In Defense of Amy Wax’s Defense of Bourgeois Values
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In Defense of Amy Wax’s Defense of Bourgeois Values
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Re: In Defense of Amy Wax’s Defense of Bourgeois Values
#2I think underlying many of these discussions is a fundamental question:
"If not all cultures and values are equally successful in modern society, should we (as a society) encourage people to adopt a more successful values, or should we adapt society to make all cultures and values equally successful?"
(edit: obviously I have biases, but I tried to phase this in a way that masked my biases. If there's a more neutral way to phrase this, I'd be interested in hearing it)
Re: In Defense of Amy Wax’s Defense of Bourgeois Values
#3I think underlying many of these discussions is a fundamental question: "If not all cultures and values are equally successful in modern society, should we (as a society) encourage people to adopt a more successful values, or should we adapt society to make all cultures and values equally successful?" (edit: obviously I have biases, but I tried to phase this in a way that masked my biases. If there's a more neutral w…
And the question below that is, who's "we"?
Re: In Defense of Amy Wax’s Defense of Bourgeois Values
#4I think underlying many of these discussions is a fundamental question: "If not all cultures and values are equally successful in modern society, should we (as a society) encourage people to adopt a more successful values, or should we adapt society to make all cultures and values equally successful?" (edit: obviously I have biases, but I tried to phase this in a way that masked my biases. If there's a more neutral w…
The only way to accomplish the latter is to pull the excellent down to the level of mediocrity or worse. How do you propose to raise up a culture that doesn't value creativity and hard work, for example, to the level of success of one that does. Culture is much more than what food you eat and music you listen to.
This reminds me of a famous Tocqueville quote:
There is in fact a manly and legitimate passion for equality that spurs all men to wish to be strong and esteemed. This passion tends to elevate the lesser to the rank of the greater.
But one also finds in the human heart a depraved taste for equality which impels the weak to want to bring the strong down to their level and which reduces men to preferring equality in servitude to inequality in freedom.
Re: In Defense of Amy Wax’s Defense of Bourgeois Values
#5I think underlying many of these discussions is a fundamental question: "If not all cultures and values are equally successful in modern society, should we (as a society) encourage people to adopt a more successful values, or should we adapt society to make all cultures and values equally successful?" (edit: obviously I have biases, but I tried to phase this in a way that masked my biases. If there's a more neutral w…
successful cultures don't necessarily scale within a society if some of what makes them successful is taking advantage of other cultures.
Re: In Defense of Amy Wax’s Defense of Bourgeois Values
#6I think underlying many of these discussions is a fundamental question: "If not all cultures and values are equally successful in modern society, should we (as a society) encourage people to adopt a more successful values, or should we adapt society to make all cultures and values equally successful?" (edit: obviously I have biases, but I tried to phase this in a way that masked my biases. If there's a more neutral w…
The only way to accomplish the latter is to pull the excellent down to the level of mediocrity or worse. How do you propose to raise up a culture that doesn't value creativity and hard work, for example, to the level of success of one that does. Culture is much more than what food you eat and music you listen to. This reminds me of a famous Tocqueville quote: There is in fact a manly and legitimate passion for equali…
Not attributing this to you, but you could deploy your argument against abolishing slavery.
> How do you propose to raise up a culture that doesn't value diligent hard work
Which culture? Don't be abstract. Name what culture you think doesn't value hard work and I will and we'll see if I can't find a counterexample.
Re: In Defense of Amy Wax’s Defense of Bourgeois Values
#7If 'all cultures are not equal' is a false statement then we're stating 'all cultures are equal' which I interpret as saying there is no metric by which we can measure the 'goodness' or 'effectiveness' of a culture.
So let's accept the statement 'all cultures are equal' at face value: all cultures are equal and therefore there exists no metric for measuring 'goodness' or 'effectiveness.' If C(now) captures my current cultural state and C(future) captures my future cultural state and we're saying both of these states are equal - because all cultures are equal - then where's the impetus for any new legislation? Where's the drive for change?
In the United States our past culture included slavery, which we'll call C(slavery). Are we really saying C(slavery) == C(now)? I bet most people would claim C(now) > C(slavery) and if so should be suspect of any claim that all cultures are equal.
This isn't a rigorous proof, but I do think it calls into question the notion that all cultures are equal. But maybe that's not what the phrase actually means: maybe what they really intend to say is we've yet to identify unbiased metrics by which we can use to measure cultures and thus correlate them. Presumably most people would bias the metric in such a manner that their culture turned out to be the best. If that's what's actually meant by the phrase 'all cultures are equal' (and I've never heard of anyone presenting it that way) then it should be stated as such because then we can work toward identifying those metrics so we can objectively improve our own culture.
Re: In Defense of Amy Wax’s Defense of Bourgeois Values
#8I think underlying many of these discussions is a fundamental question: "If not all cultures and values are equally successful in modern society, should we (as a society) encourage people to adopt a more successful values, or should we adapt society to make all cultures and values equally successful?" (edit: obviously I have biases, but I tried to phase this in a way that masked my biases. If there's a more neutral w…
The only way to accomplish the latter is to pull the excellent down to the level of mediocrity or worse. How do you propose to raise up a culture that doesn't value creativity and hard work, for example, to the level of success of one that does. Culture is much more than what food you eat and music you listen to. This reminds me of a famous Tocqueville quote: There is in fact a manly and legitimate passion for equali…
This is not a very meaningful argument if you don't provide metrics for 'excellence' and 'success'
Re: In Defense of Amy Wax’s Defense of Bourgeois Values
#9I think underlying many of these discussions is a fundamental question: "If not all cultures and values are equally successful in modern society, should we (as a society) encourage people to adopt a more successful values, or should we adapt society to make all cultures and values equally successful?" (edit: obviously I have biases, but I tried to phase this in a way that masked my biases. If there's a more neutral w…
successful cultures don't necessarily scale within a society if some of what makes them successful is taking advantage of other cultures.
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Re: In Defense of Amy Wax’s Defense of Bourgeois Values
#10Large, pluralistic societies create a new kind of natural-selective environment that pushes cultures towards greater fitness in their niches or rewards cultures that expand into or create new niches. You definitely can't expect all cultures to behave the same way and exist in all niches. See e.g. the enormous propensity of Mormons towards dentistry - "be a dentist" is not a valid universal cultural attribute, but can be adaptive for a small group. There are many routes to success.