3 ms·

This "cultural toll" you talk of, is just another form of conformist behaviour that all societies have in different forms. Some countries have class/caste strat

This "cultural toll" you talk of, is just another form of conformist behaviour that all societies have in different forms. Some countries have class/caste strata, others have a laissez-faire attitude to expectations in general, others have a rigid societal code, others appear to be less so but the moment you go near guns, abortion or taxation the societal codes and hierarchy spring into action and snap shut around the ankle of the idiot who went near them. Japan may look different to the society you are used to or grew up in, but it's no less or more conformist, it's just different. As a very simple example, in the US, people work for tips and often struggle to make ends meet in minimum wage jobs: that's a form of cultural toll. In Japan, nobody needs to work for tips (you may be followed out of the restaurant to have your tip returned to you), most people can make ends meet more easily, but there are other expectations around work and family: that's cultural toll too. What's interesting to me is that you seem to think that the status quo in the US is rightly defensible. Looking in from afar with limited skin in the game I'd argue it looks really, really dumb. This "individualism" (but where the courts get to tell people who they are and what they can believe when it comes to certain issues that have religious or historical undertones), seems to be leading to a fractured partisan nation where everyone hates anyone who even slightly disagrees with them. Not a great way to bring kids up... perhaps y'all could try something else for a while, hmm?

erikerikson 1y ago
I upvoted this but it could really do without the last paragraph. Courts aren't telling us who we are or what we can believe. Trying to summarize our mess in so few words isn't something I'd attempt. Finally: many of us live differently and are doing our best to shift things more broadly.
- PaulRobinson 1y ago
  Courts are not meant to tell us who you are what you can believe, but they are - by the SCOTUS' own admission - swayed by public opinion, and often support a narrative they perceive within wider society. The back/forth on abortion rights is a reasonable example.
lucideng 1y ago
"...seems to be leading to a fractured partisan nation where everyone hates anyone who even slightly disagrees with them." This, 100x times over. The cultural toll of 'conformity' sounds bad until you realize it's a construct enabling everyone to 'play nice' in the general sense and work towards a greater good, collectively. We are losing that conformity. The average US citizen person is socially crippled by their outrage. Nothing else matters. If you have doubt in yourself, get back in that echo chamber that probably made you into what you are and reassure yourself. It used to be ok to disagree, have intelligent debate, vote on it, and lose. In today's US, if you want to be heard, it's more about how emotionally outraged you are, not how good your ideas actually are. The more dire you can make the outrage, the better. Come up with a sound bite for your movement, catchier the better. Misrepresent anything your oppositions says, retire objective and reasonable critical thinking to 'dinosaur thinking'. Then, convince people your group/movement/lifestyle has been marginalized. Then, if your subject agrees with you, make sure they're at least as outraged as you. Use any guilt that they have to steer them current or future causes. Next, if they won't comply, publicly shame and label opposition so that you can associate them with bad things/people/events. When you dont get what you want, attack the process, call them bigots, etc. Rinse and repeat until you get what you want. As our "cultural tolls" are avoided or erode, the more divided we become as a people. The more divided we are, the more we are seen as individuals. Everyone becomes marginalized when everyone is an individual. The more divided we are, the less we hold open doors and the more we slam that door in their face, because you know... they're a bigot or whatever, so you dont have to feel guilty for hurting that evil person.
- Capricorn2481 1y ago
  > It used to be ok to disagree, have intelligent debate, vote on it, and lose You are operating under a model that every view of the world is equally valid, moral, and unworthy of emotion. That is not where we are as a country. People have made decisions to actively harm people I love, and they cheer it on to my face. This is not an emotion, it's a fact. I'm a white man. I am polite to my friends and family, and I am good at getting people to share what they really think. I have family all over the country. They talk a lot like you in public, decrying a vague sense of union we used to have in a fictional time of American history. But they whisper a different tune to me in private. I have heard some absolutely vile beliefs from people who used to bounce me on their knee. I don't speak to them anymore. Not because I'm in an echo chamber, but because I cannot reconcile or stomach the things I know about them. My extended family believes others should bleed so they don't have to scuff, and I believe this reflects a large portion of the country. You have it completely backwards. It's not that we are so angry with each other that we can't establish a cultural toll, it's that much of the country never wanted to pay this toll, and that's what makes the rest of us angry. We cannot live collectively without sacrifice, but many refuse to. The many debates regarding this article is evidence of that.
x-complexity 1y ago
As noted by an earlier reply (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43905660 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43905660), I agree with the first 3 paragraphs. The last paragraph, however, is a launch in accusations, and will be treated as such. ---- > What's interesting to me is that you seem to think that the status quo in the US is rightly defensible. You're already reading into something that doesn't exist. The underlying cultural axioms of the US are, in a reductive sense, focused more towards individual pursuits, with the accompanying effects that came from such a cultural choice being made self-evident. No defense was made towards those axioms, only that changing them requires the same toll that Japan paid to also be done by the US. > Looking in from afar with limited skin in the game I'd argue it looks really, really dumb. I've lived my entire life within a "3rd world" (S.E.A). To that end, I will say that I have isolated pockets of envy for what's allowed within the US. Other parts... I could do without, but I recognize that they're part of the "US' whole deal" bag, and adopting it requires taking on the whole bag, without exceptions. The cultural choices made are a mixed bag, and should be treated as such. Prescriptivist blanket statements like that serve no purpose other than tribal in-group signalling that can be done without. > This "individualism" (but where the courts get to tell people who they are and what they can believe when it comes to certain issues that have religious or historical undertones), seems to be leading to a fractured partisan nation where everyone hates anyone who even slightly disagrees with them. This is not something that's wholly exclusive to individualism. The same kinds of partisan rhetoric can similarly be achieved with "anti-individualism" cultures, simply because humans came from a tribal background: When more than one non-immediately-societally-lethal path exists for people to choose from, partisan support for a given path X will happen as a side effect of advocacy for X. The partisan rhetoric that comes when A clashes with B (and/or C, D, E...) is the conclusion of (1) only being able to choose one choice, & (2) that anything that is not A being chosen feeling like a loss. "Individualism bad because partisanship" does not mean that its alternatives avert this phenomenon. > Not a great way to bring kids up... perhaps y'all could try something else for a while, hmm? This is mud slinging, given the most charitable interpretation possible.
- PaulRobinson 1y ago
  The comment I replied to defended US individualism and criticised the Japanese "cultural toll". I am not "reading into something that doesn't exist", it's what I'm specifically replying to. Cultural choices are indeed a mixed bag, that was my point: everyone has them, and they're different, and you have to make choices. You might be right that partisanship occurs in alternatives to individualism, but my point is that individualism without a shared sense of society can accelerate partisanship. In the US, ironically there is tribalism (we now call them echo chambers, due to the dominance of media in this conversation), telling people that their individualism is being taken away. It's both what I'm worried about, and what you mention, in a feedback loop. I maintain that compared to every other Western liberal democracy, this is not a great way to bring up kids. That isn't mud slinging, it's an opinion.

