'For two-thirds of the population, talking politics sincerely, on the job, is uncomfortable. People who hold certain, commonplace views, stay silent believing that expressing those views will carry penalty not reward. '
This sounds like a recipe for disaster for any company. When I worked in the UK no part of my job description was about 'talking politics sincerely' or sharing my 'commonplace views'. I did that in the pub afterwards.
'Ethical Systems' appear to be a great way to stir up rancor and division with the usual cocktail of racialisation (the new segregationists) and genderisation of everything. I can't see how this would help productivity or enhance people's work lives in any shape or form. It reminds me of the first frame of a Dilbert cartoon.
People with, shall we say, radically progressive views, are more than comfortable to share them openly in the staff rooms, kitchens, before and after meetings, etc. without anybody contending with them. Anybody with more centrist, or God forbid conservative views, saves them for the pub afterwards or for their private gatherings. The Overton window seems to shift weekly.
I' not sure where you have worked, but the people who freely give their political opinions are grouped accordingly. They are not grouped by left/right, but by how annoying they are.
All are avoided if at all possible.
I have worked with people who's politics I greatly and deeply oppose. I liked them personally and never delved to deep into their political lives. However, where we have strayed I have tried to learn from their view point.
After all, if we cannot understand one another, how are we supposed to forge middle ground?
I think we really should start to teach _how_ to talk about things we disagree on. It appears that people think that re-iterating the same points (the ones that the "other" side find so extreme) at volume will change people's minds.
That's the case if the majority of people hold progressive views. I've encountered enough conservative companies where people had no problem sharing openly conservative views (some to an extreme that led to open racism).
In those companies, no one would've dared voicing progressive views. Doing that was the easiest way to become an outsider.
I think racism is orthogonal to political affiliation. The (thankfully few) most virulently racist people I know, i.e. white people who drop the "N" word in casual conversation, are straight-ticket "D" voters. I also know people who are fiscally and socially conservative but not racist in the slightest.
I mean at work you have literally nothing to gain by being honest about your views (it's not a polling booth) and could curry favour by professing the same views as those around you.
Therefore, it's not surprising that this tends towards groupthink that agrees with the Highest Paid Person's Opinion whether that should be on the left or on the right.
Indeed. At work my political views shift to whatever way the wind is blowing for a particular group. I can usually find a way to speak sincerely from any view point. All of this is contingent on not being able to avoid such conversations in the first place. You can piss people off by simply taking a neutral stance so that is not always an option. I often end up as an unofficial go-between for different groups where I can influence both toward more moderate common ground.
Could you point to some research on this, specifically ones that
account for the jobs where this happens (HN readers are likely in jobs that attract more middle class and higher education people, who are overwhelmingly left of the current UK median - go to a taxi driver mess room and compare conversations)
and
provide examples of the overton window shifting (yes, the rise of farage and ukip shifted it significantly in some aspects, but on the other hand civil unions and equal marriage has shifted it in others)
I'm willing to believe you that the overton window has shifted to the right significantly over the last 10 years on many aspects, but I'd like to see the evidence
The shift on trans rights isn't simply a shift to the left though - it's more like the mainstream/"liberal" view on trans rights has shifted and the left-wing progressive activists have been dragged along behind it, whilst insisting all the way that they were a vital spearhead of trans rights and that not agreeing uncritically with them about everything and censoring dissenting views is an attack on trans people's existence.
For example, one of the last things the UK's more left-wing party did when they were in power was add a special exemption to anti-discrimination law to deny trans women access to rape and domestic violence services. (As in, this was literally the stated goal.) Pretty much the entire mainstream progressive activism community covered for them and the lobbying group who campaigned for this, demanding that everyone shut up about how the law got there, until 2019 when the same group started lobbying the Conservatives for similar purposes. Similarly, only half a decade or so ago the folks currently trying to cancel J K Rowling and insisting everyone support beating up random elderly lesbians for holding transphobic views were just as confident in their insistence trans women were misogynist bigots for just speaking out about what TERFs were actually doing because supposedly feminist women couldn't have any affect on the real world and so the only reason to blame them for anything was hatred of women. Even the term TERF itself was apparently only coined in 2008, though the ideas it describe go back decades before then.
This becomes even more true the further you go back, to the point that maybe a couple of decades ago, probably three at the most, trans rights seems to have been outside the normal range of progressive activist viewpoints entirely in the sense that - at least in the UK - the people who rose to positions of dominance and influence did so by shunning anyone who actually treated trans women as people, and worse. I mean this very literally, not in the usual hyperbolic sense where any dissent from the activist canon of views is spun as dehumanising trans women - it seems people had a choice between being willing to talk to trans women or gaining connections and influence.
I have trouble describing any view wrt. trans folks as "mainstream". The dynamic you describe is quite real but it looks like the result of salami-slicing politics within progressive activism itself, rather than any discernible 'mainstream' influence.
Obviously, the mainstream isn't exactly campaigning for trans people to be treated in any particular way, but there's a kind of baseline expected level of respect for them as people that's changed over time, and I get the impression that the activists fall below that baseline - especially when compared to people of similar ages and social backgrounds who aren't proud crusaders for social justice. Not only that, the "salami-slicing politics" seems to happen after the non-activist consensus shifts to the point the consensus within the activist community is untenable, not before - of course, the activists spin this as evil bigots suddenly infiltrating their glorious community for justice, but in reality those views were the almost-unchallenged status quo up until that point. Even back when there was much less awareness of the existence of trans people, the activist community was vicious and nasty enough that I suspect it would've made mainstream people uncomfortable if actually exposed to their actions.
