How about everyone goes to work and does their job and goes home. You can believe X, I can believe Y, and both of us believe Z, but XYZ doesn’t have anything to do with doing our jobs so we shouldn’t let it prevent us from doing our jobs. Super cool that everyone likes their own things though, I support liking things unrelated to job, just weird that people demand that their job adheres to whatever weird thing they like.
> just weird that people demand that their job adheres to whatever weird thing they like.
This was literally a selling point at Google:
> Larry Page and Sergey Brin ... had designed their company's famously open culture to facilitate free thinking. Employees were “obligated to dissent” if they saw something they disagreed with, and they were encouraged to “bring their whole selves” to work rather than check their politics and personal lives at the door.[1]
Lots of companies have figured out that "having a worthwhile mission", in addition to just a paycheck, is one way to distinguish themselves from other potential employers.
> Larry Page and Sergey Brin ... had designed their company's famously open culture to facilitate free thinking. Employees were “obligated to dissent” if they saw something they disagreed with, and they were encouraged to “bring their whole selves” to work rather than check their politics and personal lives at the door.
There's some quote (I thought it was Peter Thiel but can't find it now) along the lines of "when they mention how important diversity is, ask them how many conservatives there are" at silicon valley tech companies.
Yes. What is your point? Must you either be in favor of James Damore and against these Googlers who are trying to organize the workplace or vice versa? Can't everyone get to share their political views and also keep their jobs?
> Can't everyone get to share their political views and also keep their jobs?
I think that "bring your whole self" assumed that the politics everyone would talk about would be politics in the general, diffuse, societal sense. The proper scope of government, the merits of particular policies and candidates, how to solve problems X and Y.
Politics in the sense of judging on who deserves to work at Google, or who is underserving, which directly implies that certain Googlers would be unfit to be there under different regimes, isn't outward-facing. It directly hurts peers. A policy which evicts someone for introducing the notion that some Googlers are unfit to be Googlers will also selectively hurt some folks at Google for speaking their mind.
Google can't have it both ways. I think they made the better choice. I'd rather treat my coworkers compassionately, think of them as humans with complex natures, than to be "right" and "meritocratic" and make them feel threatened and unworthy.
The cultures of companies change as they grow and as outside cultures change. Especially one closely connected to internet culture, which is way more uncivil and uncompromising against dissenting opinions.
I don't have a problem with that. And I didn't even really mean that to be any sort of judgement. It's just a little difficult to convey that, given the phrase involved.
Just like a cashier at Chick-fil-a doesn’t necessarily condone the company’s religious and political beliefs.
From personal experience, I work for a big tech company which very publicly says it stands for certain things and the CEO recently has been going around saying a lot of political things. It’s unrelated to the job although it feels like an explicit part of the “company culture”. It doesn’t really affect my day to day work but the whole situation just feels weird. I didn’t sign up for a political party or to espose certain beliefs, I signed up to write code build a tech platform.
FWIW this is why job mobility is super important. Both sides of the employee/employer relationship should be relatively unconstrained so that employees can "vote" against bad employer policies.
If your employer is out there making political statements or doing political things that you disagree with you should feel empowered to leave and find a new job. If you don't want employers making political statements or taking controversial political stances then vote for policies that encourage labor mobility so that the labor market can be free.
Unfortunately there are lots of policies and laws in place that prevent this kind of labor mobility and give the employer a huge amount of power.
People have become militarized with activist results like the departure of Brendan Eich. Lines have been blurred. People are making demands sometimes that are unreasonable.
Metoo movement in tech caused expulsions of many heads. Even if unrelated to the job.
Connections to Jeff Epstein is causing people to lose positions.
Political positions of support for Trump is causing customers to take stand against heads.
Where do we draw the line between association and belief and job?
> Where do we draw the line between association and belief and job?
Line: one's university has constraints in place to prevent donations from Epstein, and one does an end run around them in order to take donations from Epstein.
> just weird that people demand that their job adheres to whatever weird thing they like
What about "weird" things like not being comfortable with taking on a new project with the military that ultimately helps kill people, or amassing as much personal data on the entire population as the NSA?
I mostly agree with your sentiment on the surface. Dont talk politics or religion at work, do your job, and things usually go just fine. But life is way too complex to label individuals' moral objections to employers crossing into controversial territory as weird.
If you're not comfortable doing that project, ask to be re-assigned; most good managers will make that accommodation for an excellent employee. If you're not comfortable working at a company that does that, don't work there. On the other hand, I have no issue working on a military project; your actions could cost me a job if the project gets cancelled. Don't force your views on others; let me keep showing up and doing my job. I shouldn't end up un-employed because of your personal ethical issues.
Don't you think that civilians who die due to the military project think the same thing about the people who worked on it?
There's more to the world than you losing your job because people protested a military project. You participating in the project also has ramifications on other people's lives.
