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An opponent and two proponents of marriage equality demonstrate in front of the Supreme Court of the United States in Washington DC, June 25, 2015 (Elvert Barnes)

In 1967, Timothy Leary told the Human Be-In of San Franciscos Gate Park to Turn on, tune in, drop out. It was a high point for counterculturalism, a crescendo of anti-establishment, anti-centrism that exploded into antiwar protests, race riots, civil rights marches and an definitive end of Americas 1950s cultural high.

It wasnt the beginning of the twentieths centurys culture wars, but it was the point by which it was impossible to ignore they were ongoing. They first stirred somewhere in the 1950s in the backrooms of Beatnik poetry slams and the road warrioring of juvenile delinquents as postwar youth experimented with the edges of their humanity in the safety of a democratic superpowers economic boom.

The term culture wars took some time to come about. In 1991, James Davison Hunter coined the term when he wrote about a split between progressive and orthodox views of morality (PDF), giving a label to the phenomenon that went back to the early 1960s. As social scientists delved into the subject, they realized that the clean progressive versus conservative split had more than a few subsets, complicating an already fractured social landscape.

That same year, William Strauss and Neil Howe published their book Generations, tracing American history through a four-cycle pattern of generational behavior that they would later develop into Generational Theory. Through the ebbs and flows of generations, some would engage in culture-shaking Awakenings, while others would find themselves forced to reorder society before it could unravel.

The former the Prophets of the Awakening generationcorrespond to the Baby Boomer generation, which the Pew Research Center defines as those born from 1947 to 1965. They started the culture wars, have fought them their whole lives and are now, as they approach retirement and mortality, fighting the final phase of it.

The latterthe Heros of the Crisiscorrespond to the Millennials, those born from 1980 to about 2005, according to the Pew Research Center. They grew up during the tumult of the culture wars, have spent their formative years picking and choosing the most useful aspects of them and are now, as they enter their early 30s, about to impose their worldview on politics and society.

But thats all broad and people will (rightfully) demand proof.

So lets examine how the Pew Research Center measures attitudes and approaches of the four living generations.

The Boomers and Millennials are the largest generations in the United States, making them formidable voting blocs. The Silent Generation is the oldest and therefore the smallest while Generation X is bigger than the Silent generation but still wedged between the Boomers and Millennials as a smaller slice of the pie.

In 2015, there were about 75 million Millennials, 74.9 million Boomers, 66 million Gen Xers and 28 million Silents.

From a mere demographic standpoint, the political and social weight of the Boomers will rapidly collapse after 2020. They will be eclipsed by Gen X in 2028, a mere three presidential elections away. As Millennials age, their voter turnout will also likely increase, adding weight to their demographic dominance.

Too right. But thankfully Pew has done work on the ideological approaches of the generations. They conform to the Strauss-Howe theory that Millennialsthe Hero archetypeswill close ranks culturally to preserve society.

Millennials are heavily Democratic; heavier than any other generation, with 54 percent favoring the Democrats and only 39 percent choosing the Republicans. Only the shrunken Silent generation is dominated by the Republicans; the Baby Boomers, as would be expected of culture warriors, split Democrat/Republican 44 to 44 percent.

Gen X has a 48-37 percent split as well, once more tilting the political field away from the Republican Party.

In other words, if these trends hold, we can expect that from 2020 onwards, Republicans will have increasingly tough election fights if theyre pinning their hopes on turning out a shrinking base of conservative Boomers. Thats already a narrow needle to thread, as shown by Hillary Clintons popular vote victory in 2016.

Not really. Political socialization happens in the teen years, with the most powerful shapers occurring at or around 18, according to a study from Columbia University.

While attitudes will shift marginally in response to events, fundamental approaches to politics wont. The only way the GOP will win Millennials is by changing their party platform to suit their core values, since Millennials wont be changing their minds about Trump, Bush, the War on Terror or many other of their formative events later on in their lives.

So what will Millennials want?

Beginning in the 2020s, as the culture warriors of the Baby Boomer generation lose steam, the outlines of this new America will emerge.

So what will that mean for Republicans and Democrats?

First, it wont necessarily mean the coming of a Democratic permanent majority. Millennials arent loyal enough to the Democratic brand for that; they can be won over by the Republican Party, or by a new third party, with the right planks.

But it is all bad news for neoliberal Democrats and Republicans who favor creditor and boss-friendly policies. Hillarys workaholic approach didnt impress Millennials and neither did her relationship with a Wall Street that brought Millennials the Great Recession.

Thats good news for more traditionally left forces like Bernie Sanders, but its not a slam dunk: Millennials wont be loyal to staid socialist policies that dont rebalance society away from creditors and ease their burdens. You might call the winning formula of the 2020s neo-socialism: an improved take on the statist policies of the past without the attachment to traditional institutions.

Its also going to dramatically shift the political climate. Nobody is going to win big elections anymore by appealing to cultural wedges. Abortion will be settled, gay rights will be accepted and racial and gender cards will be far less effective. Millennials wont elect the woman or the Hispanic unless the candidate has the merits they saw in Barack Obamas intelligence and oratory.

Theyll also have a knee-jerk reaction with someone throws down an identity card, meaning both the alt right and alt left, with their heavy use of identity policies, are almost surely dead movements.

Itll also utterly reshape how America behaves in the world. Millennials dont want to dismantle NATO or end Americas global hegemony so much as use it with less expense. Millennial leaders will form alliances with unsavory types who provide stability and keep American troops out of wars; they will surely like effective proxies armies and have few qualms if they arent democratic. Americas pursuit of human rights by force of arms will rarely see political rewards.

Finally, Millennials will want to self-indulge within limits. While divorce, sex and marijuana will be fine, there will be increasingly elaborate social cues around them. As Millennials age, they will draw ritualistic lines in the sand about marriage, relationships and how they spend their past time, forming increasingly tough cultural taboos that their children will balk at.

It will be a self-interested time of stability and, most likely, comfortable but boring conformity.

Which will irritate the kids of the Millennials, especially the ones born in the 2020s. As they grow up in a safe but dull time, they will seek identity and individuality in their own way and start the cycle of cultural transformation all over again.

This article originally appeared on Medium, June 20, 2017.

Go here to read the rest:
The Culture Wars Are Ending. Here's What's On the Other Side ... - Atlantic Sentinel

I know we attended the wedding and we are going to welcome our new son-in-law into our family with open arms. I know we are going to continue to promote love and unity in our family.

I work to help prevent suicides in Utah, especially youth suicides. I know that when we marginalize any group in our society, we are sending a negative message to everyone, especially our vulnerable youth. We all have a basic need to be loved and to connect with other human beings. We will always have a healthier society if we all work to support each other.

The family is the most basic unit of society; anything that weakens the family weakens society. Strong families make a strong society. Strong families include all its members. It is one of the most important protective factors in suicide prevention. Strong families, congregations and societies include all of their members. Unfortunately, "Some exclude from their circle of fellowship those who are different" (Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, Ensign Magazine, October 2007).

We are grateful to all who joined us in letting our son know he is loved and will be welcomed anytime he wants to join us in our church congregation. We are grateful to the many people who have expressed love and support for our family. I am most grateful for those who have realized that their religion is one of hope and teaches us to love each other saints and sinners alike.

All society wins when we cease-fire and put an end to cultural wars. We all win if we choose to value all people in our society. We all win if we seek to understand and respect each other's points of view and work to defend each others' rights, especially in housing and employment. (See Elder Dallin H. Oaks, Religious Freedom, Texas Regional Conference Sept. 10, 2016.)

Let's all start with our own families and neighborhoods. We don't need to agree to be kind. Kindness and strong families will help save lives.

Debra Oaks Coe, a Lehi Realtor, is an executive committee member of the Utah Commission on LGBT Suicide Awareness and Prevention.

The rest is here:
Op-ed: We all win when we end the culture wars - Salt Lake Tribune

BANGKOK After the prime minister became preoccupied with a teen luk thung singers sexuality and apparently dispatched police to cover her up and count her hip thrusts, Lumyai Hai Thongkam has become an icon of the national cultural wars.

Details of her signature gold bikini and even her stage name were being dissected, debated, defended and criticized online and off this week.

On a recent episode of the Hoan Krasae talk show, Lumyai, 18, and record label owner Prachakchai Navarat were asked if she wore anything else under her sparkly hot pants.

Read: Police Sent to Cover Up Teen Country Singer Lumyai

Theres a petticoat, stockings and underwear, so you wont see anything, Lumyai said, a rejoinder to Gen. Prayuth Chan-ochas comments that she was about to show all her genitals with her twerking.

Lumyai, who has been singing for nine years and performing as Lumyai for two, said her routine has brought her success, and shes now doing up to five concerts daily.

I found her when I heard her singing at a banquet. Her singing was on pitch and her dancing was good, said Prachakchai, who contends that Lumyais fame is mostly due her singing talent.

Her breakout song, Phu Sao Kha Lor, (Party Girl) was watched more than 244 million times since its November release, despite its low-production values.

Its not even a music video, just a low-budget song, Prachakchai said.

