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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

#101

Post by chc »

theseatoms wrote: post #47
colanderman wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. For example, there is no one "white culture". I'm white, and there are plenty of white people in my home town with whom I share little to no cultural values. Any conversation about relative values of "cultures" is probably better cast as a discussion about cultural memes (in the original Dawkins sense [1]), with the understanding that the flow of memes tend to follow social contours as clusters, and interact w…

meme : atom :: culture : physics I agree that it's best to inspect culture from the bottom up rather than the top down. Start with the most granular units. Is anyone here acquainted with the current sociological orthodoxy or is that population mutually exclusive with HN commenters? :)

I think you probably mean "meme : culture :: atom : physics" (i.e. memes have the same relationship with culture that atoms do with physics).

Re: In Defense of Amy Wax’s Defense of Bourgeois Values

#102

Post by avn2109 »

gertef wrote: post #92
narrator wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been almost 90 years since Antonio Gramsci designed the culture war in his prison notebooks[1], so things have morphed a bit and the centrally planned communism he advocated is out of favor as an end goal, but the blueprint is still pretty much the same. To quote Wikipedia a little: "Capitalism, Gramsci suggested, maintained control not just through violence and political and economic coercion, but also ideologi…

This is a classic reactionary comment that doesn't understand the asymmetry between the "bourgeoisie" and the lower classes. The "hegemonic" "bourgeoisie", secure in the status quo, sees politics as a game for "opportunists", while the oppressed classes lay aside their differences so they can try build enough power to overthrow the oppression and end their suffering. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1013753/quotes/qt15255…

I'm not the GP and I don't have a horse in this race, but AFAICT there's nothing in your comment that contradicts the parent's claim.

It seems like his interpretation accords entirely with what you're saying.

Re: In Defense of Amy Wax’s Defense of Bourgeois Values

#104

Post by ouid »

taylodl wrote: post #7

If '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…

"Any moral dilemma can be rephrased as an evil maximization problem" -Zach Weinersmith

Re: In Defense of Amy Wax’s Defense of Bourgeois Values

#105

Post by ouid »

ewzimm wrote: post #53
taylodl wrote: post #7

If '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…

You have a good point, but the next sentence clearly states the metric: "Or at least they are not equal in preparing people to be productive in an advanced economy." It's not a statement about the artistic or spritual value of cultures, only their ability to create economically productive individuals, which is easy to measure.

>Which is easy to measure

I think this might be formally incomputable...

Re: In Defense of Amy Wax’s Defense of Bourgeois Values

#106

Post by AnimalMuppet »

taylodl wrote: post #7

If '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…

Here's another culture. C(not equal) is a culture that believes that all cultures are not equal. But those arguing that all cultures are equal are in fact arguing that their culture, C(equal), is better than C(not equal).

That is, by the act of making the argument, they refute the argument they are making.

Re: In Defense of Amy Wax’s Defense of Bourgeois Values

#107

Post by anigbrowl »

Of course we are always free to dispute each other; Wax’s colleagues could certainly have written essays or a collective essay debating her claims and pointing out flaws in her reasoning, but when is it morally and professionally appropriate to issue a collective public condemnation of a colleague?

Whenever the signatories of such a communication agree upon the idea, surely? Political agency only exists to the degree that one is willing to exercise it.

I find it perplexing that conservatives on the one hand deplore restrictions on speech that seem to stifle the expression of conservative ideas and so forth, but then complain about improper forms of speech when they find their ideas rejected. If it's OK for Wax to co-author a lightweight op-ed that expresses support for bourgeois (capitalist) moral values and breezily dismisses the downsides thereof, why should her critics limit themselves to scholarly analysis but abstain from making moral arguments of their own? Why is it OK for Wax to claim that "things are likely to get worse for us all" thanks to "the academics, media, and Hollywood", but not OK for Wax's colleagues to say they consider her to be giant hypocrite?

I have gone to great lengths to show that Wax’s central claim about culture is probably correct because the necessity of protecting dissent is clearest when the dissenter brings an important and neglected truth into the conversation.

