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‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

theguardian.com

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Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#351

Post by arminiusreturns »

wombatmobile wrote: post #175
rmrfstar wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Orwell's Oceania, the inner and outer party made up around 10% of the population. Minitrue was a small subset of that apparatus, and developed such wonderful products as "the two minutes hate". It's not like we weren't warned.

Neil Postman wrote in 1985: “What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egotism." "Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley fe…

My saying: "It's a brave new world, until you resist. Then it's 1984."

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#352

Post by TheKarateKid »

andrew_ wrote: post #337
vorpalhex wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any evidence for that point? Like sure, I'd love to blame Twitter and Facebook for all of our societal ills, but they aren't new. Culture wars didn't just suddenly happen in the early 00s. Cue the 1960s and 70s long before any social media and the amazing amount of not just protests but bombings, assassinations and so on that make the current culture war seem like a mere shouting match.

"The Social Dilemma" on Netflix touches on this - in part, the algorithms that run these platforms and govern (guide?) user interaction are responsible in large part for pitting people against each other. It's in their best interest to keep eyeballs on their respective sites as much has humanly possible.

Yes algorithms contribute, but the media is the reason these problems go from being just an argument on social media, to an actual societal issue.

Before the media started using social media as “facts” for their reporting, these arguments would just be another online “flame war.” Remember when we used those terms? Remember when online arguments remained as just that?

Now, when 1000 people on Twitter try to cancel someone the media reports it as if it’s an actual popular opinion, thus amplifying the problem for better or worse.

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#353

Post by luckylion »

shadowgovt wrote: post #348
luckylion wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might have visited different seminars than the ones this thread was originally about, or you might just experience them differently given that you appear to be a staunch believer in white privilege & the post-modern theory of racism. Religious rituals seem totally normal to the initiated and strange and cult-ish to others.

Conflating trainings derived from theory based on research and evidence with religion is also strange.

I think research & evidence is vague when you include gender & diversity studies in sciences. There's a lot that's barely above an essay, it'll stick for a few years and then get retracted (gender pay gap anyone?) The cultish behavior surrounding it ("I'm a sinner, even though I never know when I'm sinning, I'm worthless, oh please, Lord, forgive me, I submit myself before your will") makes it look like a replacement for religion, not anything stemming from science.

I don't believe the similarity to Maoist struggle sessions is an accident, it's born from the same general school of thought.

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#354

Post by kevindong »

11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #289
another-dave wrote: post #56

I think the main culprit exacerbating this is the main stream media. "Vox pops" have formed part of filling air-time or column inches for a long while, but this is largely replaced now by journalists looking at Twitter and either a) using that as a stand-in for 'this is what the public think' or b) making it the story itself. Social media is no longer just "second screen" below-the-line commenting on events, it's hel…

In the US, it seems these 13% receive outsize political attention as well. I recall at the run up to the 2016 election, one of the main issues was gender and public bathroom usage. I couldn't help wondering at the time why that issue received so much attention vs. the 42,000 opioid overdose fatalities that year alone, which got virtually zero attention.

Personally, I think the reason is just another take on the bike shed effect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#355

Post by [deleted] »

shadowgovt wrote: post #349
SuoDuanDao wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that not the same as forcing people to stay in an unpleasant class until they confess to racism?

I believe the fact some people perceive it to be is the root of, perhaps, quite a bit of consternation on the issue. But I see it is the same as forcing people to stay in an unpleasant class until they understand type theory. We teach people things they need to know so that they know them, because knowledge is useful. We're certainly not calling the question of "having education seminars" into question, are we?

[deleted]

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#356

Post by Nasrudith »

JamesBarney wrote: post #286
snowwrestler wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not yet, but these are still pretty new to corporate environments. I've been in "harassment prevention" training sessions for years, but only within the last year sat through my first "diversity, equity, and inclusion" (DEI) training. (It was not an inquisition; quite helpful in the opinion of this middle aged white guy.) There is research that shows that companies with diverse leadership and staff financially outper…

I'm super suspicious of research like that for a couple of reasons. One it would it be impossible to publish research that came to the opposite conclusion. Imagine seeing a headline that said "replacing female and black executive leadership with old white dudes increases profit" by McKinsey. Second the magnitude of the impact seems insane. This seems larger than the difference most studies find between good leadershi…

I wonder if the effect works backward - excellence attracts the best and remaining on top requires assimilating the best from all sources. Diversity essentially is a side effect of their paradigms and world views in terms of openness to new things and experimentalism.