That's funny, since that is all the military does. I think what you meant to say was: "Don't force the view that you shouldn't force your view on others onto others"
Well, I find this completely unconvincing despite not being the sort of person who cares about the politics of my fellow committer (I'll accept a patch from Hitler). Why is this any more worthy of a view than "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing".
In fact, to demonstrate with an extreme, if you go all the way to building gas Chambers (just as an illustration), I'm totally okay having you be unemployed because I have a personal ethical issue with this.
To be honest, I'm glad Google and others like them are there for the crazies. My experiences working with ex-Googlers was not positive. Bordering on hysterical, cringe beyond belief (sending site-wide emails starting with "If you're reading this you're probably a white, straight, man... blah blah" etc.), more interested in their own activism than work or actually getting along with other people.
Sure but I couple my experiences with what I've read on what it's like there, and well what more can one do? I probably could apply for a job there but that seems a bit of an extreme move :D
I can’t imagine having the energy to think about all these things outside of my day job. These people must have an incredible amount of time on their hands.
Friends who work at Google have told me they often spend hours a day reading and responding to internal threads about politics, investments, philosophy etc.
There is nothing weird or abnormal about people pushing their own agenda. Its normal and happens all the time. You won't find a manager who hasn't experienced it.
The new dimension these days is how many people you can rally to your cause and how fast you can do it. Social media and news media amplification gives anyone that power. It can be used and misused and managers are learning how to deal. It's all new so expect good and bad outcomes.
But don't expect people to stop pushing their agendas.
People go to work in big important companies like Google so that they can have more political influence. If you are techie interested in influencing future and politics, working inside tech companies might be a new avenue to influence the world. You believe X and you go to Google to push that X.
I don't know if this is effective way to influence. I'm just responding to the tone of your suggestion "people should know their place and use proper channels".
As corporations are increasingly using political power and influencing governments and the society why should workers keep politics outside workplace?
However there are a lot of beliefs that make this kind of approach unworkable.
If XYZ wants to believe that the earth is flat, sure, that can just be a personal belief and won't interfere with his work duties... well, unless he is launching satellites for NASA.
If XYZ is a furry and thinks anime girls in cat outfits are hot, sure, that's cool too. Also a personal belief that probably won't interfere with work.
If XYZ is an anti-vaxxer... well, probably won't interfere with their job unless they work in medicine. A dumb personal belief but this can probably stay personal.
But suppose employee XYZ runs a newsletter (in his own time) and publishes views about how Jews or women or black people or whatever are inferior. Can you really trust this employee to do his job at your company, where he might have to interact with people from those groups?
So, I don't think a naive approach of "just keep work and personal beliefs separate" covers 100% of situations.
The interesting thing is that the hypothetical "publishes views about how X are inferior" is considered OK if "X" is "male" or "white", say.
I understand the arguments from a structural racism/sexism standpoint for treating those situations differently from the ones you describe, but the specific test you propose seems to fail just as much: can you trust someone who thinks men are inferior in a job where they might have to interact with men?
(I will note that your use of the male pronoun in describing the untrustworthy employee is itself interesting; not sure whether that's meant to be a gender-neutral "he" or whether you actually believe that only males can hold "undesirable" views.)
Politics in America runs about 50-50. Religion is similarly every person's preference.
Taking either of those to work is a formula for disaster. I'm just amazed that companies haven't done a better job of enforcing "Leave that at home" 'till now. It really wasn't a thing until a decade or so ago.
Politics is already at work. The larger the corporation, the more likely it is to be involved in politics in a very direct way.
As a minion, you're discouraged from holding an opinion on company time, and even more strongly discouraged from doing anything that might affect the natural corporate power balance.
Active political engagement is a privilege reserved for upper management, who certainly won't be leaving their opinions at home.
> Politics is already at work. The larger the corporation, the more likely it is to be involved in politics in a very direct way.
politics "at work" is not the same as a company being involved in politics (or pushing for a particular political party).
Work time is time the employer paid you to do a job. Unless said job involves activism, engaging in such activism is not a productive use of your time.
Maybe because OP believes that google employees don’t have the right or reason to unionize. Or because they believe employees should not have the power to dictate what projects a company undertakes on ethical grounds. If someone believes they should have such powers then maybe Google is the wrong place for them.
> You can believe X, I can believe Y, and both of us believe Z, but XYZ doesn’t have anything to do with doing our jobs so we shouldn’t let it prevent us from doing our jobs.
It's easy to say this if your coworker likes football and you think sports are dumb.
But what if your coworker likes attending KKK rallies and you're African-American? Or your co-worker is out there on the weekend holding signs that say "Death to Gays" and you just happen to be gay?
>But what if your coworker likes attending KKK rallies and you're African-American? Or your co-worker is out there on the weekend holding signs that say "Death to Gays" and you just happen to be gay?
