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0 pointskomali29mo ago0 comments

That a capitalist society might achieve a 15 hour workweek if it maintained a "non debauched culture" and "culture homogeneity" is an extraordinary claim I've never seen a scrap of evidence for. Can you support this extraordinary claim?

That there's any cultural "degenerative debauchery" is an extraordinary claim. Can you back up this claim with evidence?

"Decimated," "muddled," and "polluted" imply you have an objective analysis framework for culture. Typically people who study culture avoid moralizing like this because one very quickly ends up looking very foolish. What do you know that the anthropologists and sociologists don't, to where you use these terms so freely?

If I seem aggressive, it's because I'm quite tired of vague handwaving around "degeneracy" and identity politics. Too often these conversations are completely presumptive.

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chucksmash9mo ago

> That there's any cultural "degenerative debauchery" is an extraordinary claim. Can you back up this claim with evidence?

What's the sense in asking for examples? If one person sees ubiquitous cultural decay and the other says "this is fine," I think the difference is down to worldview. And for a pessimist and an optimist to cite examples at one another is unlikely to change the other's worldview.

If a pessimist said, "the opioid crisis is deadlier than the crack epidemic and nobody cares," would that change the optimist's mind?

If a pessimist said, "the rate of suicide has increased by 30% since the year 2000," would that change the optimist's mind?

If a pessimist said, "corporate profits, wealth inequality, household debt, and homelessness are all at record highs," ...?

And coming from the other side, all these things can be Steven Pinker'd if you want to feel like "yes there are real problems but actually things are better than ever."

There was a book that said something about "you will recognize them by their fruit." If these problems are the fruit born of our culture, it's worth asking how we got here instead of dismissing it with "What do you know that the anthropologists and sociologists don't?"

komali2OP9mo ago

Sure some things are subjective but wide-ranging and vague claims are unactionable and therefore imo should simply be ignored. If someone's going to say something like that I think it's worth challenging them to get specific and actionable.

I also wholeheartedly disagree that, vaguely, diversity has something to do with the reduction of material conditions, or gay people, or whatever tf, so I wanted to allow the op the opportunity to be demonstrably wrong. They wouldn't take it of course, because there's no evidence for what they claim, because it's a ridiculous assertion.

The reasons things are they way they are today are identifiable and measurable. Rent is high because mostly because housing is an investment vehicle and supply is locked by a functional cartel. Homelessness is high mostly because of a lack of universal healthcare. Crime is continually dropping despite what the media says, and immigrants commit a lower crime per capita than any other demographic group - but the jails remain full because the USA engages in a demonstrably ineffective retributive justice system.

I'm so tired of conservatives walking around flinging every which way their feelings as facts. Zizek has demonstrated the potential value of a well considered conservative ideology, and unfortunately today all we get from that side is vague (or explicit) bigotry.

The OP didn't just claim that there's cultural degeneracy happening (which again, they didn't definite very well), they blamed real-world outcomes on it. That's a challengeable premise.

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