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 -
You can look at it in terms of DALYs, or just 'even weighting every life equally, sixty more years is 60x as valuable as one more year'. I prefer to look at it in terms of what one does with that time - productive work done, depth and complexity of experience, et cetera, and young peoples' time is certainly even more valuable by that metric. At the same time, I think lockdowns were more 'dumb and avoidable' rather than 'awful terrible catastrophe'. It was dumb, wasted a bunch of effort, but it was fine, and like 75% of the population thought it was a good idea and actively went along with it at the time. And modern society wastes plenty more effort and time than at the best of times, so whatever. Half of everything is broken and evil, to react with terror and rage to a particular instance while not noticing the rest is simply mistaken, and if you notice it all the "OMG THEY ARE FASCISTS WTF" no longer seems particularly useful. We're all fascists by that standard.
I think it was dreadful. I have small kids. The toll it took on them was immense. We were in the process of moving to Florida when basically the US said “this is BS.”
We are still seeing (and will see) years of damage.
This was true of us as well - having small children, needing to figure out how to work while they were stuck home with basically no support, then watching them flounder in virtual school, and (though better) under masked conditions for a further year was very difficult to watch and live, and the toll it took on their intellectual, social, and emotional development was obvious and extremely painful to watch.
In my case, what made me most angry was that it seemed like nearly a textbook case of a society eating its seed corn. It seemed that there was (in general societal terms and from the ruling political class) a very cavalier attitude of "oh kids are resilient they'll be fine" to save, yes, some number of mostly much-older people, with no acknowledgement that there was even really a trade-off being made. Not that I want (or wanted) anyone to die, but there seemed to be no real discussion of what we were "buying" and what its actual cost was.
It seemed even worse to me. it seemed to pose an inordinate cost on kids (using “their resilient” excuse) to create an at best marginal benefit for the old. It’s like burning your seed corn because it was dark and the flashlight was in an inconvenient location.
One of the interesting things about the Covid responses were how unequally distributed costs and benefits were even within groups of the same rough income and age.
I thought that the lockdowns were wrong, but they mostly benefitted my family, because we got to spend a lot of time with my 9 month old daughter, which was great. (Lower middle class, job that can only be done properly in person, but we made lame attempts to do it remotely that were mostly fake)
Previously, I had to go into work every day, and she was super upset about it, and she screamed about it literally all day. Then, suddenly, I could be kind of a stay at home mom for most of a year, and it was su much better! We walked through the forest, with her in a little pack! We played in streams! We reconnected with old friends with kids of roughly the same age! We tried to go to wildlife refuges, but were turned away because Covid might harm the birds? Anyway... By the time I had to go back in person, she was mature enough (and weaned!) to take it more in stride.
That was the flip side for my family. I did get to spend more time with my kids but my kids were also isolated etc
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I think the acceptability of lockdowns entirely depends on where you were in the social ladder. The reason it was initially accepted was the for the PMC and elites, it was basically “work from home in your pajamas, order in, and be told it was all for the greater good.” For them, it was vacation more or less, and they used the time they would have spent commuting baking bread and making terrible videos of themselves dancing. For ordinary people it was absolutely a catastrophe. If your small business wasn’t essential, well, basically you were literally fucked. Sorry about that, but gotta protect people from the Coof. Likewise for people who worked for those businesses, again basically the government forced them out of work, made getting unemployment nearly impossible, and gave them $2000. If they did still have a job because they were fortunate enough to work for a place that the government deemed essential, the rules and regulations made the work more difficult and uncomfortable. Factories and meat processors work at pretty good speed in normal circumstances and you have to move quickly to keep up. Remove a third of the workforce, it’s much harder. Some of those jobs lack climate control, making the required masking miserable.
In part a good point. But I'm friends with plenty of 'ordinary' non-elite people (lol!), and the general vibe I got wasn't catastrophe. I think it was well within the norm of 'bad things that happen sometimes', and as an example I think the great recession was worse.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link