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> People do not change all that much morally This is debatable. In fact, the US culture war is absolutely about what American "morality" should be. It's what a

by davedx 2y ago

> People do not change all that much morally This is debatable. In fact, the US culture war is absolutely about what American "morality" should be. It's what a lot of the Project 2025 Manifesto is about: "The document spans a wide range of policy areas, but when it comes to culture, family, and morality, it emphasizes a return to traditional values, a rollback of progressive social policies, and an assertive use of federal power to reshape American culture" There's a reason it's called a Culture War and not a Culture Mild Disagreement.

TeMPOraL 2y ago
> There's a reason it's called a Culture War and not a Culture Mild Disagreement. Culture war at this point is more than a decade old. It did not start with Project 2025. It started on the Internet. Also, GP said people do not change all that much morally. That much is true. Organizations change fast. Societies change slower. The acted on rules are a combination of three, but it's important to be aware of the distinctions and the dynamics.
- cmrdporcupine 2y ago
  Frankly, the culture war started in earnest in the late 60s.
  - freeopinion 2y ago
    So you weren't around for the 20s? The last 20s?
    - cmrdporcupine 2y ago
      As old as I am, I wasn't here for the 60s either, though both would have been a total blast
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- camgunz 2y ago
  Eh I remember the culture wars from the 90s [0]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_war#:~:text=1991%E2%80%932001%3A%20Rise%20in%20prominence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_war#:~:text=1991%E2%80...
- davedx 2y ago
  I'm not sure that makes sense to me; how do society's moral rules change (slowly) but peoples' moral rules don't/change little? I mean I can think of some isolated examples like pirating video content, but generally a society's moral rules reflect its constituents; where else do those rules come from, if not its people?
  - TeMPOraL 2y ago
    Culture. Humans have pretty stable moral intuitions about the basics - fairness, reciprocity, value of life; AFAIK they're consistent throughout time and space as far as history goes[0], and form a common base from which more complex morality stems. In short: "theft is bad" is something people are born with[1]; "pirating media is bad" isn't; the former will be universal wherever you go, the latter depends strongly on who you ask[2]; the former is constant throughout history, the latter can change within months or years. On a more general point, human society is the poster child of "the whole is more than the sum of its parts" - there's a lot of ideas and institutions in our lives that are purely abstract, and exist only in the shared, social sphere. Things like money, rule of law, countries or corporations - they exist as long as people expect them to exist, but ultimately they can disappear overnight - unlike the more fundamental concepts like self-preservation or reciprocity, which are anchored in our selves. -- [0] - If it weren't, we would have much more trouble understanding or relating to the past; the saying is that the past is a foreign country, not that it's an alien species! [1] - Or at least it's as close to innate as we can get. [2] - And, of course, the progress of science and technologies that made this question meaningful in the first place.
    - alabastervlog 2y ago
      My experience is there's also a fundamentally inborn notion of "fair price" and "fair pay" that people are born with, that they have to be educated out of to operate successfully in the modern economy. It's one way in which our system is kinda anti-human—it assumes a kind of game-playing that's seen as wrong by people, naturally, and you have to play that game or you can't succeed. "What the market will bear" doesn't feel fair to people until they're made to see it as fair.
cmrdporcupine 2y ago
Honestly, the way I see it: The people behind the 2025 stuff etc have been on the "losing" side of the culture war since 1969. And they're sick of it, they're desperate, and now are just laying their cards on the table. I grew up in an evangelical church in the 80s-- albeit in Canada -- attending "Focus on the Family" events, Bible studies, etc. that promulgated heavy socially conservative ethos -- so I feel like I have seen this narrative play out over a few decades ... After the legalization of gay marriage they just collectively lost their shit. They see the stakes as being incredibly high. They see abortion as straight up murder. Winning the 2016 Trump presidency and taking over the US supreme court gave them a taste of blood, and a sense that they can finally reverse what they see as a profound descent into degeneracy. The trans rights stuff over the last few years has them totally incensed, as its a full-on assault (to them) on the ontological reality of family, body, identity, etc. that they consider intrinsic and holy and fundamental. I think they're full of shit, but that's I think how this world view shakes down. It's a war because they feel the stakes are incredibly high. People on the right or in boardrooms of various companies that are aligning themselves with these people for what they see are strategic ends are playing with fire.
- SAI_Peregrinus 2y ago
  The evangelicals believe that anyone who doesn't believe in their god will be tortured by their god for eternity. There's nothing worse than eternal torture, so they see it as their moral obligation to do anything at all to prevent others from being tortured for eternity by their god. Nothing they do to others can possibly be worse than that, so as long as they're focused on saving others any actions they take are justified (to them). Their god considers gay sex a crime worthy of eternal torture. So anything they do to prevent people from having homosexual encounters is morally acceptable, up to and including torture & occasional execution via "conversion therapy". Anyone who truly believes in hell is either morally bankrupt & willing to allow others to suffer for eternity, or a dangerous monster who will stop at nothing to prevent others from what they see as sinning. Many of them don't go to the extremes they would if they actually believed they were saving others from hell. They're full of shit. But some of them do, and they're fucking terrifying.
  - 2y ago
bloomingeek 2y ago
Your quoted sentence is an example of a group of people who have no idea of how to run a country. They are using the uneducated voter to support an agenda that is mostly unconstitutional. We Americans, just like other countries with a rule of law, determine our own culture within those laws. To use federal power to reshape our culture is both arrogant and, since Project 2025 is how they want to do the reshaping, is against the New Testament principle of "live and let live". (another way to state this principle is: "Christian, mind your own business and stay in your lane.")
- kelipso 2y ago
  This doesn't really make sense. The Democrats mainly, but also Republicans, have been reshaping our culture using federal funding for many many years now, using rules associated with federal funding, decisions for where federal funding goes to (one clear example being museum and arts funding), policies handed down from Department of Education and other federal organizations and departments, etc etc. I guess more people notice it now that Republicans are doing this so openly but the use of federal power to reshape our culture is a well established process. Also what does live and let live get them, especially with the other side pushing so hard? A slippery slope to an immoral society.
  - bloomingeek 2y ago
    You cannot legislate mortality. Yes, federal power/funding is the norm, but not within the confines of religious control, which is what the Project 2025 is all about. The so called slippery slope is a worn out trope from the 80's, that has lost all meaning under the current administration. This is why live and let live works, as long as we all obey the law. We have to realize the rule of law is for everyone to adhere to, it doesn't matter how hard either side pushes, the only other option is jail.
    - kelipso 2y ago
      I think the slippery slope argument from the perspective of the right has all but been proven beyond a doubt.