erikerikson 1y ago

I upvoted this but it could really do without the last paragraph. Courts aren't telling us who we are or what we can believe. Trying to summarize our mess in so few words isn't something I'd attempt. Finally: many of us live differently and are doing our best to shift things more broadly.

PaulRobinson 1y ago
Courts are not meant to tell us who you are what you can believe, but they are - by the SCOTUS' own admission - swayed by public opinion, and often support a narrative they perceive within wider society. The back/forth on abortion rights is a reasonable example.

lucideng 1y ago

"...seems to be leading to a fractured partisan nation where everyone hates anyone who even slightly disagrees with them." This, 100x times over. The cultural toll of 'conformity' sounds bad until you realize it's a construct enabling everyone to 'play nice' in the general sense and work towards a greater good, collectively. We are losing that conformity. The average US citizen person is socially crippled by their outrage. Nothing else matters. If you have doubt in yourself, get back in that echo chamber that probably made you into what you are and reassure yourself. It used to be ok to disagree, have intelligent debate, vote on it, and lose. In today's US, if you want to be heard, it's more about how emotionally outraged you are, not how good your ideas actually are. The more dire you can make the outrage, the better. Come up with a sound bite for your movement, catchier the better. Misrepresent anything your oppositions says, retire objective and reasonable critical thinking to 'dinosaur thinking'. Then, convince people your group/movement/lifestyle has been marginalized. Then, if your subject agrees with you, make sure they're at least as outraged as you. Use any guilt that they have to steer them current or future causes. Next, if they won't comply, publicly shame and label opposition so that you can associate them with bad things/people/events. When you dont get what you want, attack the process, call them bigots, etc. Rinse and repeat until you get what you want. As our "cultural tolls" are avoided or erode, the more divided we become as a people. The more divided we are, the more we are seen as individuals. Everyone becomes marginalized when everyone is an individual. The more divided we are, the less we hold open doors and the more we slam that door in their face, because you know... they're a bigot or whatever, so you dont have to feel guilty for hurting that evil person.

