(no subject)

[eirias]

I have been increasingly obsessed with the so-called "culture war" in recent months. NYT Columnist David Brooks is the one who first alerted me to it as a national phenomenon; although I think some of his readings of culture are shallow and unhelpful, they do strike a familiar chord. I read Thomas Frank's "What's the Matter with Kansas?" this summer, and again, it was simplistic in some places and glossed over some details that might have been useful (e.g., explain to me again which recent Democratic initiatives were intended to help poor rural people?), but there is the sense that he is on to something.

Actual rural people seem to have this sense too. Within two days of the election I had two separate conversations with Christian acquaintances from northern Wisconsin who said they felt left out and belittled by Democrats. (One of them described himself bashfully as "kind of a Jesus freak" - I may not agree with your religion, but man, no one should have to be ashamed of it.) The broad similarity between the 2000 county-by-county electoral map and the 2004 one gives some credence to the idea that people are voting by identity and not by platform, since platforms changed completely and yet Bush took most of the same places he took before. And if I'm honest with myself, I have to say that I do it too, to an extent. I want a candidate who is like me in some ways (though hopefully a lot more clueful about economics and foreign policy and uh, pretty much everything else).

So, we have many public thinkers saying that current politics is best viewed in context of this culture war between poor-rural-Christian-traditionalists and rich-urban-secular-intellectuals (or something like that), and we have some data that seem to fall in line. It's interesting that there is such an apparent relationship between theory and practice, to be sure. But how can we know, at this point, where lies causality? Is it possible that the pundits, by casting everything in terms of a culture war, have stoked the fires of discomfort in people who wouldn't have otherwise noticed? The particular polar culture war thus described, as a potential meme, has everything going for it - it's simple and intuitive, it puts a lot of people in a group they feel sure is comprised of "the good guys," and it can explain a lot that otherwise seems inexplicable (e.g., why those other people disagree with you when you are so obviously right). Would my landlord have ever felt disrespected by Democrats if he hadn't read that it were so? Does he even know any liberals other than his tenants?

I'm not sure how in principle you'd tell the difference between "our inherent differences have led us to this culture war" and "our writers have led us to this culture war." But insofar as the latter is a possibility, I think I'm going to have to conclude that a little knowledge is an even more dangerous thing when it is in the hands of a pundit.

Comments

[ksledge.livejournal.com]

I acknowledge the culture war, too, and also don't know everything about it -- why is it there in the first place, how does the "other side" see things, etc.
I've seen all of the "United States of Canada" and "Jesusland" maps, the "New America" maps, etc that have basically involved the "blue" states seceding from the union and making their own country or adding it on to Canada. I myself have been guilty of the, "who ARE these people who live in middle America?" and "who are these people who voted for George Bush?" comments.
My fiance showed me an article about New Yorkers' reactions to the election and there were a few obnoxious quotes. One of them said something like, "people who are more proficient in what they do gravitate towards cities." Finally there was someone who got it right -- she said that if the "red" states don't embrace diversity, we need to embrace them and go on a tour of America spreading our values of diversity and acceptance. Frankly, I've always found it completely hypocritical of liberals to call themselves open-minded yet to be unable to understand or accept conservative and religious viewpoints. Then again, it's just as hypocritical for Christians to be so hateful of groups of people.
Basically, I think something needs to be done in order to unite this country. Bush did the opposite in his last four years. Hopefully in the next four he can be a little more moderate and get everyone to come together.

[thekat03.livejournal.com]

it is so easy to say i'm open-minded, but it's so much harder to constantly practice it
how do i be open-minded when someone is trying to convince me something that has been proven wrong by multiple reputable studies, for example?
how do i be open-minded when someone is trying to impose his or her beliefs on my way of life?
i know, i know, i'm trying to impose my beliefs on their way of life too, but it doesn't make it any easier to figure out

[ksledge.livejournal.com]

I feel exactly the same way, even though I just criticized people like us. It's so hard to get my mind around, but all of us need to try. We can't give up and say, "those people are weird".

This in particular gets to me: "how do i be open-minded when someone is trying to convince me something that has been proven wrong by multiple reputable studies, for example?" I, too, have a ton of difficulty being open-minded in such situations!

[tiurin.livejournal.com]

Perhaps the problem here is how we tend to define "open minded."

