“Culture wars aren’t a distraction, they’re a battle over everything”
Adam Ramsay
You’ve heard about it already. In fact, if you’re part of Western society you’re likely living it. The heated debates, the protests, the viral hashtags, the impassioned calls for change. You’ve witnessed the rise of political correctness, cancel culture, and the endless stream of opinion pieces from all sides of the political spectrum. Free speech, gender identity, immigration, body positivity, disability rights, prejudice, bigotry, oppression; various -phobias, various -isms.
Welcome to the culture wars. Social justice. Being, or not being, “woke”. The sudden flaring of passionate disagreement overtaking your social media then dying down to be eclipsed by the next hot-button issue.
It’s easy to dismiss these things as momentary distractions fuelled by a conflict-hungry media cycle and audiences waiting to be outraged. It’s easy to see them as trivial compared to more pressing issues like geopolitical conflict and where technology is taking us. The issues at the heart of the culture wars often appear to be niche concerns that affect only a small portion of the population. But the closer you look, the more you find that the conflicts behind these apparent distractions permeate the diversity of public discourse. And, if you look very closely, you will find the same conflict running through them all.
For various reasons – sensationalist media, polarising politics, the proliferation of online discourse, and shifting social norms – the culture wars are increasingly pervasive. Whether you realise it or not, they are moulding the world around you. They affect the way we communicate, the values we hold dear, and the direction our societies are headed. They challenge our assumptions, test our values, and force us to confront difficult questions about who we are and who we want to be.
And, at their heart is a fundamental conflict between competing worldviews that shape how people understand themselves, and even what it means to understand something.
But how do we navigate them?
How do we make sense of these conflicts, let alone resolve them?
What if the “battle over everything” came down to just one paradox?
This site’s purpose
This site aims to demonstrate an underlying conflict behind the culture wars – that is: the critical problem. That problem lies beyond the surface-level debates. In identifying it, we seek to equip the reader to understand and recognise this problem readily in debate with others or when examining their own positions.
Recognising the critical problem is an efficient shortcut to understanding the key points of an issue; effectively doing away with the need for much self-debate, or debate with others.
Because the critical problem is a paradox, where it goes unaddressed or disguised it fosters patterns of thoughts and argument that are ultimately non-rational. When people unknowingly think and act from a non-rational position which they assume to be rational – i.e. corresponding to reality – suffering ensues.
This site is a resource to help the reader de-program and inoculate themselves and others from this sort of thinking with compassion and clarity. It aims to provide a simple but effective light out of the shadows which inform so much of the current “battle”.
Where to start?
Do you know what Critical Theory is? Most people don’t, so if not, you can spend a few minutes reading our summary.
Do you know what “woke” means? There have been several definitions; here we offer a new one.
Then, take a look at the problem, which is explained in two different modes.