In the internet vs. culture debate, the internet is at some decided disadvantages. For instance, despite its losses of mindshare, culture still holds many of the traditional measures of status. Many intellectuals thus are afraid to voice the view that a lot of culture is a waste of time and we might be better off with more time spent on the internet. Furthermore, many of the responses to the tech critics focus on narrower questions of economics or the law, without realizing that what is at stake are two different visions of how human beings should think and indeed live. When that is the case, policymakers will tend to resort to their own value judgments, rather than listening to experts. For better or worse, the internet-loving generations do not yet hold most positions of political power (recall Zuckerberg’s testimony to Congress).
For a different perspective, Jordan Hall writes,
the dynamic of Culture War 2.0 shows up as one of intense fragmentation and disorientation, where none of our 20th Century techniques for generating social coherence stand up to the rapidly changing reality. From this level, the experience will likely be one of increasing chaos in all aspects of culture, society and individuality. If you are running a 20th Century sensemaker, it will feel like a descent into some flavor of madness.
Is Hall’s essay an insightful piece or a word salad? Maybe a bit of both. He links to a somewhat more digestible essay, by Peter Limberg and Conor Barnes.
We define a culture war as a memetic war to determine what the social facts are at the core of a given society, or alternatively, to determine society’s boundaries of the sacred and the profane. Political arguments have become indistinguishable from moral arguments, and one cannot challenge political positions without implicitly possessing suspect morals. This makes politics an exhausting and unproductive game to play, and it makes the culture war intractable.
What I take away from the latter two essays is that our culture is splintering. If our political system reflected this, then we would have many small parties.
Politics used to consist mostly of negotiation about interests. The legacy political parties used to be coalitions. Members with somewhat divergent interests were willing and able to work together and aim for common objectives. The median voter model was in force.
Today, politics is about cultural identity. That is not something that is negotiable. It does not lend itself to coalition politics.
Going back to Tyler’s post, I think that the denizens of legacy culture are not equipped to deal with the fragmentation that the Internet has wrought. So I think they are mostly at a disadvantage.
Centralized power (and cultural hierarchies that formed around it) was the most efficient form of organizing humans when information and education were costly (feudal, industrial eras).
With that competitive advantage gone, you see grotesque incumbents fighting over empty shells. It’s a process that may take a bit longer than our lifetimes, because incumbents still have control over powerful tools (primarily fiat money).
But at the end competitive emergent orders will become the norm, simply because of competitive evolution ejecting waste.
The Internet is unpriced congestion that is rapidly being priced.
I see this often, having to gain membership via fee for blocked web sites. We are dealing with the uncertainty of how to do cultural pricing, it will pass and the various cultures regrouped to be more politically efficient as pricing becomes efficient. The natural volatility of Morse’s law.
Do not panic. The solution is simple technology, tap your plastic smart card on the screen and pay an instant penny to read the post. Once that tech is established then we return to a much more accurate versions of the old cultures. Call it a chaotic moment of positive change.
“What I take away from the latter two essays is that our culture is splintering. If our political system reflected this, then we would have many small parties.”
I disagree. I think the split is more coherent than that, with one cultural group pushing in the direction of typical progressive / leftist programs and initiatives, and the other mostly aligned around the idea of opposing these moves and changes, and of coordinating around a political party existing to oppose and protect its constituency from predation at the hands of the other group.
“Today, politics is about cultural identity. That is not something that is negotiable. It does not lend itself to coalition politics.”
That doesn’t jive well with the old “High and Low vs the Middle” style of political analysis. Also, look at the functioning and effective progressive coalition of all those identity groups. You’ve got blacks, hispanics, immigrants (legal or not), other non-European racial groups, a numbe rof non-Christian groups (including Jews and Muslims with the well-known tensions between the two), unmarried women, non-normative sexualities, big unions public and private, and of coures the elite tiers of highly educated upper middle class whites particularly highly concentrated in the public-influence sectors. All of these groups are different enough in their lifestyles and personal interests – many of which are in conflict with rivalries that are hard to smooth over – that for them to cooperate together consistency is not just a classic but indeed astounding example of effective coalition-based politics based on a multiplicity of material and social status-based pay-offs to members of those groups.
Meanwhile, as above, there “everybody else” opposed to those pay-offs or whose interests of social status is threatened by the progressive agenda forms a natural if also somewhat rivalrous alliance that is in Newtownian reaction to progressive action.
Today, politics is about cultural identity.
No – only politics for the college educated indoctrinated PC-Klan.
Which is most Dem academia, Dem media, and Dem deep state.
The Blacks and Hispanics have been supporting Dems because of more “free money”. With Trump’s economy, more of these groups will be going Rep & jobs.
For a majority of those with college degrees, it’s not “the economy stupid”. It’s cultural identity and virtue signaling — to mostly other degree holders.
For the non-college majority, it IS the economy, for most of them.
This Dem 2020 will be most relevant in who gets most airtime after losing to Trump and before 2024.
The never-ending campaign, plus positioning for the NEXT campaign.
Politics today is about cultural identity? Or is it about racial and ethnic identity?