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"Apolitical" spaces are a tool. Specifically, it's a polite fiction that lets people drop their overt political agendas in favor of getting shit done, working t

"Apolitical" spaces are a tool. Specifically, it's a polite fiction that lets people drop their overt political agendas in favor of getting shit done, working together, enjoying a hobby, remaining on good terms with people, eating dinner with family, or whatever other highly valuable thing people get together for. It's not "politics doesn't exist". It's that the advantages of declaring a political cease-fire in many contexts outweighs the cost of not being able to advance your personal agenda. This is especially true in many engineering and technology contexts, where creating a product that generates business value for your company is orders of magnitude more important than your political concerns. Even if you think your politics is extraordinarily important, the answer is likely to donate a portion of your salary to political groups rather than politicizing the workplace.

pjc50 8y ago
That depends on what you mean by "politics" - if you're being unfairly discriminated against on race, gender etc grounds, that's something that other people have already brought to the space. Your options are to accept it (at a permanent disadvantage) or complain (risk being dismissed as "politics"). Sometimes the political is really personal. ("Apolitical" is like "leaderless" or "self-driving": there really is a leader or a driver or a politics, it's just that everyone agrees to pretend that they don't exist or their intermittent intervention isn't crucial)
- another-one-off 8y ago
  The people who run water systems, food distribution networks, defense systems and similar should be people who would reasonably accept that their responsibility to the system comes before [insert issue]. Every possible opinion is represented out there somewhere, and there will be someone who honestly believes, eg, that shutting down the electricity grid for 24 hours to make a point about Trump is justified. Or a point about immigration. Or a point about socialism, or what have you. What is usually meant by 'politics' is that the people who are in charge of workspaces should be on the exact other end of the spectrum to these hypothetical activists. If anything even tangentially threatens the safe operation of the system, it should be a priority over political issues.
- ThrustVectoring 8y ago
  Well yeah, your choices in general with an apolitical space are to either break the no-politics cease fire or decide that it's bad enough that you're not getting a good enough deal to stay quiet. People tend to underestimate the value of the cease fire, though - I wouldn't break it at my workplace for a $5k/yr raise, more than that might be worthwhile though.
- paulddraper 8y ago
  "Everything is politics"
joaomacp 8y ago
You're suggesting people should be robots, with the only purpose of serving their company and the capitalist system, and restrain from showing or debating any personal issues they find important. I think this approximates dictatorship and slavery. We shouldn't be scared or uncomfortable discussing politics, we should only try to remain calm and rational about it. I think this concept is more accepted in Europe than in the US. There seems to be less taboo subjects in Europe.
slivym 8y ago
I think what you're not addressing though, is that often the work engineers are doing is political. No one can doubt that Facebook has fundamentally changed politics, no one can doubt that the way they set it up had spectacular effects on politics in this country - and that they're now deliberately modifying their system to have a specific political impact. Maybe if they'd thought about the politics of their system as part of their design stage, they would've thought about what damage they were going to cause. The choice not to has arguably been a massive blow to democracy.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- closeparen 8y ago
  Say a conservative becomes CEO of AT&T. Should they consider the "damage" that will be caused by routing calls for liberals, embrace their political responsibilities, and kick suspected left-wingers off the PSTN? Republicans are real people who really make up approximately half the voters in this country. The "threat to democracy" here is the suggestion that it's a moral imperative to rig core communications infrastructure against them. Facebook hasn't "fundamentally changed" anything. Right wingers just happened to be savvier at manipulating the tools it provides, this time around. If anything, that's a surprise. One would expect social media to be good at rallying younger, tech-savvier, more left-leaning voters. One would expect the DNC to run the savviest social-media campaign, based on its track record in '08 and '12.
AndrewKemendo 8y ago
This is too limited a view of what is "political" because it completely ignores the context in which it lies. That's the point of the article - that you cannot disentangle human action from societal impact. So extending your example, by doing work that generates "business value" in a corporation as an at will employee, you're implicitly supporting the political structure of hierarchical capital ownership of productive labor. This would be in opposition to, say working only in a labor owned cooperative. (note that is not to favor one or the other, simply to make the point that there is a choice) People generally do not make such a distinction because it doesn't seem like there are options to choose from, or more likely they are simply ignorant of other ways of cooperation/organization.
snowwrestler 8y ago
Not everyone outside your political cease-fire zone will agree that the work you're doing is apolitical. If one has an agreement (formal or tacit) to not talk about politics with your colleagues while the team manufactures Nazi flags... that may make for a pleasant and productive workplace, but broader society is still going to have a political reaction to that work. The key is to understand the difference between contexts. Defining the context of your workplace is fine, but it's a mistake to assume that all contexts should treat you and your work the same. This mistake is where you get comments like "but Facebook is such an inclusive company and everyone who works there are good people." That can be 100% true, but still not invalidate the criticisms of how Facebook's products are affecting society as a whole. And if someone at Facebook is going to listen to and consider that criticism, that will by necessity introduce the external context into the internal context.
firstplacelast 8y ago
I fundamentally disagree. Ethical consumption is a cop-out, especially for those who have means (most people on this site). Real integrity comes from ethical production. Place your time and skills towards companies and projects that at the very least do not make the world worse. And if you can't do that, I do not think you get to get on a soap box and talk about how great you are because you shop for local produce, eat vegan, and drive an electric car. Everyone is as evil as their most sociopathic executive, you both contribute to the same bottom line but the employee sells out for less.
- ThrustVectoring 8y ago
  I'm not saying to choose what projects to work on or what companies to work for in a impact-on-society neutral way. I'm saying that once you've decided that doing X is the best thing to do, then having the politics be considered "settled" by everyone involved is a great way to stop wasting resources on politics in favor of getting the shared goal done.
  - dredmorbius 8y ago
    I would think it's quite premature to consider numerous courses of action in tech, particularly concerning privavy, surveillance, speech, and allocation of benefits, settled. This sounds much like someone prefering to shut down such debate. By contrast, prolonging and deliberately promoting uncertainty, as in the cases of leaded painr]t & petrol, asbestos, tobacco, CFCs, and now CO2 emissions, shows the other face. Determining good faith seems a key.