Yes yes, we can all dream up the very worst case scenario and other outliers. As someone else pointed out, companies generally have contract clauses that even govern social media whereby if you represent the company poorly you'll be fired. I'm sure that easily extends to your proposed sign waving homophobe.
The point the GP made was that most people have a lot more in common than they differ on, but in this hyper-politicized era those differences have been magnified to become an issue of pure division and likely shouldn't be brought into work with you.
Being LGBT isn't the same as being political. It's not a subset of politics. Being accepting of gay people or prejudice against them might align with the two parties in the United States but someone's existence and visibility isn't inherently political. The point is that China (and many others in the world) are taking a stand against LGBT people, not just to preserve their hold on political power.
People are still largely extremely de-politized. The fact that people are starting to have opinions that they care about again, and this is immediately viewed as extremism is very telling.
I think more likely that someone donate to anti-gay cause in personal capacity and some gay right activist in Google finds out. So they go ahead and declare "GOOGLE IS A FESTERING HELL-HOLE OF ANTI-GAY SHITBAGS" or some such on Twitter. After that they organize a walkout demanding anti gay employee be fired to make Google a safe workplace.
Do you genuinely believe that the cultural issues at Google are about employees announcing their support for the Klu Klux Klan, or calling for the deaths of gays? Do you think this kind of rhetoric is productive?
> But what if your coworker likes attending KKK rallies and you're African-American? Or your co-worker is out there on the weekend holding signs that say "Death to Gays" and you just happen to be gay?
What's the solution for the people in your country who are attending these rallies and holding up these signs?
This boycott model of employment will eventually have them fired from minimum wage jobs too. So where would these people work? They have a responsibility to contribute to society, make money, support themselves, pay taxes.
I would not like to see such people as my coworkers but I'm at a loss as to what should be done with them. As the years go by, robots will do more repetitive and manual jobs. Where would such people be exiled to work?
To a large extent, if we both showed up to work, accepted each other's pull requests, acted professionally and respectfully and went home, I'd be ok with it as a compromise.
Broadly though I'm finding it difficult to reconcile the prospect of someone exceptional who is working at a top tech company, with someone whose intelligence is low enough to advocate outright racism or bigotry. It seems like the example is very far fetched, and doesn't do much to advance whatever point you're trying to make.
I think it's probably best to use a more realistic example, wherein the prospect of working side by side with someone would honestly not be so daunting.
It's not that hard for me to reconcile those things, for two reasons:
1) We have plenty of examples from the not-too-distant past of people who were very intelligent and yet definitely racists or bigots by anything resembling modern standards. I'm 99% sure Woodrow Wilson would do fine at a top tech company in terms of carrying out his work duties if he decided to work at one, for example. And he was racist by the standards of his own time, not just ours.
2) The boundaries of what constitutes "outright racism or bigotry" are not fixed, and have been changing quite rapidly in some demographics. My general impression is that 20-something graduates of the top 50 schools in the US have, on average, a very different definition of those boundaries from most 45-year-olds, or from 20-something non-college-graduates.
> Broadly though I'm finding it difficult to reconcile the prospect of someone exceptional who is working at a top tech company, with someone whose intelligence is low enough to advocate outright racism or bigotry.
It's simple if the threshold for racism and bigotry is driven low enough that it ends up including the private beliefs of most of the country and even more of the world.
Right, which is why I was curious to know if there was a better example than KKK member, because we have seen this kind of inquisition approach to politics before.
If you go back to 9/11 we saw this same type of reasoning where instead of "KKK", "terrorist" was used as a fringe stand-in to justify the draconian structure where crazy things like spying, witch-hunting / denial of due process etc. became the norm.
I remember watching Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 in which they interview these sweet old people running a book club where they eat cookies and discuss books. A few weeks into it, the club members read an article in the paper that showed that one of their book club members was there under a fake name and was actually an undercover anti-terrorism police detective, which was confirmed by his department. Thereafter he explores the case of a retired old man who said critical things about President Bush at the gym and the FBI showed up to ask questions about him. (Around this timestamp: https://youtu.be/Q6lcP2f6Nvs?t=3515)
The problem with political causes is that there is no objective definition of "good" and "bad."
At this point, the co-worker's discomfort of working with an African-American or an openly gay person pretty much helps bring these issues out in the open rather quickly.
(And yes, I've been in a similar situation when a co-worker freaked out that I don't believe in Jesus, that I see the Bible as literature instead of factual, that I fully accept evolution as scientific fact, and yet I somehow see "Jesus" as a good role model for life.)
Spying is a very poor way to handle situations like this.
Instead, include some basic diversity training in all onboarding, and periodically renew it. It tends to scare away racists and homophobes.
But, there is an available objective definition of "tolerate": as a peace treaty. You are tolerated as long as you tolerate. If you don't (as in, say, the case of the KKK), well, by non-participation in the "treaty", you no longer have to be tolerated by anyone adhering to it.
OFC, this doesn't work in all circumstances, but, perhaps, it should be applied in all circumstances in which it _could_.
