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 -
One possible answer is the Bryan Caplan answer: the left hates markets, and the right hates the left. See Bryan for further exposition.
Another possible answer is the William Riker answer, what he calls "herestetics". The idea is that because the population will always have a distribution of preferences over possibilities, any voting mechanism will be subject to strategizing, changing the order/method by which things are considered, raising novel concerns that you think can split what would otherwise be unified opposition to your own preferences, etc. This is now done on an industrial scale, and the importance of national politics (given a strong federal government) raises the stakes significantly. Sprinkle in a little FPTP and negativity bias, and maybe that's just the fundamental reason for the culture war.
One thing I would note that would seem to support Riker's ideas, in my mind, is that when I watched Ken Burns' documentary on prohibition, I was amazed by just how poorly the political divide at that time mapped on to the divide today. Maybe someone could have gone through issue by issue and explained how I was misunderstanding, and that the same fundamental explanatory principle harmonizes them, but it really makes me think that it's all herestetics and path dependence; one group of folks try to bring up and really focus on Issue X, because they think it'll get them over whatever hump, then another group of folks tries to crack that coalition by coming up with Issue Y, and eventually lines start to get drawn.
One thing I would suggest/request for how to do a better job of getting to the real answer would be to survey across time and across the world. Is there anywhere where there ISN'T a culture war? Can we get a measure of, "In this area, the level of culture war is like a 0.3, but in this other area, it's like a 0.8"? Then, is there anywhere that is persistently low?
More options
Context Copy link