Now, I know that ultimately, things come down to definitions which often end up being extremely opinion-based. But I think of "open minded" as being receptive to ideas, in that we can use reason and critical thinking to evaluate them instead of giving them an outright dismissal without any thought.

I do not think of it as giving every single idea, worthy or not, equal time and equal consideration.

I think I've read someone using the analogy that an open mind is like having a home with a well-kept exterior/interior and a "welcome" doormat and a willingness to answer the doorbell. It is not, however, flinging all the doors and windows open to allow all and sundry to come in.

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

Sometimes I think that the culture wars came from geographical mobility.

No, really. It used to be a lot harder to move substantially away from one's hometown, and not so many people did it. This meant that much more random sets of people lived in particular places, and naturally random sets of people have disparate views, and so everyone knew people they didn't agree with but they still had to get along well enough to have a community.

Now we have very high levels of geographical mobility and -- people being people, and thus prone to seeking out others of their own kind -- they move to where they're comfortable. Where people are Like Them. Right-thinking, you know? And it becomes increasingly possible to simply not know people who disagree with you, or at least not to know them as any more than quaint curiosities, the token conservative in your social group.

This drives people's views to become more extreme; there's no counter to test them, or even to help them empathize -- to show that Us v. Them isn't really as us-y or them-y as we think; that people might have totally different political views and yet not be ravening inbred hate-spewing gay-killing weirdos.

Not that I'm knocking geographical mobility. Not at all! I'm glad for it. I'm knocking the human tendency to self-segregate, and I think mobility allows us to bring out the worse parts of that tendency.

[eirias.livejournal.com]

I have had the same thought.

All of this, though, assumes that what the pundits are describing is "real" and organic - that it comes from a source other than "I heard on TV that the liberals on the coast are arrogant and hate us." I mean, hell, I didn't know it until I read it in the newspaper ;). I'm still wondering - to what extent is that a good assumption?

[eldan.livejournal.com]

Though I am worried about the extent to which this self-segregation is happening, I'm no longer convinced that geography is the main factor. Looking at that purple counties map (http://www.princeton.edu/~rvdb/JAVA/election2004/purple_america_2004b.gif) again, although there is a cluster of solidly red counties in the centre, much of the territory that voted in Bush (notably the old South) is more mixed than that, with an overall wash of purple and no clumps of red that are large enough to be more than a couple of towns away from somewhere blue.

I think the self-segregation is very real, but it has more to do with choices of who to socialise with. Just as an anecdotal example, my county (Cuyahoga) voted 2:1 for Kerry, but the number of Bush voters in my main social circle is precisely 0, and the proportion of Bush voters among all the people I know well enough to have an idea how they would vote is far less than 1/3. It still means I have very few opportunities to talk politics with anyone who disagrees with me fundamentally, but at least it's more possible than it would be if the geographical segregation were as extreme everywhere as it is in Chicago or the Oklahoma panhandle (I'm just picking the most extreme areas in each direction that I can name from looking at a map with no labels).

[ksledge.livejournal.com]

true -- I'm NOT going to be open-minded about the opinion that gay people make bad parents and turn their kids gay, because studies show it's just NOT TRUE. However, I feel like it's important for us to be open-minded to someone's religion that might cause that person to have those views. When someone tells me they are against gay marriage, I ask why. There are a few logical arguments out there if you base them on a set of assumptions (that I don't think are true). Same goes for abortion -- I am very adamantly pro-choice, but at the same time it's very easy for me to understand why others would be adamantly pro-life.

But yes-- you are totally right. There is a limit to open-mindedness! I'm just more saying that a lot of the city people are very condescending of the country people and they don't take the time to see the country person's point of view. (Neither does the country person do this, but that's not my point.)

[eirias.livejournal.com]

Yes, the purpleness of that map indicates that "the northeast and coastal regions versus the south and middle" is too simplistic. But geographical mobility isn't just about large-scale moving; I suspect that if you zoomed in on the map and did a neighborhood-by-neighborhood scan, it would start to pixellate more. And the deal with modern culture is not only that it's easier to move, it's that it's easier to find people who are like you, no matter how big a freak you are. Hello, alt.sex.disney...