Her costume, he added, isnt outrageous and is consistent with other country singers.

Read: Prayuth Criticizes Teen Singers Sexy Dancing, Blames Farangs

This kind of dancing and clothes are very common in mor lam sing and coyote dancing. Their clothes are even smaller. We dont know where the line of morality lies after the phu yai started criticizing.

Former Khon Kaen Sen. Rabeabrat Phongpanich, a cultural conservative who heads the Society to Create Happy and Warm Families, earlier called Lumyai cultural trash. She called in to Hoan Krasae to say Lumyais stage name, Hai Thongkam (Golden Jug), was disgusting.

Theres no way she thought of it herself. She was given the name for fame and business purposes using sexI dont want to see her get taken advantage of, Rabeabrat said. Why isnt she named Lumyai Jaidee or Lumyai Jaingarm? she said, suggesting names that mean good-hearted.

The name will stand, Prachakchai told Rabeabrat.

While cultural crusaders make their points laying into the 18 year old, the internet mostly responded with a collective eyeroll at what netizens see as a cultural double-standard.

The Loke Maeng Dudjrit page compared the cultural double-standard between high-class ballet and low-class luk thung.

Current-event savvy webcomic Kai Meaw underscored the double-standard at work.

The story went through the wringer of millennial internet sensibilities that is Pim Thai Mai Dai, which plastered LUM YAI over the junta leaders face, referencing the singer and slang suggestive of lumkarn or annoying.

Related stories:

Police Sent to Cover Up Teen Country Singer Lumyai

Prayuth Criticizes Teen Singers Sexy Dancing, Blames Farangs

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LumyaiGate: Teen's Golden Hot Pants Overheat Culture Wars - Khaosod English

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Saudi Arabia's Culture Wars Strain the Kingdom - International Policy Digest (press release) (blog)

Debunking too often tends to be a team sport and just because its inevitable, doesnt mean its not a problem. In food and farm issues, only biotech drives more debunking than the organic vs conventional debate. When you are responding to misinformation, the other side already has defined the terms of the debate and its hard to bust out of those frames. Often that means the big picture gets lost. Ive been guilty of this and well get to an example of that, but lets start with the post that got me to finally write this one.

Steven Novella is a clinical neurologist and assistant professor at Yale University School of Medicine. Hes a high profile skeptic and does a lot of debunking on the invaluable Science Based Medicine group blog and his own blog, NeuroLogica. He recently wrote a piece with the gratuitously polarizing title, Organic Farming is Bad for the Environment that looked at a new German study that compared the land use and greenhouse gas emissions of the average organic consumer and the average not-organic consumer (people who dont buy a lot of organic certified food).

Here is Novellas accurate characterization of the papers findings:

The carbon footprint of the organic and conventional diets were the same no significant difference. However, this includes the fact that the conventional diet contains 45% more meat, and meat consumption was the main driver of the carbon footprint. Therefore, if you eliminate the meat variable, organic produce has a much higher carbon footprint than conventional produce, but this higher organic carbon footprint was offset by reduced meat consumption.

Obviously the ideal situation would be to use conventional farming practices, but also reduce overall meat consumption.

Further, the organic diet (which again includes the meat variable) uses 40% more land than the conventional diet. That is a huge difference. That is in line with other studies which show organic farming uses 20-40% more land than conventional farming. That difference is likely to grow as we make progress with GMOs, which are banned by organic farming rules.

Here is his conclusion:

The organic farming brand is counterproductive. It is ideology-based, and creates a false dichotomy which encourages variables to be mixed in a confusing way. While the results of this German study are illuminating, they also fall for the organic false dichotomy, and blur the real magnitude of the inefficiency of organic farming.

The evidence is clear that organic farming on any meaningful scale is significantly less land efficient than conventional farming. That may, in fact, be part of the motivation for organic opposition to GMOs they know they cant compete

And he goes on railing against organic production. He doesnt get anything wrong, though it would be nice if debunkings of the perceptions of organic farming as more environmentally friendly than so-called conventional farming could admit more often that mainstream farming could use some improvement as well. But, by and large, I agree with everything he has written. He has an especially nice passage dealing with two bits of fallacious reasoning that organic advocates often fall back on when faced with critiques of the environmental impacts of organic farming.

When I have raised this point in the past, defenders of organic farming have sometimes countered that such estimates are not based on optimal organic farming. If you do it right, you can equal or even beat conventional production. There is no basis for this claim, however. It is also a bit of a no true Scotsman fallacy, as if organic farmers using more land are not real organic farmers, or at least they are not doing it right. They also offer only anecdotes about how they or someone else is able to have amazing yields with organic farming.