pjc50 8y ago

That depends on what you mean by "politics" - if you're being unfairly discriminated against on race, gender etc grounds, that's something that other people have already brought to the space. Your options are to accept it (at a permanent disadvantage) or complain (risk being dismissed as "politics"). Sometimes the political is really personal. ("Apolitical" is like "leaderless" or "self-driving": there really is a leader or a driver or a politics, it's just that everyone agrees to pretend that they don't exist or their intermittent intervention isn't crucial)

another-one-off 8y ago
The people who run water systems, food distribution networks, defense systems and similar should be people who would reasonably accept that their responsibility to the system comes before [insert issue]. Every possible opinion is represented out there somewhere, and there will be someone who honestly believes, eg, that shutting down the electricity grid for 24 hours to make a point about Trump is justified. Or a point about immigration. Or a point about socialism, or what have you. What is usually meant by 'politics' is that the people who are in charge of workspaces should be on the exact other end of the spectrum to these hypothetical activists. If anything even tangentially threatens the safe operation of the system, it should be a priority over political issues.
ThrustVectoring 8y ago
Well yeah, your choices in general with an apolitical space are to either break the no-politics cease fire or decide that it's bad enough that you're not getting a good enough deal to stay quiet. People tend to underestimate the value of the cease fire, though - I wouldn't break it at my workplace for a $5k/yr raise, more than that might be worthwhile though.
paulddraper 8y ago
"Everything is politics"

joaomacp 8y ago

You're suggesting people should be robots, with the only purpose of serving their company and the capitalist system, and restrain from showing or debating any personal issues they find important. I think this approximates dictatorship and slavery. We shouldn't be scared or uncomfortable discussing politics, we should only try to remain calm and rational about it. I think this concept is more accepted in Europe than in the US. There seems to be less taboo subjects in Europe.

