By my secret formula, the optimal amount of work time for me to spend in culture-war beefing is about 12%. Strikes the right balance among various considerations. The range of the formula is between 4% to about 80%. Below 4% is psychotic escapism, above 80% is terminal PTSD.
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It takes either more money than god, or extreme naivete to conclude that 0% is the right level of investment. It takes suicidal lack of self-preservation instincts to go over 80% consistently (spiking past 80% under direct personal threat is of course different)
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In an earlier life, in a different culture war, I once used to spar regularly with a communications prof (humanities, not engineering) who was relentlessly hostile and adversarial, and "my side" used to joke that for a communications expert he was bad at it
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We were the naive ones then, uncritically assuming that the purpose of communications expertise was to foster harmonious, civil communications. That's like assuming cooks should only learn to cook sweet things, not savory.
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I was 20 years younger than, and it took me a few rounds to figure out that duh, playing nice and playing well are not the same thing. And that playing well and playing dirty are not the same thing. Like it or not, principled aggression is a regime of skilled communication.
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I think that's where my be-slightly-evil stance was born, and though much of that playbook as I've written about it rests on what you might call "Jesuit tactics" that are superficially civil and nice, there's definitely room in it for being tactically obnoxious etc.
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Replying to
I'm definitely nowhere near as aggro or beefy as say Taleb, but I'm definitely not in a zone of zen retreat either.
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One of the funniest things about social media is the (unironic) "fite me IRL" tack of people uncomfortable with specifically verbal aggression wanting to move conflict to what for them would be less dirty, more honorable zones.
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Humans probably evolved language at least in part to expand the possibilities for conflict, not to pre-empt or resolve it. Language is physical conflict by other means, where it can be sustained longer. Politics is war by other means.
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I also appreciate the... textual warfare contributions of meme-makers etc though I'm too old to learn those weapons. It's boring old words for me most of the time, with the occasional PG-rated gif thrown in.
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At some level, I'm glad there's enough people left in the fray instead of in self-care retreat to keep the conflict going. The culture wars may be tiresome, tiring, and in a sort of terminally futile endgame for those at 70%+ investment in it. But it's not a made-up war.
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There are real issues being litigated through the conflict. So a bad idea to premature shut down the conflict simply because many need time to heal, or because many combatants are now part of a culture-war industrial complex with vested career interests in keeping it going.
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This is why, even though I only occasionally jump in to throw a punch or two, I have no patience for those calling for a detente for the sake of detente, or civility for the sake of civility.
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Retreat to lick your wounds if you want, but don't pretend the conflict is over just because you, personally, are tired of the fighting, and don't personally have enough at stake. Retreat is a luxury available to some, not a sign of superior moral wisdom or higher virtues.
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