About the Culture War

The "cul­ture war." I'm sure you've heard the term before. What is it? Who's fight­ing it? Am I in it? Are you? What does it mean? What should we do about it? Let's dis­cuss.

Social Media: The Culture Front

I'm sure you've seen an exchange like this one before.

If you're read­ing this, I prob­a­bly don't have to explain to you why this sucks. (If you don't think it does, you should kill your­self. Now. This isn't social media, this is my per­son­al blog, so I'm free to say that with­out cen­sure. If you've ever want­ed to say that to some­one, you should try mak­ing your own blog. It's very free­ing nowa­days.)

On the oth­er hand, you've prob­a­bly seen some vari­a­tion of this around in the last few days if you've been on social media:

What about this? Does this suck? I mean, it's the same thing as the above, right? We already estab­lished what you should do if you didn't think that sucked. Isn't this just as bad?

Well, no. It's not just as bad. I could go into detail here on con­cepts like "punch­ing up" and the "death of nuance"¹ to explain why, but those aren't what this post is about. Who died, how they died, what their rela­tion was to you; none of those things real­ly mat­ter. What mat­ters is what side of the cul­ture war they were on, and what side you're on.

Soldiers in the Battle Line

I'm not going to be one of those peo­ple who lofti­ly pre­tends to be above the sub­ject I'm writ­ing about. The answer to the ques­tion at the start of the arti­cle is: yes, I am in it. It should be fair­ly obvi­ous what side I'm on. Prob­a­bly the same side as you unless this blog became real viral all of a sud­den. (But it still depends on which bat­tle­ground we're fight­ing on, I guess.) Yes, you're in it, too!

And yet, there are still so many peo­ple who will look at the pic­tures above and see hypocrisy. Some­times those posts are from the same per­son! They'll quote the nasty post next to the hand-wring­ing post and go, "See? You only believe this when it's con­ve­nient for you! You're a hyp­ocrite!"

No, there is no hypocrisy. There's only teams. If you're play­ing shirts and you tack­le some­one wear­ing skin, you're not being a hyp­ocrite because you didn't tack­le the guy with a shirt. He's on your side, and you implic­it­ly under­stand that. When peo­ple talk about "pub­lic dis­course" and the "mar­ket­place of ideas," this is part of it. These are ideas. The idea is: it's good that you're dead.

Despite this, there seem to be so many peo­ple wan­der­ing the metaphor­i­cal bat­tle­fields, mar­veling in hor­ror at the fight­ing as though they can't under­stand why it's hap­pen­ing. They don't under­stand how the cul­ture war is fought. They don't even seem to real­ize that there is a war on. They just see peo­ple hurt­ing each oth­er for rea­sons they don't under­stand.

Part of this is the pre­tense of decen­cy. And it is a pre­tense. The same peo­ple tut-tut­ting about cel­e­brat­ing deaths often style them­selves as stal­wart defend­ers of free speech, don't they? After all, that's how dis­putes should be set­tled in a decent soci­ety, right? They're often the same who will have you kicked out of your job or school for being inde­cent on the Inter­net: you can't say that!

Hey! Isn't that hyp­o­crit­i­cal?

No! It's just teams. Learn to rec­og­nize this, and every­thing will become so much clear­er for you. The cul­ture is atom­ized; train your­self to look for it, and you will stop see­ing social media with con­fu­sion and indig­na­tion, and instead start to see the fac­tions. They're every­where, fight­ing all the time. They don't all use the same weapons, but they are all com­pet­ing for trib­al dom­i­nance; that's just human nature.

I'm far from the first one to rec­og­nize that pol­i­tics is often treat­ed like a "team sport," but I don't think peo­ple ful­ly think through the anal­o­gy as I'm doing here. Every­thing is a team sport. You'll play much bet­ter if you real­ize you're play­ing.

Ready! Aim! Fire!