slivym 8y ago

I think what you're not addressing though, is that often the work engineers are doing is political. No one can doubt that Facebook has fundamentally changed politics, no one can doubt that the way they set it up had spectacular effects on politics in this country - and that they're now deliberately modifying their system to have a specific political impact. Maybe if they'd thought about the politics of their system as part of their design stage, they would've thought about what damage they were going to cause. The choice not to has arguably been a massive blow to democracy.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
closeparen 8y ago
Say a conservative becomes CEO of AT&T. Should they consider the "damage" that will be caused by routing calls for liberals, embrace their political responsibilities, and kick suspected left-wingers off the PSTN? Republicans are real people who really make up approximately half the voters in this country. The "threat to democracy" here is the suggestion that it's a moral imperative to rig core communications infrastructure against them. Facebook hasn't "fundamentally changed" anything. Right wingers just happened to be savvier at manipulating the tools it provides, this time around. If anything, that's a surprise. One would expect social media to be good at rallying younger, tech-savvier, more left-leaning voters. One would expect the DNC to run the savviest social-media campaign, based on its track record in '08 and '12.

AndrewKemendo 8y ago

This is too limited a view of what is "political" because it completely ignores the context in which it lies. That's the point of the article - that you cannot disentangle human action from societal impact. So extending your example, by doing work that generates "business value" in a corporation as an at will employee, you're implicitly supporting the political structure of hierarchical capital ownership of productive labor. This would be in opposition to, say working only in a labor owned cooperative. (note that is not to favor one or the other, simply to make the point that there is a choice) People generally do not make such a distinction because it doesn't seem like there are options to choose from, or more likely they are simply ignorant of other ways of cooperation/organization.

snowwrestler 8y ago

Not everyone outside your political cease-fire zone will agree that the work you're doing is apolitical. If one has an agreement (formal or tacit) to not talk about politics with your colleagues while the team manufactures Nazi flags... that may make for a pleasant and productive workplace, but broader society is still going to have a political reaction to that work. The key is to understand the difference between contexts. Defining the context of your workplace is fine, but it's a mistake to assume that all contexts should treat you and your work the same. This mistake is where you get comments like "but Facebook is such an inclusive company and everyone who works there are good people." That can be 100% true, but still not invalidate the criticisms of how Facebook's products are affecting society as a whole. And if someone at Facebook is going to listen to and consider that criticism, that will by necessity introduce the external context into the internal context.

firstplacelast 8y ago

I fundamentally disagree. Ethical consumption is a cop-out, especially for those who have means (most people on this site). Real integrity comes from ethical production. Place your time and skills towards companies and projects that at the very least do not make the world worse. And if you can't do that, I do not think you get to get on a soap box and talk about how great you are because you shop for local produce, eat vegan, and drive an electric car. Everyone is as evil as their most sociopathic executive, you both contribute to the same bottom line but the employee sells out for less.

ThrustVectoring 8y ago
I'm not saying to choose what projects to work on or what companies to work for in a impact-on-society neutral way. I'm saying that once you've decided that doing X is the best thing to do, then having the politics be considered "settled" by everyone involved is a great way to stop wasting resources on politics in favor of getting the shared goal done.
- dredmorbius 8y ago
  I would think it's quite premature to consider numerous courses of action in tech, particularly concerning privavy, surveillance, speech, and allocation of benefits, settled. This sounds much like someone prefering to shut down such debate. By contrast, prolonging and deliberately promoting uncertainty, as in the cases of leaded painr]t & petrol, asbestos, tobacco, CFCs, and now CO2 emissions, shows the other face. Determining good faith seems a key.