> you no longer have to be tolerated by anyone adhering to it.
The point of tolerance is to tolerate.
Just because you have managed to find an intolerant viewpoint that survives our current memetic filter, does not change the reality that you're the one preaching intolerance, right here.
Hate movements throughout history have been supported by logical-sounding arguments for marginalizing some outgroup. I don't think that stoking rage against backwards political ideas is virulent enough to end in killing fields per se, but even the current increased polarization is not good.
I... don't think I agree? I would count un-inhibited self-expression if I were looking for a success metric of tolerance, not tolerance itself. (note: you'd need some other metrics lest THAT go off the rails, to be clear)
The idea that you have to tolerate the intelorant makes the original concept self-defeating; if you instead treat tolerance as a treaty, it's self-reinforcing.
You can interpret "tolerance" differently. I will continue to practice the version where I tolerate you until you are intolerant, at which point we'll have a conversation, and at which point I am morally allowed to no longer tolerate you.
This is rescinding a "right", not requiring action.
> Hate movements throughout history have been supported by logical-sounding arguments for dehumanizing some outgroup
This is a good point and I'll watch out for it. Rescinding tolerance does not have to equate with dehumanization... but yeah, I can see how that often leads there. Seems like an easy way to avoid it is, I could just stop tolerating bigotry, but still extend the compassion and tolerance that I am able to to bigots. Judge behavior rather than people. Which is... well, it's just good practice anyway.
> The idea that you have to tolerate the intelorant makes the original concept self-defeating; if you instead treat tolerance as a treaty, it's self-reinforcing.
No, it is actually not. It is self defeating.
The problem with giving "exceptions" for why you are now allowed to treat another person, in a horrible manner, is that humans are great at trying to take advantage of those exceptions.
Basically nobody who is doing horrible things to other people, believes that they are in the wrong. If you give people an excuse, then they will trick themselves into believing that their actions are not wrong, then they will gladly accept this excuse.
The only way to put a stop to this, is to just unilaterally reject certain behaviors, and say that you will not engage in it, even if you believe the other person "deserves" it.
Because if you let people decide that it is ok to do certain things, if the other person "deserves" it, well you are going to see that people will just find people who "deserve" it a whole lot of the time.
If you feel like you're doing something because someone "deserves" it, you're doing it wrong; examine the what led yourself here to find out what it's really about.
> If you feel like you're doing something because someone "deserves" it, you're doing it wrong;
I was giving a description of how "intolerance of intolerance" works out in practice.
It doesn't matter if you think these people are doing it wrong.
I do not believe that humans can be trusted to be given such an easy to abuse loophole, that gives them carte-blanche moral authority to act terrible to other human beings (because the the target of the abuse is "intolerant", and therefore deserve it).
It is safer to just say "no. You should not treat people poorly, even if you believe that they are intolerant, or deserve it because of some other quality".
I'm reading "Legal System Very Different From Ours". The first one it talks about is ancient imperial China, where (as the author presents it) the Confucian legal tradition was about teaching virtue.
I'm reminded of a description of "conservative" vs "liberal" wherein it's about risk management versus experimentation.
Right now, if I'm faced with a choice between accommodating people who are doing it wrong, or challenging those people to become more, I'm going with the second option. Then again, this might not result in a viable society; or perhaps just a viable large-scale society.
To put it another way: You can view the loophole as the problem, or you can view the attitude that finds loopholes acceptable to use the problem.
> You should not treat people poorly, even if you believe that they are intolerant,
I can treat people well whom I also do not tolerate. It's just that yeah, usually, those acting intolerant are also acting like assholes.
"intolerance of intolerance" leads to lynchings, that sort of behavior needs to be stopped at all cost. USA has mostly gotten over lynchings but still has way too much intolerance, you would be much better off if you were a bit more tolerant and less judgmental over there.
So we should start twitter mobs to stop the twitter mobs that target people currently? Or what do you mean? The only way to stop it is to teach acceptance and temperance. We didn't stop lynchings by attacking them, we stopped it by teaching people the value of tolerance for even the worst of criminals and giving them due process. It is when you refuse to tolerate criminals that lynchings occur.
This is a pretty good point. Tolerance-as-peace-treaty doesn't apply nearly as reasonably between groups as it does within a group; although that makes sense. Do not abide by the peace treaty, conflict arises; and then it's about how you resolve conflicts between groups.
Stopped at all costs means "do not engage in certain behavior, yourself, even if you think you have a good reason for it".
Even if you think the other person deserves it, because of whatever excuse that you can think of, you still shouldn't act horribly, no matter the nice sounding justification that you can trick yourself into believing.
Humans are really good at tricking themselves into believing that their horrible behavior is justified.
In this specific situation, calling someone else intolerant is just an excuse that people will use to justify their horrible behavior to others.