Capricorn2481 1y ago
> It used to be ok to disagree, have intelligent debate, vote on it, and lose You are operating under a model that every view of the world is equally valid, moral, and unworthy of emotion. That is not where we are as a country. People have made decisions to actively harm people I love, and they cheer it on to my face. This is not an emotion, it's a fact. I'm a white man. I am polite to my friends and family, and I am good at getting people to share what they really think. I have family all over the country. They talk a lot like you in public, decrying a vague sense of union we used to have in a fictional time of American history. But they whisper a different tune to me in private. I have heard some absolutely vile beliefs from people who used to bounce me on their knee. I don't speak to them anymore. Not because I'm in an echo chamber, but because I cannot reconcile or stomach the things I know about them. My extended family believes others should bleed so they don't have to scuff, and I believe this reflects a large portion of the country. You have it completely backwards. It's not that we are so angry with each other that we can't establish a cultural toll, it's that much of the country never wanted to pay this toll, and that's what makes the rest of us angry. We cannot live collectively without sacrifice, but many refuse to. The many debates regarding this article is evidence of that.

x-complexity 1y ago

As noted by an earlier reply (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43905660 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43905660), I agree with the first 3 paragraphs. The last paragraph, however, is a launch in accusations, and will be treated as such. ---- > What's interesting to me is that you seem to think that the status quo in the US is rightly defensible. You're already reading into something that doesn't exist. The underlying cultural axioms of the US are, in a reductive sense, focused more towards individual pursuits, with the accompanying effects that came from such a cultural choice being made self-evident. No defense was made towards those axioms, only that changing them requires the same toll that Japan paid to also be done by the US. > Looking in from afar with limited skin in the game I'd argue it looks really, really dumb. I've lived my entire life within a "3rd world" (S.E.A). To that end, I will say that I have isolated pockets of envy for what's allowed within the US. Other parts... I could do without, but I recognize that they're part of the "US' whole deal" bag, and adopting it requires taking on the whole bag, without exceptions. The cultural choices made are a mixed bag, and should be treated as such. Prescriptivist blanket statements like that serve no purpose other than tribal in-group signalling that can be done without. > This "individualism" (but where the courts get to tell people who they are and what they can believe when it comes to certain issues that have religious or historical undertones), seems to be leading to a fractured partisan nation where everyone hates anyone who even slightly disagrees with them. This is not something that's wholly exclusive to individualism. The same kinds of partisan rhetoric can similarly be achieved with "anti-individualism" cultures, simply because humans came from a tribal background: When more than one non-immediately-societally-lethal path exists for people to choose from, partisan support for a given path X will happen as a side effect of advocacy for X. The partisan rhetoric that comes when A clashes with B (and/or C, D, E...) is the conclusion of (1) only being able to choose one choice, & (2) that anything that is not A being chosen feeling like a loss. "Individualism bad because partisanship" does not mean that its alternatives avert this phenomenon. > Not a great way to bring kids up... perhaps y'all could try something else for a while, hmm? This is mud slinging, given the most charitable interpretation possible.

PaulRobinson 1y ago
The comment I replied to defended US individualism and criticised the Japanese "cultural toll". I am not "reading into something that doesn't exist", it's what I'm specifically replying to. Cultural choices are indeed a mixed bag, that was my point: everyone has them, and they're different, and you have to make choices. You might be right that partisanship occurs in alternatives to individualism, but my point is that individualism without a shared sense of society can accelerate partisanship. In the US, ironically there is tribalism (we now call them echo chambers, due to the dominance of media in this conversation), telling people that their individualism is being taken away. It's both what I'm worried about, and what you mention, in a feedback loop. I maintain that compared to every other Western liberal democracy, this is not a great way to bring up kids. That isn't mud slinging, it's an opinion.