What am I get­ting at here? OK, so nobody actu­al­ly has any prin­ci­ples. Is that it? They're all just fak­ing out­rage when they're attacked, and lash­ing out when they see vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty in their ene­mies.

Well, no. This isn't a nihilist essay. Peo­ple aren't fight­ing the cul­ture war for fun; they're doing it because of their prin­ci­ples. Like I wrote above, it's implic­it, auto­mat­ic, instinc­tu­al. To most peo­ple, these thoughts are not con­nect­ed; there is no men­tal through­line between them attack­ing some­one else and feel­ing smug, and being attacked and feel­ing out­raged. I'm just try­ing to make peo­ple think about it.

Not because I think it's wrong. I'm a cul­ture war­rior too, remem­ber. I want peo­ple to real­ize they're doing this so that they can stop pulling their punch­es. I want them to stop wan­der­ing lost amid the car­nage, and pick a side.² Fig­ure out what's impor­tant to you, and fight for it with­out remorse. Make no excus­es for the ter­ror.

Part of what's wrong with Amer­i­can soci­ety at present is that it's been lib­er­al­ized to the point that no one is will­ing to fight for any­thing any­more. Every dis­agree­ment must be laun­dered through civ­il debate and bour­geois democ­ra­cy, so that it can be safe­ly ignored.

Here's a graph. I've marked it with a red line.

The red line, as you may have sur­mised, is when gay mar­riage became legal (for now). A few years after it polled as being approved of by the major­i­ty of the coun­try, it became legal. That seems very decent, lib­er­al, and respectable, doesn't it?

Now let's look at a dif­fer­ent graph, with the same red line.

In this case, the red line is when inter­ra­cial mar­riage became legal; this hap­pened when very, very few peo­ple in Amer­i­ca approved of it by today's stan­dards. Today it is more wide­ly accept­ed than gay mar­riage.

Some­times what's right isn't what's pop­u­lar. Yes, this is a very brave state­ment, I'm aware. But the rea­son why inter­ra­cial mar­riage became legal in 1967 when only a fifth of the coun­try approved of it (up from 4% a few years ear­li­er), and gay mar­riage became legal only long after a major­i­ty of the pop­u­la­tion approved, is that in 1967 bour­geois democ­ra­cy did not have the stran­gle­hold over the cul­ture that it cur­rent­ly has. It was devel­op­ing that cul­ture, but there was still a sense that the gov­ern­ment would be made to serve the peo­ple, rather than the peo­ple being made to serve the gov­ern­ment.

Look around you and behold the avenues of your abil­i­ty to resist pow­er being stripped away. Your vote means noth­ing (both par­ties are ter­ri­ble). Your approval affects no action (weed still ain't legal). Your out­rage budges no pol­i­cy (we are still sup­ply­ing with bombs the geno­ci­dal regime killing dozens of chil­dren dai­ly). Just wear­ing a shirt is sub­ver­sive action pun­ish­able by arrest. This is the end state of lib­er­al democ­ra­cy. (It might also remind you of what peo­ple say hap­pens in Com­mu­nist Chi­na. Is this hypocrisy?³) The peo­ple with pow­er decide what hap­pens, and you do as you're told.

It didn't used to be this way. It wasn't bet­ter, in many impor­tant ways, but peo­ple used to be more con­nect­ed to their strug­gles. In short (ha ha), the cul­ture war is noth­ing more than that bub­bling back up in the uncon­scious mind of the aver­age neti­zen. Dis­en­fran­chised peo­ple fight back with what­ev­er tools they are giv­en, and that's good.

Breaking Ranks

Many peo­ple don't want to fight, though. They're upset because they don't want to live in a soci­ety where peo­ple are con­stant­ly telling each oth­er to die, even if they're say­ing it to sit­ting con­gress­men. I sym­pa­thize with these peo­ple. When the bul­lets are whizzing over­head in the cul­ture war, what can you do if you're a con­sci­en­tious objec­tor?

