Great points. There are plenty of areas to discuss politics, and at work doesn't have to be one of them.
I've studiously avoided talking to anybody at work about politics, as it usually only serves to anger people if you don't agree. I've had a successful career of doing that.
I enjoy discussing politics, at work too, however, you have to do it in a respectful way. Politics is like religion, you will never directly convince anyone of anything, but if you can expose them to new ideas, and watch them either incorporate or challenge these ideas, it's a really rewarding discussion. You also have to limit these discussions to willing participants.
In my time at Google, there were tons of people who felt they had the right answer, and had to convince everyone else who was wrong to come around to their views.
>you will never directly convince anyone of anything
Policy is the surface level of a deep tree of rational beliefs. No one will ever be convinced of policy because each sees their favored policy as rational due to the underpinning structure of beliefs.
Discussions that don't begin with the core beliefs are bound to lead nowhere, you're right.
You're right in that a lot of policy debate these days is folks talking past each other, ignoring their irreconcilable fundamental assumptions. But a discussion artifically limited to discussing those in the abstract will go nowhere. Most people best converse productively at the level of a series of examples.
I agree. A big reason for not achieving something in an activity (whether a discussion, a software project or something else) is not being clear what you want to achieve in the first place.
That sounds like a fine approach, but unfortunately politics creeps into more and more aspects of life, hardly any topic remains apolitical.
Like that quote "you may not be interested in war, but ..."
That sounds like a fine approach, but unfortunately politics creeps into more and more aspects of life.
Do a historical survey of people who tried to suffuse politics completely through the lives of their followers. For completeness, look also at the actions of religions in the same way.
Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Politics, movements of any kind which demand the entirety of the lives of their followers are often perpetrators of the worst things.
As a counterpoint, look to times and places where people are free to be open, to be themselves, and to choose how they live. There is also a power in the dispersal of power. Many call this freedom.
Like that quote "you may not be interested in war, but ..."
The way Robert Heinlein put it was something like this: "The end product of politics is like the result of peristalsis. It's not very pleasant, but it's no less vital to your health and well being." I think this is a good analogy. Imagine having a cocktail party conversation with someone singularly obsessed with their digestive tract.
I'm trying to say this as politely as possible, but... are you serious?
If you seriously cannot have conversations at this level without them turning into political discussions, you really need to reflect on your conversational habits. It is absolutely not normal or healthy if you can't talk about drinking water without it turning political.
My SO is a vegetarian. It comes up a lot, both with my friends (who are all meat eaters) and newly met people alike, but I seriously cannot think of one single time it has turned into a political issue.
If these topics are frequently turning political for you, it's on you.
In places where there's more political diversity, people aren't so uptight. They know there are others who aren't like them, that's OK, and we all sort of get on with our lives. I grew up in Illinois and it feels this way.
Whereas in northern California, the "muscle" of respectful tolerance doesn't get as much exercise. People are a lot more alike and if you stand out, it seems weird. Which is kind of ironic for a place that's supposedly bought into "diversity" or "tolerance".
Yes. I am truly trying my best to understand your viewpoint here, but I honestly don't understand why you imply that those questions, or even any questions similar to them, would be necessary parts of a conversation about vegetarianism. In all of the various discussions we've had with each other and with other people, even very in-depth ones about her reasoning for being a vegetarian and how other people are not vegetarian, not once has any three of those questions come up.
The original point was in-depth discussion of things like dietary restrictions necessarily come to political questions. The counter-argument seems to be "don't discuss anything in depth."
That is not at all the counter argument. It is very possible (easy, even, at least for me and my work/social circle) to have very in depth conversations about vegetarianism without bringing up any of the questions you posed. As I said in my previous comment, my SO and I have in-depth conversations all the time with people regarding vegetarianism and not once has any of those questions surfaced.
I showed my SO this thread and she laughed at the notion that she apparently can't discuss her lifestyle (she takes a car to work and drinks tap water, too) without it being political.
I suspect, as another commenter said, that this is apparently a cultural aspect where I and those around me have always grown up talking to people about such topics without any of them becoming political, while apparently others have not had such 'training'.
