site banner
PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   26075 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 4, 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.

5
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Who cares about what Israeli Jews think?

Please write as though everyone is reading and you would like them to be involved in the conversation. "Who cares what $GROUP thinks" is not permissible rhetoric here.

I didn't mean it in a disparaging way towards Israeli Jews, my point was more like "why is it important that Israeli Jews don't care about Hanukkah" - but I could have been clearer.

It's a control group to compare with Jews who live in Christian majority countries showing that Jews only care about Hanukkah if they live in a place where Christmas is culturally dominant.

Halloween was much bigger in the US than other countries, and still is. Different countries are...different. Suffice to say I don't think the presence of difference WRT holiday celebration/importance means much. There is no "true" Judaism from which all other Judaism must be compared.

That doesn't mean that Hanukkah isn't a major Jewish holiday in America, which is what the guy was saying. Cultures are different in different places.

Let's review. We have Kwanzaa (fake holiday made up in the 1960's), Hanukkah (a non-important holiday in Judaism celebrated by an ethnic group that is less than 2% of the population in the US), and Christmas, which according to polls approximately 85% of Americans celebrate. Furthermore, it was the Christmas Season until very recently, and Christianity is the religion of the vast majority of Americans now and historically. Yet now it is "The Holidays". Let's take this down to Sesame Street level logic here. One of these things is not like the other. It's really that simple. And the only reason it's even considered important is because it happens around the same time as Christmas, and some Jews wanted to have a holiday near Christmas and because it's useful as a narrative tool to make the cultural change to Holidays instead of Christmas.

It's frankly absurd it has as much cultural cache in the US as it does considering all those factors. There's almost as many Indian Americans as Jews. Diwali should be considered just as important as Hanukkah by this logic. It only makes sense since it happens during the holiday season. Diwali is the most important festival of the year in India after all.

I wonder if you live in one of the few areas with a high % of Jewish residents, because I grew up in one and Hannukah was fairly high profile but now I live in a place without many/any Jews and there's no Hannukah presence which makes me feel as though there was no "astro turfing" but rather a natural reflection of the population of a place.

Yeah, American Jews wanted a holiday for their kids to celebrate around the time their Christian friends were celebrating Christmas and so Hanukkah rose in importance. It's quite clearly a major Jewish holiday in America.

Which one of these is not like the other?

  1. Hanukkah - an objectively non-important holiday in Judaism celebrated by an ethnic group that is less than 2% of the population in the US

  2. Kwanzaa - fake holiday made up in the 1960's

  3. Christmas, which according to polls approximately 85% of Americans celebrate. Furthermore, it was the "Christmas Season" until very recently, and Christianity is the religion of the vast majority of Americans now and historically.

If you need more evidence, there literally wasn't a "Happy Holidays" until after WW2: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=%22happy+holidays%22&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=3

It really didn't even start being a major thing until the New Left and proto-SJWs started showing up in academia and pushing for inclusiveness and PC shit in the 1980's.

an objectively non-important holiday in Judaism

You keep stating this but it's simply not true. It's important to many American Jews.

Yet now it is "The Holidays".

Don't Christians celebrate New Year's right around Christmas as well? I always assumed "the Holidays" started as a Christian thing and not an inclusive thing.

A little bit, but also St Nicholas Day, Epiphany/Theophany, and Three Kings Day.

New Year's is an important holiday in the Catholic Church but not Christianity more broadly, and it's not really that important of a secular holiday- just a day off work.

Where I live it is always happy holidays since mid December if you don't expect to see the person till the next year. But on 24-25 it is Merry Christmas and on 31-1st it is happy new year. And if you are fossil enough to send a postcard it is We wish you merry christmas and happy new year.

To culturally appropriate sjw slang - the one is the lingo of inclusion, the other of erasure. Holidays shouldn't be thought of as replacement for christmas, but as a complementary catch all.

It doesn't start until after world war 2: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=%22happy+holidays%22&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=3

I did a little digging on NGram, and found some interesting things. First, look at this graph. I for one, have never heard someone wish me a "Prosperous New Year", and yet looking through this has a sudden uptick in popularity during the early 1900's and then seems to drop off entirely.

While "Happy Holidays" certainly becomes popular after WWII, there are pre-WWII instances like this one from 1937 which has a "Happy Holidays and Prosperous New Year." A quite early one is this one from 1921, although this one seems to support a Jewish origin for the term - since Liberman is a common Ashkenazi surname.

However, I have also found entries like this one from a 1904 Christian periodical.

I'm inclined towards a hypothesis that "happy holidays" has been an existent but uncommon greeting since at least 1904, it likely caught on in the Jewish community pre-WWII, and then was popularly adopted from the Jewish community's usage after WWII, based on this investigation. So while a Christian origin for the phrase isn't unlikely, a Jewish origin for its popularization is fairly likely.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats