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 -
And since I ran out of characters:
What makes you think that I don't understand that we have different perspectives? I've been reading what you and others write for something like 4 years now. I regularly do the Fox news/breitbart/OANN circuit to see what you're exposed to. I read your substacks and whatever pieces the conservative users here link. I don't do the youtube/facebook/telegram/talk radio rabbit holes so maybe I'm missing the true, authentic conservative experience, but based on what little I've heard, that's probably for the best.
Your whole goal is to show that our worldviews are irreconcilable, that the die is cast and that our conflict is written in the stars. This is trivially true, in that you can unilaterally refuse to compromise or budge an inch no matter what I tell you and either force me to agree with you or just use that to support your position. Regardless what happens in the wider world, it's wide enough for you to find Bad Things happening, even more so given the incentives of for-profit media. You devote a lot of exposition to how the BLM protests prove that we're incompatible and out to get you, but you blackpilled before BLM, just like you were blackpilled before Trump just like (I presume) you were blackpilled before Iraq.
Differences in perspective are either due to misinformation, or it's a value judgment and one of us values x more than y. Frankly, our world is so staggeringly complex that we're all helplessly ignorant; some few people can specialize in a tiny sliver of one field among many, yet invariably, any given event draws an avalanche of takes from individuals whose conviction massively outstrips their knowledge.
Like, do either of us honestly believe we're experts on poverty rates in the US? Cherry picking some figures from a paper which probably cherry picked some figures in turn doesn't make either of us qualified to draw any kind of conclusion. The true 'perspective' we should be uniting behind is epistemic humility and calling out people who pretend otherwise.
More options
Context Copy link