by davedx 2y ago

TeMPOraL 2y ago

> There's a reason it's called a Culture War and not a Culture Mild Disagreement. Culture war at this point is more than a decade old. It did not start with Project 2025. It started on the Internet. Also, GP said people do not change all that much morally. That much is true. Organizations change fast. Societies change slower. The acted on rules are a combination of three, but it's important to be aware of the distinctions and the dynamics.

cmrdporcupine 2y ago
Frankly, the culture war started in earnest in the late 60s.
- freeopinion 2y ago
  So you weren't around for the 20s? The last 20s?
  - cmrdporcupine 2y ago
    As old as I am, I wasn't here for the 60s either, though both would have been a total blast
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
camgunz 2y ago
Eh I remember the culture wars from the 90s [0]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_war#:~:text=1991%E2%80%932001%3A%20Rise%20in%20prominence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_war#:~:text=1991%E2%80...
davedx 2y ago
I'm not sure that makes sense to me; how do society's moral rules change (slowly) but peoples' moral rules don't/change little? I mean I can think of some isolated examples like pirating video content, but generally a society's moral rules reflect its constituents; where else do those rules come from, if not its people?
- TeMPOraL 2y ago
  Culture. Humans have pretty stable moral intuitions about the basics - fairness, reciprocity, value of life; AFAIK they're consistent throughout time and space as far as history goes[0], and form a common base from which more complex morality stems. In short: "theft is bad" is something people are born with[1]; "pirating media is bad" isn't; the former will be universal wherever you go, the latter depends strongly on who you ask[2]; the former is constant throughout history, the latter can change within months or years. On a more general point, human society is the poster child of "the whole is more than the sum of its parts" - there's a lot of ideas and institutions in our lives that are purely abstract, and exist only in the shared, social sphere. Things like money, rule of law, countries or corporations - they exist as long as people expect them to exist, but ultimately they can disappear overnight - unlike the more fundamental concepts like self-preservation or reciprocity, which are anchored in our selves. -- [0] - If it weren't, we would have much more trouble understanding or relating to the past; the saying is that the past is a foreign country, not that it's an alien species! [1] - Or at least it's as close to innate as we can get. [2] - And, of course, the progress of science and technologies that made this question meaningful in the first place.
  - alabastervlog 2y ago
    My experience is there's also a fundamentally inborn notion of "fair price" and "fair pay" that people are born with, that they have to be educated out of to operate successfully in the modern economy. It's one way in which our system is kinda anti-human—it assumes a kind of game-playing that's seen as wrong by people, naturally, and you have to play that game or you can't succeed. "What the market will bear" doesn't feel fair to people until they're made to see it as fair.