On a related note successful Empires become more diverse over time - one of the few virtues of Imperialism and they need the edge to expand further while the most xenophobic ones tend to be shorter lived or more limited in their success. One insulting but true observation about national flags flown by white supremacists is that they are all flags of losers (Nazi Germany, Confederacy, Rhodesia).

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#357

Post by da39a3ee »

gsk22 wrote: post #350
monoideism wrote: post #265

This is not my experience in the US. Culture wars have invaded both work and family life. It's not a tiny minority, it's many, if not most, Americans. I feel sure most Americans have the same experience, but perhaps I'm an outlier?

How has this so-called culture war invaded your family life?

I (late 30s) am unable to talk to younger members (late 20s) of my family about science in western society because they believe that academic science is inherently corrupted by patriarchal and racist power structures, whereas I believe that there is no need to be anywhere near so cynical about academic science and that it is in fact one of the areas of society that we can be proud of.

The younger members have grown up taught by many university professors who have pushed postmodernist, power-structure analyses in any different subject areas, to the extent that they find it more important to think of science from the sort of postmodernist cultural theory point of view, than to actually think about the science itself.

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#358

Post by [deleted] »

shoemakersteve wrote: post #204
nailer wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Collusion is a very specific charge. Yes. And Russiagate was the belief that the Trump org colluded with the Russians. Which was debunked. Not that citing Wikipedia means anything, but from the main article at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_20... : > there was insufficient evidence to bring any conspiracy or coordination charges against Trump or his associates.

It was not "debunked" in any way. We know 100% they colluded with Russian agents. They just couldn't prove criminal intent. As far as Trump's obstruction of justice, correct me if I'm misremembering, but I'm pretty sure the Mueller report basically said "He did it, but we couldn't come up with solid enough evidence that we would be confident we could indict a sitting president" and the last line saying something like…

[deleted]

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#359

Post by mobilejdral »

11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #289
another-dave wrote: post #56

I think the main culprit exacerbating this is the main stream media. "Vox pops" have formed part of filling air-time or column inches for a long while, but this is largely replaced now by journalists looking at Twitter and either a) using that as a stand-in for 'this is what the public think' or b) making it the story itself. Social media is no longer just "second screen" below-the-line commenting on events, it's hel…

In the US, it seems these 13% receive outsize political attention as well. I recall at the run up to the 2016 election, one of the main issues was gender and public bathroom usage. I couldn't help wondering at the time why that issue received so much attention vs. the 42,000 opioid overdose fatalities that year alone, which got virtually zero attention.

It wasn't about bathroom usage, but about getting a voting base to vote. Religious groups don't care about opioid issues, but they do like talking about and voting against LGBT+ issues.

As for the issue itself, the wikipedia article has a pretty good overview of the whole thing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathroom_bill

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#360

Post by free_rms »

luckylion wrote: post #353
shadowgovt wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conflating trainings derived from theory based on research and evidence with religion is also strange.

I think research & evidence is vague when you include gender & diversity studies in sciences. There's a lot that's barely above an essay, it'll stick for a few years and then get retracted (gender pay gap anyone?) The cultish behavior surrounding it ("I'm a sinner, even though I never know when I'm sinning, I'm worthless, oh please, Lord, forgive me, I submit myself before your will") makes it look like a replacement…

The "school of thought" behind the cultural revolution was twofold:

1) Mao had been frozen out after the disaster of the Great Leap Forward, and this was his way of discrediting his enemies and getting back on top.

2) Young people full of fervor are fucking vicious.

None of it really had much to do with marxist philosophy in general or with the things Mao in particular had said before he'd been frozen out. But it says a lot about power.

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