And I think - the accuracy of pundits aside for the moment - it's incontrovertible that people tend to cluster around people who make them feel comfortable. I've got token friends whose assumptions about the world are quite different from mine - some tell racist jokes, some have favorite "horror stories" of the time they got hit on by a homosexual, some think school is bullshit and go out of their way to cheat the system... and the best way I can describe outings with these people is tiring. I feel physically and emotionally drained after spending just a few hours interacting socially with people who say things to which there is no socially-appropriate reaction other than smiling weakly through gritted teeth. It is eye-opening, but I can tell you that at the end of the day I don't typically feel very motivated to do it again. It makes a person feel terribly lonely.

[ksledge.livejournal.com]

I really like this point, but I totally disagree with it. I think that the environment cultivates the attitude in the first place. Thus I think that social mobility has helped. I do think that within a city or small area people tend to self-segregate, but I think this was always the case.

On the other hand, people do like to talk only to people who agree with them, and only hear about information that confirms their beliefs. I think that through media, people have had a much easier time doing this of recent. Previously, everyone in a town used to read the same newspaper, and most newspapers reported pretty objective journalism. The part about newspapers is still pretty much true, but the part about people reading them is not. People watch TV now...which they kind of did before, but now they can watch Fox news if they want. More importantly, people get their news from websites and blogs now. There are internet communities to find people who think just like you do. I believe THAT is where everyone has run off to, and that's precisely why people's views aren't being challenged. Even if you read a blog that points only to legitimate news, it's still a filter where that individual writing the blog may have chosen among many news articles to find the ones he agrees with.

So, in short, I don't blame social mobility. I blame the many non-objective media sources. Fox news is the biggest offender on TV and happens to offend on the pro-Bush side of things, but in the internet liberals are at least as bad with weblogs and whatnot. (Not that they claim to be totally objective on such blogs, but people read them as if they were.)

[rms10.livejournal.com]

At the same time, there were some rural counties that went for Kerry (i.e. my mother's home county) -- and that county is filled with traditional, church-going Christians (many of whom I'm related to). Right there is an example of voters who decided that the Democrats were the better choice, whether it was because of the war or the economy. And I'm sure that plenty of them dislike abortion and gay marriage. (Also note that while Kerry won Michigan, the anti-gay marriage amendment passed 60-40.)

I think it is possible to get a lot of Christians on board with the Democrats, by pointing out how the Democrats help the down-trodden (or, at least, how the Republicans hurt them more, which may be more accurate). At the same time, there is a group of fundamentalist Christians whom you'll never get, because they feel that allowing such sin as abortion and gay marriage will cause God's judgement to rain down upon us, as it did in Sodom. Those Christians are not a terribly large fraction of Christians (although they may be a fairly large fraction of the weekly-attending Christians), so maybe the Democrats should stop worrying about them and focus on the rest.

[rms10.livejournal.com]

Note that I should have said "observant religious folk" instead of "Christians", although I imagine Christians veer Republican in higher proportions than other major religions in the U.S.

[kirin]

In terms of "pixelization" - I dunno. In my usual social group here, I only know of a couple Bush voters out of 20-30 people, so, definite minority. But in my neighborhood (I live about 15 minutes drive away from the local centers of liberalism for house pricing reasons) the Bush/Kerry signs were split 50/50 to within margin of error, and there were a lot of 'em.

I suspect this is often true these days in areas of moderate to high population - nieghborhoods are based more on price, convenience and other factors, but then people will self-segregate in terms of who they actually hang out with. (In over three years of living here, we've gone to a significant "social" event for people in our neightborhood exactly once - and we didn't talk much politics.)

[darlox.livejournal.com]

It's worth mentioning that one possibility is that there is no culture war, but rather a more general decay of culture across the board. With the advent of air conditioning, cable TV and the Internet, people don't even know their neighbor's names anymore, much less their beliefs. Via any electronic medium, you can gauge someone's stance on an issue, but it's difficult to form a broad-based picture of who they actually are.

How can society form something that can be rightly called a Culture when the cohesive bonds between the members of that society are actively weakening?

Despite the increasing secularity of American society's movers and shakers, any message sent out through the media, blogs, classrooms, etc etc etc, is automatically a hobbled message. There's too many options, too many conflicting viewpoints, too much line noise, if you will. Religion tends to have a fairly consistent message that doesn't decay much across geographic or temporal distances. While there may be divergent messages across religions and sects, your average religious person is FAR less apt to switch from Catholocism to Hindu as they are to switch from CBS to Fox news.