Also, it seems like the non-mainstream communities which acted as welcoming spaces for trans people back in the earlier days were often non-activist ones, founded around the kind of "liberal" ideas about diversity and acceptance that activists decry. Then more recently the activists used that historic support for trans people to demand some of them end that diversity and acceptance, because that's supposed to be what it means to support trans people these days.
>The overton window has shifted to the left on many issues. E.g. trans rights
>
>In my own workplace the overton window shifted notably left in gender issues in the last decade.
These are not shifts to the left, they are a shifts towards liberalism.
The left still has a big problem with gender identity. Take a look at Rosie Duffield and Jess Phillips in the Labour Party, Joanne Cherry in the SNP, and the issues surrounding the formation of the Alba Party.
My point was actually that the Overton window has been shifting to the left. It has been shifting to the left on social issues basically ever since the French Revolution, and to the left on economic issue ever since the end of the Cold War.
People looked at Trump and thought "wow, what a far right extremist", but compare Trump to a far right extremist from 100 years ago, and you'll realise just how far left the window has shifted.
I remember working at a company that had a library room which was sometimes booked for meetings.
Every single time I was in a meeting there, without fail, at least one progressive person in the room had to loudly make some negative remark about Ayn Rand and scoff, sigh loudly, or roll their eyes to express their disapproval. Maybe they'd do all three at once. It was a real meme. I think this was because the room had a poster with quotes from various authors and Ayn Rand may have been on the list, although I'm unclear in my memory.
I always found it funny, the behavior was over-the-top childish coming from grown adults. I just bit my tongue, they were otherwise decent people as coworkers.
Then you need to sense what is the workplace consensus on political topics and pretend you agree, otherwise you'll risk getting pushed away at work. I used to know a guy who was pretty vocal about legalisation of drugs and he was able to present his points very well. However everyone at workplace labelled him as a "druggie" and eventually he was dismissed as HR bought the rumours that he is doing drugs, which was of course false.
I love working in a place where using work resources for non-work tasks is strictly forbidden. It's been years since I got an email with even a scent of politics.
What do you mean by "the new segregationists" and "genderisation of everything"? Are people stomping in and replacing gender-neutral workplace restrooms with separate ones for specific genders? Is racial (or otherwise) segregation being put in place at your place of work? Are gender-neutral pronouns like "they" being replaced in company prose with "he" or "she"?
I assume that the previous poster sees “new segregationism” in the following behaviours:
* The de-nuancing of race by reverting to “white” vs “black” and sidelining all other “races”.
* The redefinition of racism to be exclusively something that “white” people do to “black” people.
* The rollback of cultural integration goals by ringfencing certain behaviours as either “black” or “white”, with any cross-pollination being branded “appropriation”.
* Elevating race as the primary lens through which all society should be viewed, thus abandoning the project of emphasising the content of our hearts and not the color of our skin.
I assume that the previous poster sees “genderisation” in the following behaviours:
* Confusing sex and gender, to the detriment of sex and with the aim of establishing the primacy of gender in all respects - legal, interpersonal and medical.
* Re-establishment of gender norms as the definition of identity, rolling back progress in challenging gender stereotypes.
I should say that as far as i can tell, this sort of belief is extremely fringe. The nature of the world today is that a handful of people can get loud on Twitter and get a lot of attention for it.
Reminds me of a friend (a white woman) who was wearing dreadlocks for a period of time (she loved reggae music and everything associated with it). She was abused by black people who didn't like she "appropriated" "their" hair style and she was abused by white supremacists for "promoting" other races. She ended up shaving her head after a couple of incidents.
yes, this represent progresive activist learning lesson from group like KKK. what was the KKK strategy? burn crosses, hold hostile marches, lynch people for to intimidate beyond their numbers. what is progresive strategy? yell on twiter to get persons fired/canceled beyond their numbers. obviously there is not lynching or equivalent here: become incresingly loud to ocupy mindshare past number of people behind the cause.
I'd consider myself on the left, progressive etc, concerned about issues of discrimination. But hear hear, the four points you make regarding 'new segregationism' are very, very familiar and I'm truly concerned about it.
In effect it's led me away from the political bloc I tend to vote alongside, because the tone of the discourse is polarising and often reductive. I don't want to be affiliated with it, nor do I want to participate in it.
At the same time, I have even less with the centre right parties, many of whom are entirely satisfied with ignoring or belittling genuine issues and their own partial culpability. And I feel the 'new segregationism' from the left is in large part a reaction to their belief in the right's insistence to see white supremacy (not in the nazi sense, but just in the political sense that white's socioeconomic positions should remain elevated) as the default, just look at the Trump era. It's really hard to seek cooperation with the other side anymore, and in large part I can't say they're wrong either.
This sounds like a recipe for disaster for any company. When I worked in the UK no part of my job description was about 'talking politics sincerely' or sharing my 'commonplace views'. I did that in the pub afterwards.
'Ethical Systems' appear to be a great way to stir up rancor and division with the usual cocktail of racialisation (the new segregationists) and genderisation of everything. I can't see how this would help productivity or enhance people's work lives in any shape or form. It reminds me of the first frame of a Dilbert cartoon.