The problem is that you can turn around every generality you have said to be supportive of what I presume you're against. For example, why wouldn't "un-inhibited self-expression" include someone getting a tattoo of a swastika? (preemptively responding to an argument that said tattoo would diminish more self expression than it itself is: this depends on the makeup of society, tautologically).
> I will continue to practice the version where I tolerate you until you are intolerant, at which point we'll have a conversation, and at which point I am morally allowed to no longer tolerate you
Now apply that to my perspective here. I've judged that you're being intolerant. We're having that conversion, yet you're sticking to your intolerant viewpoint. So this means I no longer need to tolerate you, personally?
> if you instead treat tolerance as a treaty, it's self-reinforcing
Sure, but not in a good way. Framing it as a "treaty" implies a forceful ultimatum if it is broken. What you've actually created is a focal point of going after people that don't conform to your definition of tolerance.
> stop tolerating bigotry, but still extend the compassion and tolerance that I am able to to bigots.
This is another way of looking at it, closer to what I'm saying. Talking about "intolerance" in a vacuum doesn't really account for whether the magnitude is growing or diminishing - some tendency of de-escalation is required for things to settle out
The general consensus, at least around these parts, is that bigoted behavior is unacceptable. What's really under debate is when views (or even more tenuously, associations) are brought up by critics and reacted to as if they were actions. That tendency seems more akin to escalating aggression than resolving differences.
You can totally go get it. I won't welcome you back. You are no longer celebrating other people's self-expression, and so lose our celebration of yours.
> So this means I no longer need to tolerate you, personally?
Hmm... Yeah, seems reasonable. Here's a different approach:
It seems clear that most people are able to mostly tell when something intolerant is happening. So, look up the event chain: is this intolerance in response to intolerance, or is it response to something else?
> some tendency of de-escalation is required for things to settle out
Yes! Pretty sure the answer here is "forgiving tit-for-tat".
> are brought up by critics and reacted to as if they were actions
Which is (generally) really unfortunate :( I'd (generally) like to have tolerant discussions on views, but it's rare that people can do that. Where this generality can break is when the view is extreme enough that it undergoes a state change; as a friend puts it, "advocating genocide is not expressing an opinion"; although for me there's a step before that break that is "are you willing and able to discuss this as if you could be wrong."
That link claims to be about tolerance, yet leads with a picture of someone holding a bat menacingly but wearing a uniform that appeals to your political taste.
Sorry, no, that is not tolerance. Rather it is political violence. Political violence may be justifiable, but needs to be argued for on its own merits - not couched as an exception to "tolerance".
> You can totally go get [a swastika tattoo]. I won't welcome you back.
I was examining your adherence to your statement that "un-inhibited self-expression if I were looking for a success metric of tolerance". You are now saying that you will discourage people from expressing themselves in ways you do not agree with. You can't have it both ways.
Apparently that lofty generality was just serving as a dog whistle, to be ignored for those whom you disagree with. Furthermore, you took my hypothetical and responded directly in terms of me, as if I am some "other" that is personally interested in getting a racist tattoo.
> It seems clear that most people are able to mostly tell when something intolerant is happening
Much of what one political team considers "activism" is perceived as intolerance by the other team, so where does that end up? Setting subjective feelings as a standard practically guarantees herd behavior.
> Yes! Pretty sure the answer here is "forgiving tit-for-tat".
And yet you have continued phrasing things in terms of ultimatums, where your judgment of someone's actions is justification to write them off in a larger way. Even if you yourself deescalate in your own personal interactions, what you've written directly supports escalation.
I stand by my original comment. You, right here, are fanning the flames of intolerance.
Person A is being intolerant. They are breaking the terms of the notional peace treaty; the consequence of that is losing the right to be tolerated.
Person B is OK because Person A has lost the right to be tolerated. They are not breaking the notional treaty.
Person B is not OK because Person B has not lost the right to be tolerated. They are breaking the notional treaty.
As for the rest of what you're saying...
Yeah, I can see how that bat picture is off-putting. I don't always notice those kinds of undercurrents. Thanks for pointing it out!
> discourage people from expressing themselves in ways you do not agree with
You can, if your differentiator is along different axis. See the Person A/B/C example above.
> Furthermore
Thanks for expressing that you're picking this up. That's not something I'm putting down, so I'm not sure where that's coming from.
> perceived as intolerance
Yep. I don't yet have a way to address this en masse, although talking to individuals seems to work.
> Setting subjective feelings as a measure
...That seems appropriate? But you're right about the failure mode. I'd then say the issue isn't using this sensor we've all got, but in directly reacting to the results of that sensor. If your box is showing high CPU usage, and all you do is up the CPU...
> I stand by my original comment.
You do you, and I value that you're expressing what you're picking up. It's not what I'm putting down.
Except very few people are saying "Let's kill all of Group B", especially in 2019, at Google, in San Francisco. But sure, if you want to act on your "intolerance" for that specific flavor of intolerance, then please go to eg Indiana and protest the actual KKK.
