What would you consider a major "culture war" battleground?

[theprestige]

Porn would come under censorship which is a culturally divisive issue.

Not everything that is culturally divisive will become a major cultural battleground.

Elsewhere you've made your case for why we should fight the good fight against porn. Here is where you make your case that our society will take up that fight in a major way, in the next few years.

 

[bruto]

At the risk of looking like I'm trying to be overly clever, I'm going to say the biggest "culture war" battle is the notion that there even is a "culture war". Every individual has a set of opinions on things, and most individuals can group themselves into sets with others who agree with them on at least some of those opinions. But most of the time these groups can do nothing but talk (or complain). Until and unless anybody can actually take action and cause change (or prevent change, of course) it doesn't make a difference (except possibly with people's blood pressure as they lose their tempers).

Just because you feel a certain way about a certain thing doesn't make it true, or important. Or even interesting.

But if a certain percentage of the people involved declare it a culture war, as appears to have happened, it becomes one, and I think becoming one, it becomes more generalized, and those fighting with culture war as their principle tend to lose track. Issues like hair length and clothing choice and family roles get bundled together along with big moral principles and trends.

Not everything that is culturally divisive will become a major cultural battleground.

Elsewhere you've made your case for why we should fight the good fight against porn. Here is where you make your case that our society will take up that fight in a major way, in the next few years.

My point above, I think. One can have numerous opinions on numerous issues, but this thread is (or was) about what those who choose to frame their issues as culture wars will name as their objects. I don't think porn and prostitution, as general principles, will be among them, though they may come along for the ride.

 

[Donal]

At the risk of looking like I'm trying to be overly clever, I'm going to say the biggest "culture war" battle is the notion that there even is a "culture war". Every individual has a set of opinions on things, and most individuals can group themselves into sets with others who agree with them on at least some of those opinions. But most of the time these groups can do nothing but talk (or complain). Until and unless anybody can actually take action and cause change (or prevent change, of course) it doesn't make a difference (except possibly with people's blood pressure as they lose their tempers).

Just because you feel a certain way about a certain thing doesn't make it true, or important. Or even interesting.

"Culture War" seems to be one of those terms that seems neutral, but is usually used as a way for the speaker to vilify the people they disagree with. It basically means whatever you want it to.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

What is the difference between a Culture War and the Marketplace of Ideas?

 

[TragicMonkey]

"Culture War" seems to be one of those terms that seems neutral, but is usually used as a way for the speaker to vilify the people they disagree with. It basically means whatever you want it to.

I think it's also mostly used as a distraction from more important things. Get the peasants shrieking and waving placards about Janet Jackson's nipple or swear words in Huck Finn and they won't notice you've snuck in a massive tax deduction for owners of champion racehorses and having more than six superyachts. Leave our allies to die on the ground of one of our proxy wars...maybe one line in a news article nobody reads. A man in a skirt seen in a grocery store? MOBILIZE THE PEOPLE!!!!! RRARRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!

 

[TragicMonkey]

What is the difference between a Culture War and the Marketplace of Ideas?

Marketplace: people can pick what idea they want. Culture war: stopping other people from picking the ideas they want.

 

[Hlafordlaes]

The major battleground? The epistemological framework upon which reasonable discourse relies. That empirical science connects knowledge to nature, that reason connects knowledge to human society, and that faith governs the connection to anything not amenable to discovery by any means except revelation (ahem, but at least thus, faith is in its place), and that mixing them is what riles for no good reason. Say, ancient human artifacts (a physical reality) being used to justify mystical belief (a mental association alone).

Or, to complete the connects, how mathematics is like empiricism, though it also connects perfectly to that which can only exist as pure mental artifact with no physical correspondent, a parallel, but no relation to faith's realms of conjecture. Or, how art is the one that translates mind-based realities into physical artifacts, making the imagined real, or the real more imagined, as in good photography.

All these connects and how they work are the main battleground upon which blood is spilled, all while combatants miss the point.

 

[d4m10n]

The Heritage Foundation.

As a skeptic, I'm just going to take your word for this.

 

[Hlafordlaes]

Case in point: Kari Lake attempting to use reason (flawed) in place of empirical evidence. This is the hallmark of both faithists and the corrupt: a self-consistent fantasy is better than tethered fact.

Result: mangled, counterfactual worldview. Whether intentional or not at first, it sets in and takes hold from rote repetition. And then, "culture" war. Not about culture, really, but about character, or the (trained) lack thereof.

 

[Cat Not Included]

No, I'm really implying that the progressives decide which cultural aspects or artifacts or institutions need to be changed or eliminated and the conservatives decide which of those they care to defend.

I've been pondering this and am struggling to come up with any 'culture wars' that are 'started' by progressives.

Like, take some of the current 'culture wars':

On the light end, there's the whole 'woke media' thing. Right wingers are raging and shouting the terribleness of how movies/TV/video games (um, do they shout about books?) are so 'woke'. As far as I can tell, that's just some weird right wing rang explosion. Nobody even seems to know exactly what they're complaining about. One moment they're raging about how a movie is 'woke' based on some tiny trailer bit, then the movie comes out and lo and behold, OK, the main themes do focus on system societal problems and could reasonably be called 'woke', but now they're saying "Oh wow, its actually totally ANTI-WOKE and all those early woke hints were just to troll the libs". I have no idea how 'progressives' are supposed to have sparked this incoherent "culture war".

