> As long as you express something in a civil way, you should be able to do it without repercussion.
To get back the original topic of the thread: an increasing problem in our workplaces is that lots of people don't think this way. And maybe I'm wrong, but the impression I get is that those people are overwhemingly of a particular political persuasion. It's not even "left wing" but a specific type of ultra-leftism. The word "woke" has so much baggage but I'm not aware of a better label.
It's impossible to have a good-faith discussion with these people. Any disagreement is immediately met with mind-reading accusations of bigotry. Professional and personal consequences are likely to follow, which I suppose is consistent: if I sincerely believed that someone was a literal white supremacist, I wouldn't want them in my company either.
I don't know how things are internally at Coinbase or Basecamp, but I can sympathise with the general idea of their "no politics at work" policies. There are better and worse ways you can implement such a policy - some of the objections I've heard are totally fair, e.g. gay men saying "since gay marriage is a political issue, does this mean I'm not allowed to mention at work the fact that I have a husband?" I'm straight, but I wouldn't want to work at a place where gay people feel like they have to keep their sexuality a secret.
But it's not always that clear-cut. Coinbase's initial "no politics at work" announcement said something like "we can all agree that something is a problem while disagreeing on the best way to solve it", and that's the key thing I think we're losing. You can believe that black lives matter without supporting the organisation called Black Lives Matter. You can oppose racism without agreeing with the policy prescriptions of Ibram Kendi (and there are black intellectuals who make such a case, e.g. Coleman Hughes, John McWhorter.) Maybe I'm wrong, and I don't claim to be an expert on any political issue, racism included. But can we at least have this discussion without my being called a white supremacist? To quote a famous victim of police violence: can't we all just get along? And if that really isn't possible, maybe we should just all shut the fuck up and stick to writing code.
Really I think this is a symptom of a deeper rot within our political instutitions. In a more perfect world, we'd all be content to keep politics out of the workplace because it wouldn't be necessary: we'd be able to satisfy our political needs through the structures that are specifically in place to do so. If workplaces are being hyper-politicised, something is going wrong with democracy.
> It's impossible to have a good-faith discussion with these people.
To clarify: obviously bigotry, racism, sexism, etc are all real and occur. I am specifically addressing the baseless, knee-jerk accusations towards dissenting opinion. As are you, from what I gather.
I think there is something to be said for the idea that secular ideologies (be they libertarian, MRA, "classical liberal", environmentalist, feminist, woke, intersectionalist, etc) have replaced the religions of yore for large parts of the population. With those secular religions come all the incidentals of religious community: social control, virtue signalling, one-upmanship, splinter factions, standard texts...
You are not so much having a discussion as questioning articles of faith, which people don't generally budge on, can take very personally and which can be somewhat impervious to reality. That's also why it devolves into ad hominems: where you might have been called a bigot before for disagreeing with, say Christian orthodoxy, you are now called a racist/misogynist/transphobe/etc for disagreeing.
In short, I think the "culture war" is a real thing. It's just not nearly as new, widespread or tangible as Fox News (for instance) would have us believe. For some reason, academia and tech seem to be disproportionately affected. For tech specifically: maybe because we sectorally skew young and tend to live on the Internet more, increasing exposure to fringe bubbles?
I agree, and this is kinda new but to be expected.
For a long time some minorities were particularly silenced by our societal systems. If you were a foss advocate, vegan, ecologist, feminist, LGBT aware, what have you, in the 90', you were ridiculed and you didn't have a voice.
Now the table have turned, and the pendulum is balancing to the other extreme: those who were frustrated 20 years ago now created an anger culture out of it that they express loudly. I understand were they come from.
It will go back to balance, but things take time to stabilize. In the meantime, those who had a point of view that were common in the 90' now are considered bad people by default.
I don't think this is the right move, but I understand the process.
Are you sure that the ones who were particularly silenced are now particularly angry?
I would say that a lot of unscrupulous individuals just used the momentum to give free rein to their toxicity or bad ideas. A lot of the young activists even do not personally remember the old bad times, so they are getting angry on behalf of historical events.
(The same development was typical for 19th and 20th century nationalisms - "they" caused a historical wrong to "us" in 1740, "we" must have a revenge. Thus all the building of Greater X countries. It turned to be a very bad principle with a huge body count.)
The swing of the pendulum is possible. For example, the immigration and Islam debate in Europe swung a lot towards far right positions since the 2015 migration wave. Few parties openly advocate for a permissive border regime anymore; even those that are "suspect" of harboring such sentiments try to bury them under other topics, such as the German Greens.
Sure, I am not, this is an opinion backed by life anecdotes, not science.
But I do see some of my idealists friends that ended match up this pattern, and I find that there are regularly people in the angry mob that seem to have a similar profile.
I don't hold that theory as gospel, but it helps me develop compassion toward those who are angry.
> As long as you express something in a civil way, you should be able to do it without repercussion.
To get back the original topic of the thread: an increasing problem in our workplaces is that lots of people don't think this way. And maybe I'm wrong, but the impression I get is that those people are overwhemingly of a particular political persuasion. It's not even "left wing" but a specific type of ultra-leftism. The word "woke" has so much baggage but I'm not aware of a better label.
It's impossible to have a good-faith discussion with these people. Any disagreement is immediately met with mind-reading accusations of bigotry. Professional and personal consequences are likely to follow, which I suppose is consistent: if I sincerely believed that someone was a literal white supremacist, I wouldn't want them in my company either.
I don't know how things are internally at Coinbase or Basecamp, but I can sympathise with the general idea of their "no politics at work" policies. There are better and worse ways you can implement such a policy - some of the objections I've heard are totally fair, e.g. gay men saying "since gay marriage is a political issue, does this mean I'm not allowed to mention at work the fact that I have a husband?" I'm straight, but I wouldn't want to work at a place where gay people feel like they have to keep their sexuality a secret.
But it's not always that clear-cut. Coinbase's initial "no politics at work" announcement said something like "we can all agree that something is a problem while disagreeing on the best way to solve it", and that's the key thing I think we're losing. You can believe that black lives matter without supporting the organisation called Black Lives Matter. You can oppose racism without agreeing with the policy prescriptions of Ibram Kendi (and there are black intellectuals who make such a case, e.g. Coleman Hughes, John McWhorter.) Maybe I'm wrong, and I don't claim to be an expert on any political issue, racism included. But can we at least have this discussion without my being called a white supremacist? To quote a famous victim of police violence: can't we all just get along? And if that really isn't possible, maybe we should just all shut the fuck up and stick to writing code.
Really I think this is a symptom of a deeper rot within our political instutitions. In a more perfect world, we'd all be content to keep politics out of the workplace because it wouldn't be necessary: we'd be able to satisfy our political needs through the structures that are specifically in place to do so. If workplaces are being hyper-politicised, something is going wrong with democracy.