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 -
Read Gregory Clark's The Son Also Rises. Most people tend to both overestimate modern inter-generational mobility (note that wealth/income only partially correlates with social class), and underestimate past intergenerational mobility. Clark argues that, except for the uniquely low social mobility in India thanks to the caste system, intergenerational class mobility has been pretty uniform across periods and societies (where societies are large and complex enough to have stratification, that is), and the present is no exception.
Counterpoint: Toby Young's "The Fall of the Meritocracy." If anything breeds "I deserve this" attitudes among elites — and the belief that the people beneath them deserve their station too — it's the view that they earned their position via "merit" (and those lower are so because they lack merit), and not mostly due to being born to the right parents (a better description of the reality). Whereas, when you openly acknowledge that the people on top are only really there thanks to mere accident of birth, "there but for the grace of God go I." It looks to me like you can't really have noblesse oblige without the noblesse part.
There is a pretty large difference between overestimating modern/underestimating historic mobility, and saying it's exactly the same. Clark uses a pretty unusual measure, and notably one that inherently smoothes out variation in the "short term" (here meaning small numbers of generations) by his own admission. So, if my grandparents were low class, my parents lower middle class, I'm upper middle class, but my kids fall back to lower middle class and so on, then for him that's approximately zero/minimal social mobility. I concur with him that there is probably some general "genetic competence" that will drive the social class of one's offspring measured over multiple generations and that even comparatively rigid social systems have some means of advancing so that people can move to whichever class they "belong". Btw, Clark primarily claims consistently low social mobility everywhere.
Nevertheless, I actually consider it a feature, not a bug, of Meritocracy that people can both rise and fall very fast, and especially that a single high-competence outlier can jump quite far for just a single generation. Especially, what Clark does not look at (and doesn't even claim to look at; It's beyond the scope of what he's investigating), is the competitiveness of different systems. Imo it's obvious that meritocratic systems outcompeted non-meritocratic systems historically, and it was acknowledged as such even by contemporaries. You can find some alternative explanations, but all of them are in my view far more convoluted than the straightforward conclusion that Meritocracy is more competitive - which is also very unsurprising, as the entire point of Meritocracy is to advance the most merit-ful to the highest power.
In more practical terms: How could more rigid social systems possibly have done anything but be in the way of me advancing my social position? The moment I dare turn up at high school, at least some teachers and classmates would consider me beneath them, as my parents didn't even go to high school. Going to university would have been worse, and getting my PhD worse yet. At any point, people would - rightfully, in a rigid class system - point out that I do not belong. I already struggle to navigate the obvious cultural differences between my conservative christian upbringing (despite being atheist myself!) and the secular woke left academic world. Most likely I'd fail, and would have taken up some blue collar work just like my parents.
I won't claim the current system is perfect - but insofar as the current world is bad, it is by being not perfectly meritocratic. But I don't expect anything to be perfect anyway, and more Meritocracy is a pretty straightforward positive.
You should read it again (and imo Clark as well, for that matter). Both argue primarily in favor of the view that long-run social status is substantially due to genetics (a view that I agree with), it is no mere accident of birth whatsoever! Neither of them argue in favor of Monarchy in any way - Young in particular argues in favour of embryo screening and other approaches to fix biological inequalities (again, something I agree with).
In Meritocracy, even if you might have "good genes" in some theoretic sense, you're nevertheless asked to prove your worth. As a result, impostor syndrome is very common, both by studies and in my personal experience interacting with the elite; It's hard to find even a single person who isn't constantly worried about "being good enough" for his social status, with the exception of some non-strivers and petty tyrants that are common in administrative positions.
On the other hand, in for example a traditional Monarchy, it was generally accepted that being born into a higher class literally makes you inherently superior. And as both Clark and Young point out this would be in some average sense correct! Noblemen have historically loved to point out this, and would actively sneer about those among them that felt the need to prove themselves - after all, why would a lion feel the need to prove himself not a sheep?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link