Rather what "Person A" is likely to have said is something civil that clashes with the dominant political team's reality distortion field. Rather than having to address the substance, those who disagree feign highly personal reactions as if a minority viewpoint is that "kill all" mortal threat, effectively resorting to the age old monkey status games for silencing dissent.
Person A: B raped a girl, so B doesn't tolerate women!
Person B: I did not!
Person C: I don't tolerate person B.
Person B's Friends: I don't tolerate person C since they broke the tolerance contract, B hasn't done anything.
Person C's friends: I don't tolerate B's friends since they broke the tolerance contract by not tolerating A.
Does this sound familiar? It was the start of the Tulsa massacre. If you say that "intolerance of intolerance" is a good thing then I take it that you think that the Tulsa massacre was warranted, since they were just intolerant of intolerant people right?
Edit: Or in the case of for example Damore:
Person A: There are inherent differences between group A and group B, so likely not all differences we see between them are due to discrimination.
Person B: I don't tolerate A's intolerance, he is clearly bigoted and thus broke the contract!
Person C: I don't tolerate B's intolerance, A might be misguided but didn't really show intolerance.
A, B and C now starts a verbal war causing several people to get fired on both sides before it calms down.
Your first situation is not identifiable to me as anything like my described situation. I do not see how you could think the two are examples of the same thing. Your narrative also does not appear coherent to me.
The Damore example is much better. I spent a long time going down that rabbit hole, and my conclusion is that he had a number of things that should have been considered and were not, in themselves, problematic, and he also had a number of things to say that were problematic, and he said many (but not all) of those things in ways that were problematic. The ensuing cultural conversation did the usual unfortunate thing, and devolve into black/white tribalism.
This is why I go first for a conversation with the Person As before deciding on courses of action.
In answering your question, it's more about reciprocation: if you make it comfortable for people to be who they are, we'll make it comfortable for you to be who you are; or the inverse. Which does have a strong element of "who did it first", but that's resolvable by risking the other person defecting while you cooperate and if they do that, well, doesn't really matter who did it first because it's clear who wasn't up for trying.
Picking out specific actions... I honestly don't know. We had a guy in one my communities get kicked out for doing this thing where he'd hear about someone's story about being a victim, and then retell that story in such a way that a) he was now that kind of victim and b) the original person now wasn't.
Being intolerant of intolerant actions is what is necessary to maintain a tolerant society. If you tolerate intolerant views, the paradox doesn't arise.
Views lead to actions. You can not draw a line between them and hope people will happily stand on one side of it.
If you allow intolerant views, you normalise intolerance. If you normalise intolerance, you ALSO normalise intolerant acts, and they WILL follow naturally.
You don't have to hope for anything. You just wait until they try to carry out the action (paying particular attention to those who have previously expressed views that are likely to lead to it), and physically prevent that.
If you normalize cracking down on views on the basis that they're intolerant, the people who make that determination end up with a lot of unchecked power. In France, for example, you can be jailed for wearing a t-shirt that says "boycott Israel" today - it's hate speech. In Germany, many flags used in Rojava are banned as extremist symbols. And note that despite all these laws, RN and AfD still exist and thrive.
Yeah, no, you can't physically prevent that, not without a perfect panopticon police state.
If you allow intolerance to spread, it WILL, without fail, hurt people. Sometime, immense number of people. This is not theoretical. It happens, again and again, and the only way to prevent it is to oppose intolerance at every stage.
Your abstract ideology of absolutely free speech is not in any way worth the immense pain and suffering that will, inevitably, follow.
On the contrary - you can't prevent intolerance from spreading without a perfect Panopticon police state. That's precisely why Europe is failing at it so badly, despite all their hate speech and extremism laws. Organizations like AfD can dog-whistle in public to avoid crossing legal limits, while still fundamentally communicating the same ideas. You could crack down on that if you had a pervasive surveillance state monitoring all private communication, but they aren't willing to go there.
On the other hand, policing actions is much easier, because the more consequential ones are also the more prominent - you don't need a surveillance state to deal with them, you just need a reaction force.
No, I am arguing that everyone can and should do all they can to condemn hatred. That regular people should make sure there are consequences for being a hateful bigot. And that people should not get tricked by "both-sides" bullshit, or empty appeals to "freedom of speech".
Don't be friends with a racist. Make sure they understand their views are not acceptable. Do your part today.
That does not at all seem like the constructive thing to do. Generally speaking, ostracizing groups of people for their beliefs leads to further polarization, and more extreme views.
In my experience, people are seldom racist for the sake of being hateful. Rather than applying an arbitrary label to someone so that you can lazily dismiss them as evil (which is just as bigoted as the bigotry you claim to oppose), it's better to find the underlying cause of the apparent racism, and addressing that concretely instead.