In reality, Haidt takes one aspect of Wax's claim (about the value of marriage), shows some bipartisan/broad-spectrum support for the idea that promoting marriage can have social benefits, and treats this like an empirical result. I don't think that comes anywhere close to validating Wax's broad claim that the hegemonic post-war culture is the best cure for today's social ills, or that its shortcomings are incidental rather than inherent, or that its desiderata of modest obedience and productivity are the acme of human experience.

It's fine with me if he agrees with Wax, but this doesn't give him the right to dictate the terms of discourse. If Wax can write a "provocative essay" why must her critics restrict themselves to the language of theoretical discourse?

Re: In Defense of Amy Wax’s Defense of Bourgeois Values

#108

Post by rpiguy »

solotronics wrote: post #78
rpiguy wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not thinly veiled racism. What the author was ineloquently trying to point out is simple. African American's have been screwed by the system and so they have been taught not only distrust the system, but also to resent authority. Furthermore, these communities are now self-seggragating. Where at one time there was a vision/dream/fantasy that African Americans and Whites were converging toward the same destina…

how do you change a social system without modifying its values? values lead to actions leads to change etc.

The article is not arguing that values shouldn't change, just that empirically the new values we have chosen (single parenthood, self segregation, etc.) are producing inferior outcomes to the old bourgeois values. There is no argument as to whether there are other superior values to adopt, etc. There must be other paths forward but the article doesn't go there.

You can in some instances enact major shifts in social systems without modifying its core values. Values and beliefs are two different things. For example giving women the right to vote was a major change, but didn't shift any of the classic core American values (to be trite, freedom, independence, etc.)

Re: In Defense of Amy Wax’s Defense of Bourgeois Values

#109

Post by AnimalMuppet »

ouid wrote: post #105
ewzimm wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have a good point, but the next sentence clearly states the metric: "Or at least they are not equal in preparing people to be productive in an advanced economy." It's not a statement about the artistic or spritual value of cultures, only their ability to create economically productive individuals, which is easy to measure.

>Which is easy to measure I think this might be formally incomputable...

Well, it seems to me intuitively obvious that cultures that value education prepare children better for their economic future than cultures that don't value education.

I may not be able to compute it. I may not even be able to measure it. But I think that anyone who disagrees is making a far less reasonable claim than I am making, and therefore has the burden of proof.

Re: In Defense of Amy Wax’s Defense of Bourgeois Values

#110

Post by narrator »

gertef wrote: post #92
narrator wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been almost 90 years since Antonio Gramsci designed the culture war in his prison notebooks[1], so things have morphed a bit and the centrally planned communism he advocated is out of favor as an end goal, but the blueprint is still pretty much the same. To quote Wikipedia a little: "Capitalism, Gramsci suggested, maintained control not just through violence and political and economic coercion, but also ideologi…

This is a classic reactionary comment that doesn't understand the asymmetry between the "bourgeoisie" and the lower classes. The "hegemonic" "bourgeoisie", secure in the status quo, sees politics as a game for "opportunists", while the oppressed classes lay aside their differences so they can try build enough power to overthrow the oppression and end their suffering. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1013753/quotes/qt15255…

Yes. The Hegemony did include anti-homosexuality, racial and gender discrimination that I'm glad we've gotten rid of. Part of the hegemonic core value set is that the norms and rules can be carefully changed over time.

Now, since the hegemony has adapted and added tolerance of homosexuality and disapproval of racial and gender discrimination, the Gramscians are reaching further and further into the discontented for supporters. What's really revitalized the cultural right is when the Gramscians tried to pull in Islamists and non-citizens (the least politically charged name I could come up with for this group) into the coalition of the disaffected. The contradictions in their ideology as a purported means for peaceful change of the existing system just got too huge and many people didn't understand the justification for the movement anymore in terms of a nationalist and progressivist basis. This is similar to how many people lost the plot on the justification for the Iraq war on a nationalist and progressivist basis.

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