Culture War Kills Independent Thinking

And without independent thinking, we will never get to the truth

In recent months, I have been talking a lot about how much I oppose the culture wars, and the fact that I hold both sides responsible for it. Today, I want to talk about why I'm so opposed to the culture wars. The most fundamental reason why I'm vehemently opposed to the culture wars is that it kills independent thinking. People on both sides of the culture wars are often brainwashed to follow the standard narrative of their side on every hot button issue, without truly thinking for themselves where the truth is in each case. There are several ways the culture war dynamic makes independent thinking impossible. I will outline each of them.

Firstly, the us-vs-them tribalist dynamic hampers independent thinking. The mindset of wanting to 'own' your opponents all the time is simply incompatible with a commitment to finding out the truth. Those with this mindset simply can't accept that the other side can be partly right too, which is actually the case more often than not. Secondly, because of the need to defeat your opponents at all costs, everything becomes justifiable. In the quest to defeat the other side, unsound ideas become accepted. Biased reporting, half-truths and semi-lies become accepted and normalized, as long as they are deemed 'useful', even if they actually have a harmful effect on real lives and/or broader society. Individuals are dehumanized, decency and compassion are dispensed with, as long as your side 'wins'. I am worried that in real life, we have already gotten to this phase. In extremely-online circles, things are much more advanced, as I will discuss later on.

Once a mindset where winning is more important than the truth is established, we enter the next phase. Bad faith actors, often with hidden (or not so hidden) extremist agendas come in to take advantage of the dynamic, to push their agendas. Unsound and dangerous ideas, from critical anarchism to religious authoritarianism and outright racism, ideas that would be swiftly rejected under normal circumstances, often find receptive audiences among dedicated culture warriors looking for the next tool to attack their opponents with. The process of rational debate and assessment (as to whether the idea conforms with the truth) is effectively bypassed. This is how extreme ideas get to enter the mainstream.

Finally, the aforementioned dynamics eventually lead to the loss of a shared understanding of reality rooted in the objective truth. Once we reach this point, it becomes almost impossible for those on opposite sides to have a productive conversation. An endless stalemate ensures, further encouraging all the aforementioned dynamics. The truth is compromised further and further, and biased reporting and half-truths eventually evolve into basically outright lies. This is how we get to the crisis of people becoming unable to discern the truth at all. I believe the extremely-online segment of the Western world is already at this phase, which is why online discourse is so toxic.

To halt and reverse this progression, and to return to a healthy society where there is a rational discourse rooted in the objective truth, we must put an end to the culture wars. The culture wars must be ended at all costs as a matter of emergency, because there is no other way out. We need to act before dehumanizing other individuals and disregarding the truth becomes normalized forever.