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 -
People in cities become collectivists, because people are piled so close together that just about anything you do becomes the business of your neighbors. If you want to go anywhere you're stuck with your 3mph feet on crowded sidewalks or getting piled together on crowded, dirty, and slow government-run (not just government-built) transportation.
The city of reality is not as walkable as advertised (you can walk in your neighborhood but the city is likely too big to walk to downtown or any other neighborhood), and has little sense of community (partially because people move around all the time, partially because it's so big and crowded -- the paradox of being alone in a crowd is a common one) or sense of belonging. Conservatives pine for those things but the places they existed mostly don't exist any more because they require a small number of people in one place for a long time who mostly interact with each other, and that's just not the modern world. Ironically one of the few places you actually can find this is in neighborhoods full of generational welfare recipients; they may be dysfunctional communities but they are communities.
Exactly. Cities make people “oversocialized” (ol’ Ted K was right) and constantly needing to consider other people’s feelings when you pursue your life’s ambitions (or truth for that matter) dulls everything. I had a post back in the old country about spending a few months living rurally and one observation I missed was how much more ideosyncratic, but not neurotic, country folk are. If you want to build a new structure on your land you just need to figure out who will help you with it and whether stuff will fit in your truck. In the city meanwhile you need to grovel to a planning board for years like a peasant. Freedom is good. I wanted to build!
The other thing is that walkable urbanism is only possible for families — I.E. the only important demographic over the long run — if crime and disorder is very low. I’d love to live in a walkable suburb if we tripled the prison population and had absolutely zero tolerance for disorder. But hey, that’s not in the liberal vision.
This is why there's a weird current of pop culture that looks at the Cyberpunk Sci-fi city as utopia. the city where the very vastness has resulted in it becoming a new frontier, the concrete jungle... etc.
The idea you could have all the idiosyncrasy of the country with all the opportunity of the world at your finger tips... because enforcement had broken and no one could be made to care about stepping on their neighbors toes.
.
Its the only "dystopia" that people are actively excited to revisit again and again, or whose style they try to emulate... no one's clamoring for more stories in Oceania... there's no hype train for being able to play in the world of Atlas Shrugged
More options
Context Copy link
I don’t know about this.
I see far more families out on the street hanging out and just generally enjoying life in Latin America (where crime is much higher) than I do in the United States. It’s always the top thing I notice traveling between these two.
Latin American streets are full of life. Full of families, tons of children running around, events, gatherings, all manner of activity. US streets are quiet, dead, there’s nobody around, and even just walking around is shunned.
I also noticed that this affects my mental well-being a lot, and it’s the main reason my political persuasion is basically an urbanist in the way Noah describes.
There's things that could confound this: LatAm places have held onto traditional cultural aspects better than NorthAm places; better shared culture between people in the city; nobody ever felt the need to flee the cities (and if they did, they probably just straight-up fled the country instead); and part of the crime rate vs. niceness thing could be you can just shoot someone who makes your life/experience miserable and mostly get away with it.
I don’t think these are great counterpoints as, LatAm is one of the most ethnically diverse places of the world, and it’s definitely true that people structure the cities there based on fleeing from crime.
But there may be something in what you mention about the idea of fleeing cities, in the US, city cores became the crime ridden parts, whereas in LatAm, the outskirts are typically more dangerous and the city center is more clean and well kept.
That’s probably part of it. But in my opinion, car culture is the biggest factor here. Here in the US we went all in on designing everything around the car, and it upended basic communal life in my opinion.
Probably helps that the Mexican government never wages war on the productive classes within the city and never forced the children of the middle-class into the most violent neighborhoods at bayonet point.
America had functional urban life from its founding to the 1960s... then the federal government waged literal war on it
.
edit: this is why Canadian cities consitently remain intact in-spite of everything, even with modern homelessness and drug problems the middle and upper-middle class will still live in "inner suburbs" as few as 100 meters from housing projects or homeless shelters... because they can send their kids to schools, PUBLIC SCHOOLS, where their kids won't be interacting with that and anyone dealing drugs or interrupting class or comitting violence would be removed.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The liberal vision is generally not very good at accommodating itself to the needs of families, so it’s no surprise there.
More options
Context Copy link
I agree. Cities seem to foster these weird little hyper-networked monocultures where everyone thinks similarly, acts similarly and just generally behave as if they stepped straight off a conveyor belt, because everyone is absolutely obsessed with what everyone else thinks of them (though it's likely not out of any sense of community, they adopt these beliefs and behaviours because there are incentives to do so). There's also a tendency to self-elevate and to thumb their nose at the poor, uneducated country-dwellers who aren't as liberal and cosmopolitan as they are, though I won't get into that.
Country folk, on the other hand, generally seem much less... Borg-like, in the way they act. It was refreshing, the few times I've been out there. I'm sure there are things that are lacking in rural areas, such as economic development and job opportunities, but there's a vibrancy and genuineness to the people there which you simply do not find in the city. I suppose it's a consequence of not being involved in perpetual status games.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link