This is a justification for exterminatory politics. As a person with views to the right of centre the historical record suggests I would at best end up losing everything I own and probably end up in a re-education camp or dead in the event of a communist revolution. By your logic I would be justified in quite extreme measures to combat communism in the present day.
It was written in 1945. People didn't need to be reminded that the left can be intolerant too, and that the principle of intolerable intolerance you are so keen to apply to the right applies more to your behaviour, because you want to drive the them from civil society, than to the right, because they are merely defending their right to keep their job without apologising for or hiding their opinions.
People regularly quote that Wikipedia article as if it proves something, somehow ignoring the fact that it lists a number of arguments against Popper's conclusion.
Perhaps put you biases aside? There are white supremacists who don't think they're racist. (It's kind of like someone claiming they aren't homophobic but also opposing gay marriage.)
It's a complicated subject.
IMO, I don't see how someone can be a racist / homophobe in secret; thus I don't see a justification for spying on a co-worker just to find out things like this.
> I don't see a justification for spying on a co-worker
Hmm. I don't have an examined opinion on this, outside of general hesitation to go looking for problems for reasons such as confirmation bias and whatever the name is for what self-fulfilling-prophecies looks like this in kind of situation. Well, and maybe that if you're looking for justification you've already messed up. Just because you can somehow find a consolation prize doesn't mean you should have done something in the first pace.
Because you're using your biases against people who think differently than you to justify immoral behavior.
Edit: You don't need to tolerate bad behavior, but it goes both ways: You can't justify bad behavior in the name of policing other peoples' dumb actions.
Because I think you need to have more empathy for why people align themselves with causes you disagree with.
If you have the time, I suggest reading "They Thought they Were Free," by Milton Meyer. It's a well-known book that tries to answer why generally "good" people joined or supported the Nazi party in pre-WWII Germany.
It's been about a decade since I last read it, but I keep it on my shelf. What I remember, though, is that the reasons why Germans joined or supported the Nazi party vary quite greatly. I remember one passage about a man who basically liked dressing up in Nazi uniforms because he loved pageantry of Nazi rallies. Another was about some Jewish children who saw a Hitler Youth parade in a movie theater newsreel, and really wanted to join.
It's well worth the read if you need to understand why hate groups are so attractive to some people. (Or, to basically "examine your biases" towards people who you have "legitimate disagreement")
Are the world famous #1 gay couple Dolce and Gabbana homophobic? They oppose gay marriage, but in your American culture there are only two ways of life, you pick Republicans or Democrats and run with whatever their ministries of truth spew out.
> in your American culture there are only two ways of life
That might be the culture I come from, but it is not my culture, and I do not subscribe to it, claim responsibility for it, or claim ownership of it.
Then again, there's not a lot of people in my culture, they're pretty spread out, and it's hard to get them together in one place to do our thing, soooo.
It is a motte and bailey argument, most people agree with gays having access to legal marriage, the contentious part is religious marriage. Should we force preachers who don't believe that homosexuality is kosher to wed gay couples? A lot of people don't think so, and then they say they are against gay marriage even though they would be fine with legalizing them getting a legal marriage.
For example, do you think that we should force Muslim Imams to wed gay couples? I believe that it would be a fairly controversial topic even in left-wing circles.
The idea that gays are going around forcing religious people to marry them against their will is contrived and demonizing to gay people. Nobody forces someone to officiate their marriage. The question of gay marriage is entirely about the widespread legal ban on gay marriage and whether that is/was justified.
> Or your co-worker is out there on the weekend holding signs that say "Death to Gays" and you just happen to be gay?
In the early social media days, I worked in a small team with a man and a woman for a couple of years. When FB came around we friended each other, and I found out that she was a very leftist lesbian and he was a conservative church leader. I was a libertarian-leaning atheist, so we made quite the trifecta.
It was never an issue, before or after, because we didn't bring any of the potentially contentious parts of ourselves into the work environment.
We can, and should, be able to present different personas depending on the company we are in. The inability to do so, rather than being a moral failing, is a sign of fanaticism.
I agree, the point is that it's not black and white. You can't just say "people should not bring their interests to work."
At the extreme end your "interests" might be "preservation of my basic human rights." But once we agree that that's a valid political stance to bring to the office then the discussion shifts from "don't bring politics to work" to "where is the line?" and it forces the conversation to become more nuanced.
That may or may not be true, but it's definitely not the responsibility of any individual LGBT+ individual to try change someone's mind. Especially when said person will likely have a pretty bad time while interacting with someone who hates who they are.
How do you square that with stuff like whether your company should, for example, support same sex partner benefits, trans inclusive healthcare, prayer rooms, etc?
> same sex partner benefits, trans inclusive healthcare
Aren't things like this governed by local laws? In Canada we have private insurance for things above and beyond basic health care, but only the government gets to decide who is a partner, dependant, etc...
> prayer rooms
Are they going to build chapels for every religion? Who decides which religions get chapels or prayer rooms? Or does only 1 religion get a prayer room because 2019 politics?