There is a confusion here. These are certainly ethical issues, that may be discussed at the level of the particular personal ethics practiced by particular people. Immediately jumping to the political is a particular (and particularly unpleasant) way of answering these questions, but not the only way. I would never eat chimpanzee, but I would consider eating horse. My friend would never eat horse, but would consider eating veal. We can discuss this from an ethical perspective. We don't have to lower the discussion to politics.
It's a good question; I may not have a satisfactory answer. There is something uncontrollable about the political. It always stands in relation to the rest of humanity, and we can't control or necessarily even predict what they will decide. Whereas, even if I take inspiration from other humans whom I treat as ethical exemplars, my sense of ethics comes ultimately from myself.
Whether one sees a distinction between these two concepts may align with one's position on the spectrum between individualist and authoritarian. Or maybe not, I really don't know...
> Whether one sees a distinction between these two concepts may align with one's position on the spectrum between individualist and authoritarian. Or maybe not, I really don't know...
If so, then we would assume that people who see a distinction there would also see nothing wrong with different countries having different political orders, for example stronger gender roles, procreation being tied to marriage, and marriage being tied to household business? We might assume that authoritarians would want to stamp out such variations and individualists would assume that different cultures can organize things like marriage and business differently?
But that doesn't match our observations I think, so it has to be something different. Either that or everyone is secretly an authoritarian when it comes to disagreements regarding social order and ethics of relationships or when we decide to be because it is "really important."
I don't feel that assumption is warranted, but I'm not surprised that someone else does. For myself, I definitely prefer some political orders to others.
Even so, I recognize that some authoritarian polities produce better lives for many of their subjects than some less authoritarian polities do. There's always room for improvement. A situation in which husbands don't beat wives because the people are educated in humane fashion is strictly superior, in my estimation, to one in which husbands don't beat wives because that would invite devastating punishment from the state. Even that latter situation is strictly superior to one in which husbands do beat wives and the state reserves its devastating punishments for other purposes.
However, that is not to say that the society blessed by humane education should make war on either of the other two, or on some society like our own in USA that is in some sense an average of all three. Humane culture is best spread by example, not by the sword.
By the way I agree that we should lead by example but I don't know how you can get beyond the fact that different evils are so different they cannot be directly weighed off each other.
For example how do you weigh the draining of capital by foreign companies agains the purported benefits of liberating people from family and family business expectations (which my wife by the way definitely does not want to be liberated from)?
It is possible to simply not seek authority. We can opine without seeking to enforce our opinions on others. I was no fan of TPP, but I never took any action that was motivated by that opinion.
It's usually the vegetarian (vegan) that starts it, so if it doesn't turn into an issue, your SO has the non-escalation skills, not all of your meat-eating normies.
I'm curious if you live in San Francisco, Seattle, New York City, Portland or any "woke" city. The point you're replying to is palpable as someone that has lived in two of these places, but I agree that it would sound absurd based on my experience living in places that aren't highly woke.
That said, my SO and I travel frequently (and due to the nature of our work, our friend group is very varied in terms of where they come from, with several of them being ex-SFers/ex-NYCers, etc). I honestly can't think of any increased politicization when talking with non-Texan friends versus Texan friends.
These are all very easy to discuss at work without politics. You ask, "Do you have any dietary restrictions? If so you should make sure to read the menu closely, it'll tell you what the dish contains."
There, now I know as much as I need to about my coworker's diet. We're here to work and if you're going to be a member of a _diverse_ community with a shared goal you're going to need to accept that other people live their lives differently than yours and that's ok. I don't need to know the reason my coworker is a vegetarian I just need to let them know if my cookies that I brought to work contain animal products.
If you refuse to get along the result will be internal strife and the shared goal, a successful company, a working community, etc. will fail.
Sure you can. You can have an attitude of tolerance, of acceptance, and embrace different opinions/stances. Judge a little less, worry a little less about what others do.
Our culture has become a toxic stew caused by everyone forgetting to mind their own business; partially because people think that because politics does have a part of everything people do (hence the etymology of the term), that it gives them the right to control others. Fascism is the end result.
>Sure you can. You can have an attitude of tolerance, of acceptance, and embrace different opinions/stances. Judge a little less, worry a little less about what others do.
Completely agreed on that point. In fact that's how politics should be discussed.
