of Lindsay Graham speaking to make him say homicidal things about Russians, fully emblazoned with community notes warning of this.
More options
Context Copy link