Nope. In many places in the states you have little to no protections. (You can be fired for being trans, for example.)
> Are they going to build chapels for every religion?
Most workplaces I've worked have had a 'quiet room' or similar that was designed to be a private space for personal prayer if needed. It had a chair and clean carpet, but was otherwise unadorned. It just couldn't be booked as a conference room. There are folks whose religions require them to pray during the day, and having a space to quietly do so seems (to me) to be reasonable?
I wonder if there is any of the kind of phenomenon I used to observe in my blue-collar days - smokers could take 10-15 minutes off every hour to go to the smoking area and light up, so non-smokers got irritated and started going along too for their "second-hand smoke" breaks...
I’d be shocked if amazon in fact had a policy that only Muslims could use the prayer rooms.
Christians and Jews should be able to use them if they choose. I googled around and could only find statements that Muslim employees of a security contractor for amazon were not allowed to use the rooms for a while, but after protests and NLRB intervention now are.
Maybe because in the US we have religious freedom so we don't feel the need to protest to demand others accommodate us?
It's like a millionaire eating at a restaurant, and instead of tipping the waitress he expects to be tipped by the waitress. The extra demands only leave a bad taste in everyone else's mouths.
I don’t really understand the relation of your comment to mine.
I’ve worked at a (US) company with a prayer room that was used by some Muslim employees. As a Christian myself, I don’t think it would have been considered a problem if I used it when it was vacant to say a prayer, although my religious tradition doesn’t have the 5x/day prayer requirement like Islam does so I never did.
I don't think only Muslims could use the rooms in any stories I have read about this topic. That wasn't my point.
Consider going to a Muslim majority country where the religion controls the laws (like Indonesia) and /demand/ your Christian religious needs be accommodated.
From my studying, you would either be summarily dismissed or even possibly punished.
> I don't think only Muslims could use the rooms in any stories I have read about this topic. That wasn't my point
“ Amazon (for example) provided only space for Muslims to have prayer rooms, but no one else.”
I understood this to be a statement that Muslims, but no one else, where provided space for prayer rooms. It appears you meant something very different, so my criticism doesn’t apply.
You are correct that there are some very intolerant Muslim-majority countries out there in the world. It’s here in the United States that anyone, no matter their religion, can find freedom and accommodation. Land of the free and home of the brave, and all that.
There is currently a mass misunderstanding of religious freedom in the US. We have the freedom to say "no" to any belief we don't agree with, and that includes religious demands of employees.
The only reason Muslims get what they want is under the threat of violence. And US employers are scared of this, so they give in.
> Imagine if Buddists at Amazon had protested and demanded their own space for shrines?
Like... a prayer room? I'm imagining it now and... seems fine? It's hard to read your complaints as anything other than xenophobic, but maybe I'm misunderstanding the point you are trying to make?
That is pretty anti-religious, and your expectation of “tyranny” from a small minority of devout Muslim believers is ridiculous. It reminds me of American liberals who believe “Christian dominionists” are hiding around the corner ready to take power in some sort of real-life Handmaid’s Tale.
In reality most people just want to be allowed to do their own private thing and be treated well by others. Going into a room in private to practice your religion isn’t tyranny, it’s reasonable accommodation. They are no more going to enact a tyranny by doing this, than I do by making the sign of the cross when I eat my lunch at work, or that a Sikh coworker does by following his beliefs and wearing his turban, or a Jew his kippah, or so on...
Employers aren’t offering the prayer room because they fear violence, it’s because they want to appeal to their employees by giving them a comfortable and welcoming place to work.
Hypocrisy is the issue. If you choose to support one religion over another you are then you are taking sides on religion. What that topic is (in this case a room) is irrelevant in respects to hypocrisy. Hypocrisy weakens your resolve to do what is right and just.
Sharia law will be considered a religious right in the future in the US. And because we were hypocrites before, we will be hypocrites again. And if you don't think Sharia law will bring violence with it, I can provide links for you to study.
Didn’t you say that you accept that non-Muslims can use the prayer room though? So a Buddhist would be perfectly welcome to go into the room and use it. I’m a little confused what your point is.
We are giving up freedom of religion to appease one single religion. It's the start of really bad problems down the road. The demands and acquiescence is the issue, not the room.
You can't demand anything in the US right now from an employer on the basis of religion unless you are of one religion. All the others are ignored, or wouldn't even dare to make demands.
And this is done under the threat of violence from that religion.
Because historically practicality is the limiting factor for enforcement as opposed to any regard for those affected by it. Keeping it expensive has generally resulted in a situational usage where it is more appropriate and far less abusable.
I'm a live and let live kind of guy, if a company wants to compete for employees by offering all of that, that's great!
On the flip side, where do you draw the line? It's one thing not to work someplace, it's another to protest your own employer because they are not accommodating you with prayer rooms onsite.