cmrdporcupine 2y ago

Honestly, the way I see it: The people behind the 2025 stuff etc have been on the "losing" side of the culture war since 1969. And they're sick of it, they're desperate, and now are just laying their cards on the table. I grew up in an evangelical church in the 80s-- albeit in Canada -- attending "Focus on the Family" events, Bible studies, etc. that promulgated heavy socially conservative ethos -- so I feel like I have seen this narrative play out over a few decades ... After the legalization of gay marriage they just collectively lost their shit. They see the stakes as being incredibly high. They see abortion as straight up murder. Winning the 2016 Trump presidency and taking over the US supreme court gave them a taste of blood, and a sense that they can finally reverse what they see as a profound descent into degeneracy. The trans rights stuff over the last few years has them totally incensed, as its a full-on assault (to them) on the ontological reality of family, body, identity, etc. that they consider intrinsic and holy and fundamental. I think they're full of shit, but that's I think how this world view shakes down. It's a war because they feel the stakes are incredibly high. People on the right or in boardrooms of various companies that are aligning themselves with these people for what they see are strategic ends are playing with fire.

SAI_Peregrinus 2y ago
The evangelicals believe that anyone who doesn't believe in their god will be tortured by their god for eternity. There's nothing worse than eternal torture, so they see it as their moral obligation to do anything at all to prevent others from being tortured for eternity by their god. Nothing they do to others can possibly be worse than that, so as long as they're focused on saving others any actions they take are justified (to them). Their god considers gay sex a crime worthy of eternal torture. So anything they do to prevent people from having homosexual encounters is morally acceptable, up to and including torture & occasional execution via "conversion therapy". Anyone who truly believes in hell is either morally bankrupt & willing to allow others to suffer for eternity, or a dangerous monster who will stop at nothing to prevent others from what they see as sinning. Many of them don't go to the extremes they would if they actually believed they were saving others from hell. They're full of shit. But some of them do, and they're fucking terrifying.
- 2y ago

bloomingeek 2y ago

Your quoted sentence is an example of a group of people who have no idea of how to run a country. They are using the uneducated voter to support an agenda that is mostly unconstitutional. We Americans, just like other countries with a rule of law, determine our own culture within those laws. To use federal power to reshape our culture is both arrogant and, since Project 2025 is how they want to do the reshaping, is against the New Testament principle of "live and let live". (another way to state this principle is: "Christian, mind your own business and stay in your lane.")

kelipso 2y ago
This doesn't really make sense. The Democrats mainly, but also Republicans, have been reshaping our culture using federal funding for many many years now, using rules associated with federal funding, decisions for where federal funding goes to (one clear example being museum and arts funding), policies handed down from Department of Education and other federal organizations and departments, etc etc. I guess more people notice it now that Republicans are doing this so openly but the use of federal power to reshape our culture is a well established process. Also what does live and let live get them, especially with the other side pushing so hard? A slippery slope to an immoral society.
- bloomingeek 2y ago
  You cannot legislate mortality. Yes, federal power/funding is the norm, but not within the confines of religious control, which is what the Project 2025 is all about. The so called slippery slope is a worn out trope from the 80's, that has lost all meaning under the current administration. This is why live and let live works, as long as we all obey the law. We have to realize the rule of law is for everyone to adhere to, it doesn't matter how hard either side pushes, the only other option is jail.
  - kelipso 2y ago
    I think the slippery slope argument from the perspective of the right has all but been proven beyond a doubt.