So, it follows that more religious and tightly-knit rural communities would arguably have a more defined sense of culture than bohemian NYC residents. I hope there ISN'T a culture war, because if there is, the "blue state" folks may very well be fighting it unarmed.

wag the dog of culture war

[cognative.livejournal.com]

I personally thing the "culture war" is hyped up. They (pundits) take two extreme positions and make it sound like everyone in the USA must subscribe one of the two. As if people's attitudes are a bimodal distribution with fundamentalist christians on the right and radical liberals on the left. I'd say it's more of one big bell curve with a lot of people in the middle.

The dems really ought to start using religion more often. Despite my personal aversion I think it's a great idea. There's tons of theology to back them up. They just need someone with a flexible interpretation of the Bible to back them up. Shit I could do it. I've got enough Biblical knowledge to know what parts can be (mis)interpreted to their advantage.
And you know those simple country folk love a good bible verse :)

Re: wag the dog of culture war

[eirias.livejournal.com]

I personally thing the "culture war" is hyped up. They (pundits) take two extreme positions and make it sound like everyone in the USA must subscribe one of the two. As if people's attitudes are a bimodal distribution with fundamentalist christians on the right and radical liberals on the left. I'd say it's more of one big bell curve with a lot of people in the middle.

This is exactly what I'm wondering about - just as culture war fascinates me, I'm worried that I and my readers (who, from the above evidence, seem to have given this a good deal of thought lately, like me) are being taken in by the hype. Actually, it's totally an empirical question and I wonder where the data are on it? I scanned PsycINFO for "culture war," but only got 30-some odd hits. Some of them were sort of relevant (one looked at attitudes toward fundamentalist Christians, for instance), but a lot were not. I should probably check out sociology journals too; they might have stuff more relevant to people-en-masse.

[rshruti.livejournal.com]

NPR counts as liberal media, in that they tend to spin things in a liberal way. Yes, they include a lot of good information as well, but it's generally accepted that they are among the most liberal of the media.

I'd disagree about your reading of "newspapers previously." I have heard (but have no evidence right now) that in any mid-sized city you'd previously have several newspapers, and they wouldn't even pretend to be objective. Now you have newspapers that pretend to be objective but really aren't very.

Re: wag the dog of culture war

[cognative.livejournal.com]

Well now that I think about it let me edit my statement. The issue of a culture war depends on who counts as soldiers in said war. Any american citizen? Or any very politically active american citizen? My guess, and it's only that, is that more active people tend to have strong and disparate views. So within the people very involved in politics there IS a culture war. However within the general populace which includes people of marginal interest in politics there isn't so much of a break.

There, that sounds good and completly unfounded by anything other than conjecture :)

[leora.livejournal.com]

I agree that the baove plays a part. I think the internet will also play a part, but I'm not sure how yet. A lot of people don't socialize that much with the people in their geographical area, but in various little subsets of the net. And then you have both more ability to find like minded people, but also often more ability for someone from a radically different situation to voice their opinions. Or, for a bit of both. Ah, the liberal with similar beliefs as I have is telling me about the affects US actions are having on Australia... good to know.

The total affect of this will be - I have no clue. But I think it will have many affects. Possibly as many as the general tendency to move will have.

I think it helps if you define like-minded in many ways. For example, I get one set of beliefs perhaps when I hang out on poly communities, where I'm not likely to meet many Republicans, but some of them may think psych is a bunch of bogus science. Whereas, when I hang out in an INFJ community, many of them will believe a lot of bogus science is psych, but generally respect psychology, on the other hand, some of them are Republican. If I were in a group for every activity or sliver of myself, then I would meet a fairly good cross-section. And I do interact with some people with radically different beliefs through LiveJournal Support, since a desire to help others or enrich your community doesn't seem to be solely possessed by people of certain political orientations, age, sex, sexual orientation, state, country, race, etc. Although I rarely know what race people I know through the internet are.

Re: wag the dog of culture war

[rms10.livejournal.com]

No, that makes a lot of sense, because if there is a bell curve along the political spectrum, but the people at the ends are the most politically active (because they feel marginalized by the lump in the middle), you will get exaggerated conflict. This could be why moderate candidates -- i.e. John McCain -- rarely make it past the primaries, so we're left with two "extreme" candidates. (Note: I don't think Kerry was extreme, or even all that liberal, but I know others did.) So the people at the edges dominate the discussion, while the people in the middle roll their eyes. (Unless they're my mother, who seems to be getting more liberal out of spite.)