It is hardly a hot take to proclaim that we are in a period of hyper-tribalism. Admittedly, I have only been on earth 31 years and have a tentative view on what happened here before I was around. Relative to even a few years ago, though, it feels like polarization around some (not all!) culture war issues has dramatically heightened, and the dial on general moral panic has been turned up past 11. If you want an explanation of why that might be, here’s a good Ross Douthat take.
Related to tribalism, I have been thinking a lot recently about the concept of “cancel culture” and the general reflex of using the language of culture to ascribe a set of behaviors to an alleged tribe. I can’t put my finger exactly on why this is happening. My best guess is that the framing of a lot of our issues, especially race, has adopted a critical theory lens where individual agency is de-emphasized relative to “systemic” factors that bake problems into the social cake. In this view, human agency is not just bounded by certain taboos which are near-universal, but also is bounded by arbitrary cultural preferences and beliefs which are imposed by groups with disproportionate power.
It’s not like cultural framing wasn’t a thing in the past. But in a prior era, “culture” in this sort of context might have been interchangeable with “climate” (think “culture of fear” or “culture of violence”) to express an ambient condition as opposed to a defining pejorative quality of someone else’s team. I can’t say definitively that there was a break, but it does seem like we had a semantic shift where these terms were no longer comparable and culture took over.
Related to tribalism, I have been thinking a lot recently about the concept of “cancel culture” and the general reflex of using the language of culture to ascribe a set of behaviors to an alleged tribe. I can’t put my finger exactly on why this is happening. My best guess is that the framing of a lot of our issues, especially race, has adopted a critical theory lens where individual agency is de-emphasized relative to “systemic” factors that bake problems into the social cake. In this view, human agency is not just bounded by certain taboos which are near-universal, but also is bounded by arbitrary cultural preferences and beliefs which are imposed by groups with disproportionate power.
It’s not like cultural framing wasn’t a thing in the past. But in a prior era, “culture” in this sort of context might have been interchangeable with “climate” (think “culture of fear” or “culture of violence”) to express an ambient condition as opposed to a defining pejorative quality of someone else’s team. I can’t say definitively that there was a break, but it does seem like we had a semantic shift where these terms were no longer comparable and culture took over.
Cancel culture is a well known example of this label. The cancellers are understood to be a far left group of gatekeepers - usually in media or other cultural institutions - who are hypersensitive to any perceived affront to disfavored groups and who believe in expulsion rather than contrition. If this sounds hyperbolic, it is because it is. I’m increasingly convinced by Will Wilkinson’s argument that cancel culture is a bad label and all we really have are individual examples of cancellation which may or may not be justified based on the circumstances surrounding each event. What’s interesting is that some of the loudest voices against supposed cancel culture come from an ideologically cloistered group of right wing politicians and cultural commentators. What should we take away from that?
I’m not here to debate the merits of cancellation or specific cases, though. I am actually here to talk about car culture.
I am not meaning to pick on Kevin Burke. He’s a great advocate for development and pro-growth policy in the Bay Area. But we had a brief exchange on Twitter yesterday which feels emblematic of the culture label reflex. Here’s what he had to say:
My response basically was that I don’t know what car culture is and am skeptical that such a thing exists. Yet it is a popular thing for a subset of the YIMBY community that is Very Online to constantly cite anecdotes of their pedestrian encounters with angry drivers as evidence of the existence of a “car culture.” This feels like a great illustration of how absurd it is to take a set of individual behaviors, tie them up with a bow, and call it a culture. In this case and others, the alleged culture in question is nefarious, uniform in its thinking, and defined as such by its enemies.
Let’s consider the two sides here.
In one corner are drivers, who it is safe to say are most people. They generally espouse some mix of desires for the urban landscape that would make being a pedestrian or cyclist more attractive but also would like parking and wide open arteries that enable vehicle use. These are clearly in tension with one other, and this is why we have public policy to adjudicate these interests. Some of these drivers are assholes and like to yell at pedestrians. Some are not. Some of the assholes might like bike lanes in theory. Some of the nice people might really wish the whole city had free parking. What we do know for sure is that almost everyone believes cars are useful in at least some cases and shouldn’t be banned from San Francisco.
In the other corner we have a subset of YIMBYs who put “ban cars” in their Twitter bio and regularly decry car culture when they get yelled at by a driver or have a near-collision (which, to be fair, warrant some anger!). They are a very small group with extremely homogenous ideological commitments. Most of them are, in some form, activists. They find themselves constantly meeting and strategizing with other activists in their small ideological universe.
Now tell me who is the culture.
Like everything else in human relations, this is complicated. I don’t doubt that some views are widely shared. I also think that the world defies categorization. If anything, the expansion of knowledge and connectivity afforded by the internet age should make this more obvious, not less. I am going to continue to mull over some of our ascendant cultural framing, and one question I will first ask myself is whether “culture” is a better label for the accused, or the accuser.
- Cameron Parker