OK, so we've got trans people existing. As they have for...well, basically forever. But maybe getting a bit more prevalent in the news and media. And suddenly the right wing decides this is an existential crisis and we need laws about bathrooms and laws about sports and laws preventing people from getting medical and psychological care and all that other ********. That appears mostly to be "hmm, we're not getting as much support on gay bashing anymore so we need an easier, smaller target" from the right. How did progressives start this "culture war"?

We've got the right wing deciding that we need to make a bunch of laws preventing teachers from talking about topics in class, and pulling books from libraries, and making laws so we they can frickin' arrest librarians for having a book that some random person doesn't like. How the hell did progressives start that? Just having books someone doesn't like exist counts as 'starting a culture war'?

And the conservatives are going 'hey, we can't get votes so let's ditch this whole stupid democracy thing and put an authoritarian tyrant in power'. They're trying to put their president above the law, remove the abilities for voters to actually make decisions, do away with the existing constitution and government...but what, the progressives count as 'starting' that war by...generally getting more popular votes?

 

[theprestige]

I've been pondering this and am struggling to come up with any 'culture wars' that are 'started' by progressives.

Trans rights in public policy.

Abortions of convenience.

 

[jt512]

I've been pondering this and am struggling to come up with any 'culture wars' that are 'started' by progressives.

Like, take some of the current 'culture wars':

On the light end, there's the whole 'woke media' thing. Right wingers are raging and shouting the terribleness of how movies/TV/video games (um, do they shout about books?) are so 'woke'. As far as I can tell, that's just some weird right wing rang explosion. Nobody even seems to know exactly what they're complaining about. One moment they're raging about how a movie is 'woke' based on some tiny trailer bit, then the movie comes out and lo and behold, OK, the main themes do focus on system societal problems and could reasonably be called 'woke', but now they're saying "Oh wow, its actually totally ANTI-WOKE and all those early woke hints were just to troll the libs". I have no idea how 'progressives' are supposed to have sparked this incoherent "culture war".

OK, so we've got trans people existing. As they have for...well, basically forever. But maybe getting a bit more prevalent in the news and media. And suddenly the right wing decides this is an existential crisis and we need laws about bathrooms and laws about sports and laws preventing people from getting medical and psychological care and all that other ********. That appears mostly to be "hmm, we're not getting as much support on gay bashing anymore so we need an easier, smaller target" from the right. How did progressives start this "culture war"?

We've got the right wing deciding that we need to make a bunch of laws preventing teachers from talking about topics in class, and pulling books from libraries, and making laws so we they can frickin' arrest librarians for having a book that some random person doesn't like. How the hell did progressives start that? Just having books someone doesn't like exist counts as 'starting a culture war'?

In the unlikely event that were to remove your ideological blinkers, you would see in an instant that every one of those issues could be framed as having been instigated by the so-called progressives.

 

[bruto]

Of course it's trivially true and, I would contend essentially meaningless, to point out that resistance to change is a reaction to change. Where I think the mistake creeps in is in the presumption of some centrists that the resistance to change must reasonably be met by allowing the resistance to vitiate it. besides, not all change is the creation of progressives. It may be that scientific truths are largely discovered by so-called progressives, and resisted by so-called conservatives, and such things as global warming and its ramifications become a culture war battleground, and so you might say that the battle over such things is "instigated" by progressives, but the issue is not their creation, and while one might take the centrist position that a half truth is better than no truth at all, or half right better than all wrong, it's a position not everyone would consider the best.

 

[d4m10n]

"Culture War" seems to be one of those terms that seems neutral, but is usually used as a way for the speaker to vilify the people they disagree with. It basically means whatever you want it to.

Or, we could just go with the relevant wiki on what constitutes a culture war^WP.

 

[Cat Not Included]

Trans rights in public policy.

Abortions of convenience.

Trans rights didn't become an issue until people started trying to make laws against trans people.

Abortions didn't become an issue until people started making laws against them. (I'll ignore the 'of convenience' as that's a purely nonsensical thing).

 

[Cat Not Included]

In the unlikely event that were to remove your ideological blinkers, you would see in an instant that every one of those issues could be framed as having been instigated by the so-called progressives.

Well, guess I'm just too darn idealogically blinkered, but I'm sure a big smart right winger like you can pick one and explain it clearly and irrefutably no problem, so please enlighten me!

 

[d4m10n]

Trans rights didn't become an issue until people started trying to make laws against trans people.

This is demonstrably false. Title IX and any other laws concerning sex equality have to be interpreted either to include trans women as women or not, and such laws predate the anti-trans laws by decades.

Abortions didn't become an issue until people started making laws against them.

In 1821.

 

[Donal]

In the unlikely event that were to remove your ideological blinkers, you would see in an instant that every one of those issues could be framed as having been instigated by the so-called progressives.

Oooo boy. What kind of wife beater logic are you going to employ here?

 

[Donal]

Or, we could just go with the relevant wiki on what constitutes a culture war^WP.

Sure, but its not what 90% of the people throwing the term around mean.

 

[Poem]

Ok, but who is hoping to censor it now? Is the Federalist Society scheming to overturn Reno v. ACLU^WP and related cases?

Since the Miller test essentially merely gauges that if most people are consuming it then it's not obscene, then very little will be done. Reno v. ACLU was determined according to the Communications Decency Act which adopted similar language to the Miller test.

Any conclusion other than that society cares more about easy porn access than children isn't tenable.

I still think that Reem Alsalem's report is a significant step forward.