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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   26200 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 1, 2024

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Not gonna lie, you had me until you concluded with "But there are also crazy people in conservative communities."

To clarify, that was addressed towards the linked Tyler Cowan discussion saying that he didn't know of a better argument for social conservatism than that book.

I think you're, first, minimizing the self-determination that conservative / traditional folks still do (I would say, must) exercise.

Please clarify on what you mean. I have noticed a disproportionate number rightist mottizens seem to be from left wing areas, especially progressive urban areas of the California, the Pacific Northwest or New England, and having broken with a default worldview of left liberalism see rightism as an independent minded rebellious choice of sorts, with very few being from hard conservative areas where right wing views, religious zeal, strict men's dominance over women, etc are the default majority worldviews and having those is a matter of inheritance and conformity with ones surroundings, with left views being the break. If you mean self-determination in the break with the surroundings sense, that could explain it.

Second, and much more importantly, people "going their own way" is often not benign. An eccentric hermit who spends his days writing in the nude on his own property is a far cry from the paranoid-schizophrenic so detached from reality that he puts a bystander into a position that could cost the latter his freedom.

The examples given mention traditional social structures, expectations, etc. Think more secularism rather than going to church, or having equal division of labor in a relationship versus traditional gender dynamics more than the mentally ill yelling about little green men on the sidewalk.

To me, this is a kind of unrealistic libertarianism. "You just do you. I'll do me. The rest is fine" falls apart pretty damn fast if we believe that extra-judicial violence is bad, public goods exist, and contract law is ... a thing. But, hey, I'm probably just afraid of that level of freedom.

I'd characterize it more as a previous set of man-made structures having grown rickety and eventually collapsed as the winds and rains rolled through, incapable of withstanding the challenges of the changing climate, with some people pining for the old building styles that can't handle the new weather now while there's also an explosion of people fiddling with different building styles and materials to see what man-made structures work for them and hold up, which crumple, and so on. And at the same time, you have areas where the old man-made structures haven't been challenged by weather changes yet and still are standing. The fracture of the old structures in some areas giving the opening for better ones to be developed.

To clarify, that was addressed towards the linked Tyler Cowan discussion saying that he didn't know of a better argument for social conservatism than that book.

Gotcha. Thanks for clarifying. Cowan is weird too in that he seems to be broadly ambivalent about social politics most of the time and then will come out with things like this from left field. I mean, Blake Butler is very very into experimental prose territory. I was surprise Cowan had Butler's new book on his radar whatsoever (come to think of it .... was probably just the New Yorker review. Cowan is an O.G. haute-couture literary type)

Please clarify on what you mean. I have noticed a disproportionate number rightist mottizens seem to be from left wing areas, especially progressive urban areas of the California, the Pacific Northwest or New England, and having broken with a default worldview of left liberalism see rightism as an independent minded rebellious choice of sorts, with very few being from hard conservative areas where right wing views, religious zeal, strict men's dominance over women, etc are the default majority worldviews and having those is a matter of inheritance and conformity with ones surroundings, with left views being the break.

Currently live in a "hard conservative" area in the Old Confederacy. I was responding to your initial assertion regarding conservatives / traditionalists living a life that had already been mapped out for them (or something to that effect - I'd direct quote, but I'm in a weird spot with the editor and afraid of losing my comment here). The problem is that trying to live that "mapped out" life is very difficult to impossible even in "hard conservative" areas. What's far more common is public displays of fealty to those old ideals, paired with a sort of domestic realpolitik wherein family structures are far more modern (and post modern) than folks want to admit. Here's a neato example. If you really want to live in an actual conservative/traditional directed life, you have to make that choice everyday.

If you mean self-determination in the break with the surroundings sense, that could explain it.

Broadly, this.

The examples given mention traditional social structures, expectations, etc. Think more secularism rather than going to church, or having equal division of labor in a relationship versus traditional gender dynamics more than the mentally ill yelling about little green men on the sidewalk.

The former leads to the latter. They're inextricably linked. Lorenzo Warby's masterwork "Worshipping the Future" demonstrates this (and is engrossing it is readablility)

I'd characterize it more as a previous set of man-made structures having grown rickety and eventually collapsed as the winds and rains rolled through, incapable of withstanding the challenges of the changing climate, with some people pining for the old building styles that can't handle the new weather now while there's also an explosion of people fiddling with different building styles and materials to see what man-made structures work for them and hold up, which crumple, and so on. And at the same time, you have areas where the old man-made structures haven't been challenged by weather changes yet and still are standing. The fracture of the old structures in some areas giving the opening for better ones to be developed.

Awesome extended metaphor, but I got lost. I don't understand what you are saying.

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