371–380 of 674 posts
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?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In that sense we're all 'racist' to some degree and its important to acknowledge that so as to overcome it. No. I reject this. No matter how many times you or others tell me that I’m racist and can’t help it, and if I just pray... I mean take enough sanctioned training courses it’ll go away I will not partake. Period. Nobody is racist until proven otherwise, or racist until they’ve taken enough unconscious bias tra…
I suspect that a lot of people forget the concept of mens rea (sometimes through lack of critical thinking, sometimes for deliberate conflation). Labels are easy to throw around; unconscious bias gets lumped together with racism. One is culpable behaviour, the other not paying attention. But again if someone wants to push a particular point of view it's just easier to label someone else as "bad" without having to exp…
I am no domain expert but an ammendment to require mens rea for far more felonies as opposed to the farcical nonsense where picking up an unidentified feather could be a crime if the feather turns out to be from a bald eagle.
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-news-media-is-destroying-i...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 u…
Culture wars are fought by tiny minorities, but they're fought over the large majority. The issue of gay marriage in the US was fought mostly by progressive and social conservative activists, but the people they were trying to convince were those in the middle. The reason the progressives won is that the middle became increasingly convinced that banning gay marriage was immoral for the government to do.
In the case of a gay marriage, a small minority was directly affected by a tangible and quantifiable problem: not being able to have the same legal status as straight families. It wasn't about taking something from the majority, or guilt-tripping others. So adopting what they asked for had a net-positive effect: straight people were unaffected, while the gays got perks previously unavailable to them.
The current trends are different. Climate change and social justice issues don't personally affect most the people who are vocal about it. Interestingly, most of them do have one thing in common: lack of highly marketable skills or professional weight. Most of them are priced out of property ownership or retirement. Many are depressed to a point where they cannot find anyone to make family with (in my experience, strong marriages boil down to having common constructive interests, working on the same goal together and relying on each other). Except, they are not addressing the quantifiable problems. Instead, their fury got redirected to much broader problems that are almost impossible to quantify or address in a measurable way. So now it's a fight with no winning, it keeps people busy blowing their steam off at random strangers who dare to disagree with them, but all it does in the long term is increases the divisiveness of the society and makes fear and anger the new normal.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>I think the main culprit exacerbating this is the main stream media. I understand your argument but I also in no way want to distract from the culpability owned by social media companies, their product designers and managers, and the people who wrote the code to implement their desires. They are ultimately guilty for the damage they have wrought on our societies. Traditional media companies may have exacerbated the…
The difference is while few people would claim social media companies are in any way a credible source of truth, there is still a residual notion that the main stream media's role is to be the eyes and ears of society, a role that it obviously no longer deserves.
Many, many people in my area regard social media as a credible source of truth. I know that people don't think much of the people where I live, and that comes from the lack of good educational opportunities afforded them out here in flyover country. But these people get to vote too. They get to participate in society as well. I guess I mean that they count. You can't say there is no one who claims social media is credible, when it is obvious there are millions who are swayed by social media precisely because it is credible in their view.
In fact, if a story is only on social media, it's proof of the story's validity in their eyes. If the mainstream media won't run a story they found on social media, then it must be part of a conspiracy to keep the "truth" from getting out. I hear this narrative everyday in my area of the midwest.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> it means a part of a system of power that benefits people considered "white" at the expense of others. This definition doesn't even bother me on face. Obviously, systems can be designed to advantage one group and disadvantage another group. And, obviously, Jim Crow effects the distribution of family wealth to this day. What bothers me about BigCorp diversity training is something a quite different. Choose a random…
Focusing on things they can reasonably change is a legitimate approach. It would be defacto illegal for them to engage in racially discriminative stock sales. Asking their ownership to please give away their stocks to random minorities sounds like a fast way to get booted by the board for crashing the stock value by creating a needless controversy . Only fanatics seriously consider large scale forced redistribution f…
That's kind of my whole point, right?
It wouldn't be "systemic" or "structural" if a single CEO or a few CEOs could unilaterally fix the problem, because one man isn't a "system" or "structure". The thing that makes systemic/structural racism systemic/structural is that you'd have to radically change of the normal order of things to address the underlying problem. It's not personal, and it therefore can't be fixed by a few personal actions. It has to be fixed at the systems level.
BigCorps can't change anything about systemic racism because they are the system.
> Focusing on things they can reasonably change is a legitimate approach.
"Mandatory HR training made me rethink my views on systemic racism" -- no one ever.
In fact, I'm 100% convinced that these diversity trainings are actively counter-productive to actually changing any minds.
If you take structural racism seriously, then the idea of BigCorp "doing something" about structural racism via HR lectures to low level employees is prime facie absurd. Cindy in accounting can't do shit about structural/systemic racism... that's kind of the whole point of distinguishing it from more personal forms of discrimination/prejudice.
Training on systemic racism might make sense for powerful people with the ability to effect the functioning of systems over years/decades. Politicians, boards, CEOs, execs, VCs, maybe some managers, etc. And it's the sort of thing that activists should try to explain in public forums.
But at the individual contributor level, a much simpler regimen of "what is explicit discrimination" + "we will fire you for overt explicit discrimination because it is illegal and not aligned with our corporate values" + "dear god don't do stupid shit like wearing blackface to the company party" + maybe a short module on implicit bias is much more effective. Because that's the sort of material is actionable at the IC level, and it's the sort of thing people are open to being told by HR drones.
Half day trainings on systemic racism for Cindy in Accounting or Bob the Admin Assistant makes no god damn sense, and probably does more harm than good.
Like, seriously, HR is not the right place for this conversation. You'll lose more people than you gain by shoe-horning such a complex topic into a BigCorp training module. Stick to shop ethics.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 u…
But the cultural questions involved like who is doing science? for what reasons? under what constraints? what practical applications are there and who will they be applied to? Those potentially matter quite a bit to me.
Sounds like your family are attempting to be active and well-informed and have chosen to become informed in a part of the domain where they can have useful opinions, rather than a part where they can't.
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.