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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

#131

Post by hprotagonist »

lambdaphagy wrote: post #71
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…

Relative to all people living today, let alone whom have ever lived, you probably share rather a high percentage of the variation in cultural values with white people, however construed. Check out this map, for example: http://www.iffs.se/media/1906/culturemap_may2015.jpeg and notice how Anglos, even when separated by oceans for hundreds of years, tend to cluster in one corner of values-space.

what in the world is a "traditional vs. secular-rational values" axis? Why is it in linear units between -2.5 and 2.5?

I have no idea how to interpret this graph.

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

#132

Post by anigbrowl »

narrator wrote: post #64
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…

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…

It really didn't matter if they were morally justified or not by any philosophy. The point was is that they were opposed to the hegemony and that's all that mattered.

Wait...you're saying that they pursue their own interests?! How dare they!

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

#133

Post by Veelox »

I have not read Amy Wax's original letter but my understand is that she made the claim that people in the lower social-economic classes have been rejecting the "Bourgeois" culture. She then went on to say that this rejection has and will have negative affects on those groups.

Would someone be willing to point out how that claim is offensive? Or is it how she made the claim that is the issue?

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

#134

Post by bcoates »

antisthenes wrote: post #74
bcoates wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Culture and society engage with one another. To take an extremely concrete example, our society takes every possible opportunity to treat young unwed mothers like absolute shit. "Raising up" the culture of people who are unsurprised that people at the peak of their fertility tend to get pregnant even in an environment where marriage is increasingly unattainable to that population is more about not going out of our wa…

I take huge issue with this statement because it tries to sneak certain statements past the reader without evidence. How do you mean marriage is increasingly unattainable ? A marriage license costs $55. Are you alluding to something else here? Single mothers are one of the last bastions of subsidies and welfare, especially considering how everything else has been scaled down in the recent years. > our society takes e…

A little googling:

TANF (the last vestige of single-mother welfare) is ~$30bn/yr for the whole US, state & federal contribution.

SSDI (a mix of people with severe medical problems and the work-shy) is $150bn/yr.

OASI (I'm old - gimmie money) is $813bn/yr

Medicare (I'm old - gimmie healthcare) is $709bn/yr

Single mother welfare is a rounding error in the budget compared to other subsidies and welfare, which is mostly diverted towards older and wealthier people.

I'm not just talking about cash welfare -- try holding down a job while raising a kid by your own and see how much our society will bend over backwards to accommodate any lifestyle choice other than single child-rearing.

I don't have a dog in this fight - I'm a middle-aged, childless single guy. But I have eyes to see and it doesn't take much research to figure out who's getting the short end of the stick in our social order.

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

#135

Post by Danihan »

Blackthorn wrote: post #122
nyolfen wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

would you say there is no such thing as black culture?

Black culture exists, at least in the United States, since the USA systematically destroyed any other form of heritage from black people.

This seems like an extremely ignorant comment to me. There is a ton of black culture in the South that is uniquely American.

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

#136

Post by overgard »

wsxcde wrote: post #46

Let's not get bogged down by the all cultures are not equal strawman. That is not at all the key point here. Amy Wax/OP's argument is problematic because it conflates very different things using a subtly disingenuous argument. She starts off by saying something completely uncontroversial: kids from stable marriages do well in school. But she then plays on the audiences implicit biases to imply -- but not explicitly a…

It seems far more "problematic" to infer a racist statement when none was actually made. It's disingenuous to put words in people's mouths.

Let's not forget a persons reputation is at stake here, and casually calling them a racist because you extrapolated something that they may or may not agree with can be extremely damaging.

If someone is truly a racist you don't really need to "out" them -- they'll do it themselves over time.

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

#137

Post by ouid »

chrishacken wrote: post #48
danfolkes wrote: post #18

Here is a follow-up article written by one of the 33 members of the University of Pennsylvania Law School faculty to sign a letter criticizing Amy Wax: Don’t Care if Amy Wax Is Politically Incorrect; I Do Care that She’s Empirically Incorrect https://heterodoxacademy.org/2017/09/03/i-dont-care-if-amy-w...

What concerns me is that people act like she doesn't have the right to write her opinion (it clearly is just her opinion; it was published to the opinion section), without her facing repercussion.

It's not an opinion, it's a conjecture. Opinions are emotional responses to facts, not arguments about their veracity.

Examples of opinions include:

The color red is beautiful. I'm sad that sharks are being hunted. I hate poor people.

None of the following are opinions:

This rose is red. My landlord poisoned my dog. Poor people do more drugs than rich people.

In particular, a statement is not an opinion simply because it is presented without evidence. It is only an opinion if it can't possess any in the first place.

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

#138

Post by anigbrowl »

Nomentatus wrote: post #61
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…

"Good and bad is in the eye of the beholder and what you value." - Now put your hand on a hot stove and say that again. Nature forces some values. (quote from apoverton but the principle, vs Hume, applies to many other comments here.)

The fact that some values are forced by nature tells us very little about how to prioritize those which are not.

For example, what is the best color? Many people have strong color preferences, but the question doesn't admit of a single objective answer.

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

#139

Post by antisthenes »

Veelox wrote: post #88
antisthenes wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I take huge issue with this statement because it tries to sneak certain statements past the reader without evidence. How do you mean marriage is increasingly unattainable ? A marriage license costs $55. Are you alluding to something else here? Single mothers are one of the last bastions of subsidies and welfare, especially considering how everything else has been scaled down in the recent years. > our society takes e…

Not op and not exactly what you ask for. Welfare is structured so that single moms get more money if they stay single. It is bad for the kids to grow up without a father and it is bad for society to encourage it. Source: Wife worked in a homeless shelter.

Appreciated all the same.

Poor policies that leave people in poverty traps (e.g. having a single mom find a job that pays barely above her welfare benefits shouldn't be stripping her of benefits, but a much more gradual sliding scale instead) should constantly be brought to light and fixed.

> It is bad for the kids to grow up without a father and it is bad for society to encourage it.

Absolutely, but to fix that we also have to look at why the fathers aren't sticking around, not only why single mothers aren't remarrying and/or getting out of poverty quicker.

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

#140

Post by pdkl95 »

leepowers wrote: post #81
wsxcde wrote: post #46

Let's not get bogged down by the all cultures are not equal strawman. That is not at all the key point here. Amy Wax/OP's argument is problematic because it conflates very different things using a subtly disingenuous argument. She starts off by saying something completely uncontroversial: kids from stable marriages do well in school. But she then plays on the audiences implicit biases to imply -- but not explicitly a…

> .... inner city blacks are incompatible with an advanced free market economy. We must have read different articles because that's not what I saw - I think you're so focused on detecting a dog whistle that you're missing the key point being raised. Values are race, gender, and class neutral. A value or system of values can be adopted by a person regardless of their race, gender, class, sexual orientation, etc. Value…

> We can also imagine an inner city black who has a choice between two value systems

Far too many black families do no have the luxury to choose a new value system. Extreme generational poverty is bad enough, but many are not allowed to even start on a path towards self improvement because 7.7% of adult black men are currently in prison. How, exactly, does "pro-family culture" improve social mobility for the 1-in-9 black children with a parent in prison.

> It may be that bourgeois values are hostage to other social, economic, and cultural factors.

Exactly - it wouldn't surprise me at all if the "benefits" attributed to marriage are actually a proxy for race.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/02/26/ameri...

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