It's pos­si­ble to live through the cul­ture war and not fight it, as long as you real­ize it's being fought. Chances are, though, you're still going to be on a side. Soci­ety is inher­ent­ly polit­i­cal; pol­i­tics is the study of soci­ety. Per­haps it was best said like this: "The philoso­phers have only inter­pret­ed the world in var­i­ous ways; the point, how­ev­er, is to change it."

Can you stop the cul­ture war, all by your­self? Absolute­ly not. It isn't ever with­in the pow­er of a sol­dier to stop the war. All the sol­diers col­lec­tive­ly, togeth­er, maybe; but at that point, you're not a sol­dier. You're the leader. As a sol­dier, you fight the bat­tles you're giv­en. Come to terms with this, and you can choose not to fight them.

If you don't want to fight, you will still sym­pa­thize with a team. That's OK; allow your­self to do that. Don't begrudge your fel­low sol­diers. You can still con­tribute to your cause through peace­ful means, as long as you real­ize you have a cause. Try to con­vert peo­ple to your side; that's one few­er per­son to fight. Do this by ask­ing ques­tions.⁴ Peo­ple will almost nev­er lis­ten to what you've told them, espe­cial­ly when they're busy fight­ing the cul­ture war, but they will let you help them come up with it by them­selves.

As with fight­ing, pick your bat­tles. Most peo­ple aren't worth your time, you will only waste it try­ing to con­vert them. But as I allud­ed to ear­li­er, there are many bat­tle­grounds in the cul­ture war. Maybe in this one, you and this per­son are ene­mies, but in anoth­er, you'd fight side by side. Approach them as you would a com­rade. Try to de-esca­late; be the first to show humil­i­ty, and you'd be sur­prised how often peo­ple will return it.

Engage them with vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. Gen­uine­ly try to under­stand their per­spec­tive. Con­sid­er that you might be wrong. Maybe you might even real­ize, you were sym­pa­thiz­ing with the wrong side all along.

This is what actu­al dis­course is based on, by the way. If some­one talks about debate, and they are not bring­ing this to the table, they are not inter­est­ed in the free exchange of ideas. That's fine. Most peo­ple aren't, even if we live in a cul­ture that inces­sant­ly pre­tends it is. Who has the time? But don't be tricked.

Forewarned is Forearmed

Regard­less, if you've got­ten this far, wel­come to the side of the peo­ple who real­ize there are sides. Don't mind if any­one tries to con­vince you there aren't; they are just fight­ing for their side that doesn't want you to think about the sides. You might also run into the side that admits that there are sides, but argues that we should live in a soci­ety with­out sides; they, too, are fight­ing for their side.

Lis­ten to them close­ly. Ana­lyze what they say. Is it hypocrisy that they fight for the side of no sides? Mouth the now well-prac­ticed answer to your­self, and smile. Now that you rec­og­nize the super­fi­cial, you may begin the hard work of dis­sect­ing what lies beneath, what it is that they real­ly want, what they're real­ly fight­ing for: whose side are you on, any­way?

That's what this is real­ly all about. That's why this blog post was writ­ten. Look at the bat­tle­ground, and draw up the bat­tle lines in your head. Map it out. Under­stand that all's fair in love and war. Peo­ple are com­pli­cat­ed, but you can't begin to com­pre­hend them if you don't even know where you are.

You're on the front lines of the cul­ture war, baby. Pick a side.

1. This very phrase is the per­fect exam­ple of the cul­ture war. Go look it up and see the ways in which peo­ple will use it. Chances are you won't agree with a lot of their ideas about it! But it's still a real and valid con­cept. ↩︎
2. As long as it's some­thing worth pick­ing a side on. You don't need to have a cul­ture war over pineap­ple on piz­za and tell peo­ple to die about it. Pick your bat­tles; is this a hill worth dying on? ↩︎
3. No. It's teams. ↩︎
4. But not all the time, don't be obnox­ious, oth­er­wise they'll right­ly rec­og­nize you as a sealion. Good faith is manda­to­ry here. ↩︎