site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 20, 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.

7
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

You can't just say 0.4% increase in the population is easily manageable. If the current European welfare/support structure can currently only support 500,000 in excess, a 2 million increase is a 1,500,000 overload of what the system can support. Let's not forget there will still be migrants coming in from other places while this is going on.

As an example New York City, as of August 13, has had an increase of 58500 migrants come into their care system. That's 0.75% of the population of New York City, but New York has a ton of money and resources put into a support/welfare structure. Yet that increase is overstraining the New York support system, to the point where local residents are now frustrated with the incoming migrants taking away city resources that should have gone to them, and the city is offering tickets out of New York City to the migrants now.

There is also the question of how likely are the people of Gaza to be absorbed peacefully into Western society and culture? The low age and the fact that this is a more equal gender split is an interesting point you brought up, but it's also a fact that nearby Arab/Muslim countries like Egypt don't want to accept Gazan refugees. The countries containing the people who have the most in common with Gazans and have greater proportions of people that are in agreement with Gazan's wants and desires don't want to take them in.

Then there is the issue of the people who don't want to leave Gaza. What percentage of the people in Gaza actually want to seek aslyum and leave compared to wanting to stay and create a Palestinian state? Hamas's open stated goal is the complete destruction of Israel and a large portion of the Gazans (58%) have a positive or very positive view of Hamas. Are we going to just force these people to be absorbed into the west as well?