The scientific evidence tells a different story. When actually applied in the real world at meaningful scales, organic farming is less productive than conventional farming. Even if we use the more conservative estimate of using 20% more land, we cannot afford that. There is no 20% more land to expand into.

The next non-sequitur is to argue for reducing food waste. Thats like saying we dont need green energy, we should just reduce energy waste.

Notice what was acknowledged, but essentially glossed over. If there is one big takeaway from the new German paper its that Meat Consumption is Bad for the Environment. This is clear when you note that while average organic consumption profile requires 40% more land in these calculations, greenhouse gas emissions draw about even with average conventional consumption.

The only group where the biggest partitions of greenhouse gas emissions didnt come from beef and pork was women organic consumers whose biggest GHGs came from cheese and fresh dairy.

This all comes into sharper relief when you look at the values comparing GHG emissions for different foods between organic and conventional. They arent that different. Ive highlighted the foods where there are significant differences. Organic consuming men who eat more poultry than anyone else should be dismayed to find out that the greenhouse gas emissions associated with organic poultry production are 26% higher than for conventional.

In terms of raising the land demands and greenhouse gas emission on the basis that matters per unit consumed meat consumption dwarfs organic for driving up the environmental impact of protein consumption at the population level. Organic production and consumption are such small portions of impacts because they dont account for much production or consumption in the first place. In the US, organic production accounts for about half of one percent of farmland and about 5 percent of grocery sales. In Europe, where people are willing to spend more of their budgets on food and fewer people are poor, it accounts for about 6 percent of farm land. Even though its true as the paper shows, on a unit produced basis, the land use and GHGs of organic are far higher than conventional, its such a small part of the market, the impact isnt that big a deal.

Before moving on, a side note. One detail I found really interesting in this paper was that the footprint of beef in these models is smaller than it would be if you were going to repeat this study on American consumers because a lot of German beef comes from animals culled from dairy production, so the bulk of their footprint is already embedded in the dairy numbers. That would not be an assumption you could make if you were doing these calculations on American consumers.

While I think I do a pretty good job in the FAFDL forum of pointing out the metrics where organic production comes out ahead of conventional and trying to keep the tiny footprint of organic production in perspective relative to other challenges, in my writing, the rules of debunking have often got the better of me, even where I was trying to get to a larger, more important point.

Case in point.

A few years ago, a major paper comparing organic and conventional yields was released to much Internet fanfare. The authors were touting the fact that they found organic farms which adopted the conservation agriculture techniques of polyculture and diverse rotations narrowed the organic yield gap considerably compared to conventional farms which did not employ polyculture or diverse rotations.

Here is how the lead author characterized their findings:

We found that although organic crop yields are about 19% lower than conventional yields, certain management practises appear to significantly reduce this gap. In fact, planting multiple different crops at the same time (polyculture) and planting a sequence of crops (crop rotation) on an organic farm cut the difference in yield in half. Interestingly, both these practices are based on techniques that mimic natural systems, and have been practised for thousands of years. Our study strongly suggests that we can develop highly productive organic farming methods if we mimic nature by creating ecologically diverse farms that draw strength from natural interactions between species.

However, when I read the paper, I noticed what I thought was an even more important finding. The yield gap was actually the largest when you compared conventional farms using polyculture or diverse rotations to organic farms using those systems.

That is, if instead of comparing best practices organic to average conventional, you compared best practices organic to best practices conventional the gap between the two was LARGER than when you compared average to average or even worst practices to worst practices. Adopting polyculture and diverse rotations into conventional systems seems to supercharge conventional farming in comparison to organic.

Now the reason I think this is so significant is that, as I said above, organic production in the US only accounts for 0.6% of acreage, so closing the yield gap in organic is still a fairly minor accomplishment at a systems level. HOWEVER, increasing yields while improving the ecological impacts on millions, even tens of millions of acres of conventional farming could be a big deal. A major BFD.

Thats the finding we should be shouting from the rooftops. The paper shouldnt have just quantified the yield gap between organic and conventional. It should have quantified it between conservation ag systems and non-conservation ag systems in both organic and conventional. After reading that paper, dont you want to know what conventional farmers who adopt conservation systems gain over their brothers and sisters who dont? I do. And Id like to see the same comparison within the organic sector.

I pointed all this out (mostly) in the piece I wrote on the paper. However, I ended the piece with a bit of rant on how I thought one of the big problems that the organic program presents is that it has come to be inaccurately perceived as synonymous with sustainable agriculture and eclipses the much more consequential results that conventional farmers practicing conservation ag are achieving and warps the discussion and robs our best, most conscientious conventional farmers of some of the recognition they deserve.

