Saying you can trace everything back to culture does not imply that you can trace everything back to our culture, let alone a particular sliver of it. And even if you could, it would still not follow that we have that influence now, at this point in the conflict, so at most the venting and arguing about the situation now could be said to maybe possibly indirectly contribute to some future conflict.
Indeed, there is no causality between what we're typing here right now and what is happening now in Ukraine. In that sense, it has "no effect on the conflict". However :
1) Yes, I do relate remote world events to "our culture" in the sense that I relate them to the global cultural ecosystem as a whole, of which "our" (whose?) "culture" is a part. Pragmatically, a person can vote for Putin partly because "even the USA" elect Trump or because "even his US gamer community" praises Putin as the saviour-of-white-schlong. We're all each others peers, nowadays (to varying degrees : a very closed full dictatorship à la North Corea isn't affected by global discussions to the same degree as a free speech liberal democracy, and Russia is somewhere in-between). In fact, Trump's election did also bolster extreme-right votes in many unrelated countries. And cultural sociopolitical currents à la #metoo or #gamergate do affect public debates and cultural sensitivities throughout the world. Money wouldn't be invested in troll farms without these causalities.
2) So many things have long term effects, you could prevent any action by using its lack of immediate result to delegitimize it. "It's not our fault anymore" skips directly to "the consequences would be too far later". The choice of focusing on immediacy is, itself, a convenient way to escape the notion of interconnection and responsibility. Again, as I said, there are practical reasons to escape these notions (forum cohesion), but it's a little cheat. And it hides the fact that today's Putin has been (partly, indirectly) the consequence of decades of international praise, and that tomorrow's putinoïds are the consequences of the same values being still fetishized. For me, the shame of Ukraine's war is also carried by remote admirers of Putin and of what he represents, and so is the responsibility for future manifestations of (geo)political True Manhood™. And this doesn't leave my eyes when I look at people around me. But I know that they'd never feel shame for it. The 20th century was full of mutual admiration (and more than that : emulation !) between different autocrats promoting the same values, and the praised turned to hostility when the geopolitical ambitions started competing. "
They're our broth... wait, down with these guys, we have nothing in common !".
Here's my question: what doesn't this apply to? If everything is downstream of culture, doesn't that mean every topic can be defended this way? Once we discard distinctions based on both size of influence and direct/indirect, I see no limiting principle. Why can I say, using the same logic, that a bitter argument about Liz Phair's Exile in Guyville is part of achieving gender parity in the Middle East?
In a way it does. Feminist movements in Middle East, even though their forms and priorities differ from western feminism, are not unrelated to the models displayed in Europe or the USA. As I said above, there are variations depending on the scales of public discourses and the permeability of a given culture (I wouldn't equal a confidential argument about Liz Phair to a broad public dispute on social networks, also different societies engage with global/foreign debates to varying degrees). But such debates shape dominant mainstream values, and dominant mainstream values color the world. They form consensuses that are referred to in various countries, through various forms of diffusionism. The world tends to frown, nowadays, on black slave trade or native american genocides, and that stems from individual actions, discussions, interrogations, debates, elections, jurisprudence, etc. And this, already way before the popularity of online international arguments. Ideas and worldviews travel.
There are few things that it wouldn't apply to. Abortion rights are currently the stake of geopolitical domino games, where the pieces get pushed by local public debates, and shifting senses of normalcy. What affects public worldviews affects policies, and in turn these affects other countries discourses (political discourses are full of "see what happens over there" and "but we would be the only ones to").
but individual responsibilities have chokepoints around things like elections, and between those chokepoints many of them are swamped.
Elections are the expression of public sentiments, and public sentiments are formed through ordinary interactions throughout the years. A racist being elected or not is less the effect of a vote being cast than the effect of years hearing from peers that racism is or isn't okay (and I mean racism as the content, not as the label). Votes used to give punctual visibility to dominant values, now these are permanently visible on the internet.
If you think I have some delusion (or even eventual expectation of) "cohesion," then we're not on the same page at all.