But if we consider politics to be "what should we do as a society?" then you can't avoid political discussions in those topics still, right? You can only seek to discuss such topics tolerantly and maturely, I think.
I will admit to having avoided arguing with one of my colleagues about whether it is irresponsible to have more than one child in the current state of the world (he thinks it is, and I have three kids).
I would generally find all of the above somewhat too pedestrian as topics, if they come up too often. Also, I've discussed all of the above at work with coworkers recently, and when things do veer into the political, they don't go too deep (though at my current job, we're free to be quite acerbic) and the conversation veers away to something else.
I guess we treat the avoiding taboo topics more like not driving on the lines, and less like driving over a minefield. We generally avoid for safety's sake, and don't expect things to blow up immediately if there is a bit of driving over the line.
I don't think this is true anymore. Even war doesn't impact my life. We've been at war almost 20 years now and the only difference it's made in my life is airport trips are more annoying. And even if war did impact my life more directly, I don't see how discussing it at work would be helpful in any way.
Living in Europe and being a bit closer to the war zones, I can tell you it has affected my life in a large number of ways. It is a big reason why a lot of my voting in the US is for whoever seems more anti-war (within reason).
I also vote anti-war. Would you mind sharing some tangible examples of how it's affected your life? I'm not looking for a debate, I'm genuinely curious.
1. I was commuting between Sweden and Denmark when the refugee crisis (people fleeing our efforts at proxy civil war in Syria, and our efforts at direct war in Iraq and Afghanistan) caused the Swedes to have to close their borders. This was not controversial. Migrationverket could not house the number of refugees who showed up and so refugees were sleeping on the street in Sweden in November. This lead to hours of lost time every day and eventually the loss of a contract that lead to the commute, and eventually after that, to a stagnation in my work (I left Sweden for Germany in part for that reason). You would see whole families with nothing trying to get somewhere they would have some sort of chance.
2. My kids have been subject to some harassment due to the fact that they are mixed SE Asian/White, and therefore could probably pass for Afghan. This was true in both Sweden and Germany.
3. Now the lines to get things like work permits or blue cards renewed are getting longer and longer (because of capacity shortage in civil servants) which means that when I go to get this renewed, I need to plan six months to a year in advance. A large problem here is the fact that the refugees are impacting the immigration service departments. Its to the point I am considering giving up US citizenship for German citizenship just to get around that problem.
There are of course more. Not getting into the amusing problem Sweden has with hand grenades and plastic explosives (organized crime gangs scaring each other late at night by setting off bombs and grenades, though I suppose that's better than drive-by shootings).
I'm sorry that your kids have been harassed. It's very hard to watch it happen to them. My son is 6 years old, non-verbal, and diagnosed with autism. In my son's case, how do I explain bigotry (and he clearly feels it)? In your kids' case, they may understand the explanation, but still struggle to reconcile the feeling.
Yeah. In one of the worse incidents in Germany, to the credit of Germans, the majority of adults in the around came to my kids' defense. I tell them to try to be thankful for the culture of being helpful, but it was a hard thing for them.
For a long time my oldest hated Germany after that. I actually feel bad because both of being part of the Berlin tech boom that is causing rents to rise really fast (and price many Germans out of the city) and also for the fact that refugees are being used to undercut wages (I know of too many cases of refugees being paid under minimum wage to ignore that dynamic).
But that doesn't excuse ranting at my kids as they are walking down the street.
Yes, nowadays attempting to “stay out of” politics simply leads to people accusing you of actively supporting the status quo. You can’t win, once a political culture has taken root around you.
I think you can accept or be neutral on the assertion that "the personal is political", without it entailing that you actually live in a state of political engagement. After all, the professional ought not be personal.
And the other thing is that the company may itself be actively involved in politics that some of its employees may object to. Google actively tries to control the political debate through youtube. Its positive discrimination policies may be considered by some of its employees as objectably discriminatory.
I can understand that the company will not tolerate anyone publicly disagreeing with its political stance but it is a natural thing for their employees to discuss the politics of their employer between them.
Though given the little tolerance of large companies for disagreeing their politics (not just in the Silicon Valley), the said employees would be well advised to not do so in writing.
I've studiously avoided talking to anybody at work about politics, as it usually only serves to anger people if you don't agree. I've had a successful career of doing that.