In fact, we just dont have a widely recognized term for sustainable farming that other than organic. There is a term, its just not widely used. Its the term, that I introduced earlier: conservation agriculture, and it centers around a set of practices to improve soil quality and output, but without the prohibitions that hamstring organic. Conservation agriculture was first applied to the use of no-till and lo-till conservation tillage and has expanded to include the use of cover crops, mulches, composts and diverse rotations. If we were to add to that integrated pest management (IPM) wed have a framework with real legs. But conservation agriculture is languishing in organics shadow, even as organic struggles to tame its tillage addiction and keep its dirty little nitrogen secret.

In fact, there is good research that shows that conservation agriculture not only increases yields, but it increases profitability as well by lowering inputs costs (read also as: lowering environmental impacts of fuel, fertilizer and pesticides) in tandem with the higher yields. Note also, that profits increase without the organic premium in price, so conservation agriculture is accessible to low income consumers in the developed world and to the poor in developing nations.

How much of a distraction is organic when it comes to how we think about sustainable agriculture and where to turn our resources?

So you can see where I was pivoting back to.

This isnt an easy problem to address. I stand behind everything I wrote in that piece (except that I cringe at the title). It was stuff that I think needed to be said and better, more widely understood. It all goes to hump that I think we need to get over and thats not going to happen without debunking misconceptions that are getting in the way. And all the positive stuff about the benefits of conservation ag are in there, they just dont get the attention they deserve. And I can tell, because I see how the essay is shared on social media. Its not shared to tout the benefits of conservation ag, its shared to put organic advocates in their place. The cringe-worthy title is partly to blame. I titled it when I was trying to see if less fastidious, more clickbaity titles would bring in more traffic (not that I could see or at least more polarizing titles didnt move the needle, so I happily retreated from that indiscretion).

But its not just on writers and communicators to do a better job. Readers, especially those sharing and debating on social media, you need to step up your game as well. As the editor of Food and Farm Discussion Lab I make sure that we run tons of stories looking at the benefits of conservation ag and other positive developments in agromodernism, and I see what gets read and what gets shared. And what gets read and shared are pieces that go to the center of the organic vs. conventional / pro-GMO vs anti-GMO culture wars. If I just wanted more traffic, I could just turn this site into a tabloid that slams organic and anti-GMO activists five days a week. I dont, because I dont think thats good enough. When we run debunking stories we work really hard to make sure they are rigorous (when we do it right they can get shared far and wide in spite of having crossed all our Ts and dotted every I). When we run the occasional red meat, it has to also provide some valuable insight. Those stories reach thousands, even tens of thousands of readers. Positive stories on sustainable agriculture reach hundreds, sometimes only dozens of readers. So why bother?

Food and Farm Discussion Lab is incorporated as a non-profit for a reason and we run off a Patreon campaign rather than advertising for a reason (make a pledge now, if you havent already!). Its important that this information is available for people who are looking for it. Among our core readership are journalists, academics, industry people, and practitioners of various stripes. Not all readers are created equal in terms to what it means to our mission in serving them. Giving a grad student who is studying horticultural and agroforestry good analytical tools for thinking about permaculture is at least, if not more important to me than giving a hundred keyboard warriors a new cudgel in the organic/GMO debates, though thats a big part of what we do as well. We do our best in the balancing act between pitched polemic that gets shared far and wide reaching lots of people, and the pieces making the case for a positive vision of what evidence and metrics based sustainable food production can be which reach far fewer.

So do me nay, do yourself a favor and put down the cudgels for a while to browse our Conservation Agriculture archive. Or expand your horizons and find something interesting to read about the health of our oceans and fishery management. Theres a whole great big world out there beyond bickering about glyphosate of which of course, our archive is unrivaled and chock full of high quality cudgels. Rest assured, theyll be there when you need them, but dont be afraid of expanding your horizons. Even if your interests are narrowly focused on the organic/GMO culture war, youll be more effective if your knowledge base extends beyond the narrow range of factoids necessary for the debunking wars. But the real value is in having a stronger sense of what we are for. Knowing what you are against is the easy part.

A version of this article at Food and Farm Discussion Lab as Lets Stop Burying the Lede in the Organic vs Conventional Debate and has been republished here with permission from the author.

Marc Brazeau is an editor and writer at Food and Farm Discussion Lab. Follow him on Twitter@eatcookwrite

More here:
Conservation agriculture: Beyond the organic vs. conventional ... - Genetic Literacy Project