You actually
do have cohesion, and you have a
requirement of cohesion. If the forum started bursting into full scale open hatred it simply wouldn't be a forum, it wouldn't be controllable at all. And the same goes with society : you wouldn't be able to go buy bread if you knew everyone's opinions and deeds and realized the continuity between their opinions and the actual practical real-life sufferings that result from them. These are realities we sweep under the carpet. We keep out of sight the death of homeless people, we hide asylum seekers in remote camps or drown them in the sea, we live off bombings and starvation, we deprive gender-atypical people from their own lives and identities, we scorch the Earth, and it's all remote abstractions and lolz down the chain of votes, policies and everyday attitudes. Bring up these ghosts, show who gloat or pride themselves for their own indifference, and you've got a society of cynical monsters you're supposed to be polite with, far from the screams, gurgles and suicides they cheer for. Civility becomes impossible, or even obscene. So we mask it all. We don't think of it. It's simply a necessity of life. We can't afford newton balls to bring back our consequences. And on internet forums, it means that those who are for or against bombs being dropped on a village have to get along in the name of their hobby, as this is more important to their lives than children being burned alive ("come on we won't ruin the friendly atmosphere over mere differences of opinion").
And frankly, your job is quite easy here, compared to places where discussions are about whether ukrainians deserve the bombs. There's actually a vague local consensus on this. My gripe is about more remote, abstract elements (the deniability of indirect responsibility/complicity about events - events which themselves are, at least, deplored and disowned).
So yes, in practice, there
is a maintained cohesion on this forum. What would be profound antagonisms are actually vastly put aside, in this forum's day-to-day activities.
(Also, I don't really see people "bristle" at the rules. Not even me. I admit their necessity while feeling bitter about what it shows and hides about mankind.)
The fallacy is that we would change that ugly and awkward reality if only we could confront it on your forum, etc. Let's forget the layers and filters between our trickles of culture and world events. Let's concede their importance totally: even then, there is still the assumption that arguing about something here will produce better "culture" in any particular instance. I'd have thought the last few years would have obliterated that notion. It certainly isn't something that can be assumed.
Indeed, I doubt that a political flamewar would change anything. But not because of how remote (in time, scale, space) it is from the consequences : again, this is the voting fallacy but upstream. Sensitivities are shaped by everyday discussions and mirrored attitudes, by values circulations, by subcultural normativities - votes are just the end result of it. But it would be pointless because flamewars are sterile clashes of void rhetorical violence. It would bring the forum down without changing anyone's opinion (on the plus side, it would shatter an impression of tacit assent, on the minus side it would only polarize over-invested postures construed as core identities). In this zero-sum context, skipping the whole mess probably brings a same result at a reduced cost. And as I said, the shame that I'd consider legitimate from Putin fans (or ex-Putin fans), the reconsideration of values that should stem from it, would certainly never occur : there are too many cognitive devices shielding people from it.
But I disagree about the rationale for these rules. I disagree about this idea that words on a forum are disconnected from world events, and that places where a dominant consensus go one way or the other play no role. I think that a community being defined by one consensus (one way or the other) plays a role as a jigsaw piece in the vast mosaic of global public discussions. There is, currently, a dominant consensus in the western world about the illegitimacy of Putin's invasion. This has an impact very different from the one that the opposite consensus would have. It legitimizes and encourages ukrainian resistance ("the world is with us") and it opens a potential window of doubt for russians who access it ("woah, the world sees us as the baddies there"). Ukraine feeling let down by the world's consensus, warmongering Russians feeling vindicated by the whole planet, would shift political attitudes -slightly or dramatically- differently there and there. And this consensus is an ocean of droplet (with a dominant color). The same could go for many things that are unfortunately less consensual.
I'm not promoting this or that forum policy. I'm pointing at the fictions it preserves, and why it needs to preserve it. I think it has reasons to be, and I think it has also rationalization that go beyond these reasons. My point is simply to lift the carpet's corner, point at what we hide, and why we hide it, and drop it. We hide it because discussing our responsibilities would be too costly. But letting the question aside on these forums, considering it off topic", is different from claiming "hey, anyway nothing of it is related to anyone from us here, we're too far and too small". This is, itself, a specific stance, an opinion left above the carpet. It belongs either under it, or next to the opposite reminder : putinism has been legitimized, glorified and reinforced by western forumers for years, no matter their current stances on Ukraine.
(And while political, that's not even a left vs right thing. Putin has supported anti-establishment, divisive currents in many countries, some right-winged, others left-winged, inducing the same forgiveness or praise in return. What I don't forgive to trumpists, I don't forgive either to french politicians and militants who are supposed to represent my values. That's even more nauseating to me, and I really hope those get crushed in the next elections.)
Yoda, feel free to remove this post if you consider it leaves the "meta" level too often.
Closed Thread
Please, stop this!
