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You didn't actually address my question, and I made no mention of the state. I'm going to quote you again: you claimed that > When you protest against it publi

You didn't actually address my question, and I made no mention of the state. I'm going to quote you again: you claimed that > When you protest against it publicly in the workplace and shout down others for as little as not vehemently agreeing with you, then we have a problem. I'm asking if you think that's generally true. For example, if you actually believe this, you would presumably make no attempt to silence me if I protested something in the workplace, as doing so would be taking exactly the action you object to. Presumably you would internally object to my protesting something, and we both agree that that's alright. But were you to express that concern outwardly, say by asking me to stop, it would be shouting down others for as little as not vehemently agreeing with you about workplace conduct. And therefore we would have a problem, or more correctly, you would have a problem with yourself. In other words, we encounter a bit of a paradox. How you resolve this paradox is of paramount importance: the value system you use to resolve this paradox becomes the values you use in the workplace. I'm using this to illustrate a point: there isn't a "null" position. Nebulously banning "political" views doesn't work unless you're clear about what makes something political. And people will disagree with you on those things. Its much less painful to ban things based on content (say: cursing or insults) than "how political it is", because the second is just an excuse to let your values implicitly bias the local Overton window without acknowledging that.

SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
> the second is just an excuse to let your values implicitly bias the local Overton window without acknowledging that I can't speak for the original commenter, but I'm perfectly willing to acknowledge that. Banning politics is a difficult and inevitably biased rule. But the alternative seems to be that politics invades every minute of everyone's life, and that's completely intolerable unless you're fortunate enough to precisely align with your local mainstream.
- joshuamorton 7y ago
  And that's fine. It's a choice. One I personally disagree with, but at least it's a deliberate choice. But if you make such a deliberate choice you need to be frank about it: you're making a tradeoff between, let's say, tranquility and openness, and favoring tranquility at a cost to people whose views are less mainstream. Or (under an alternate definition of political), you're making the choice to accept without argument the whims of the current government, in other words making company values dictated by the environment instead of by the company itself. This is, again, not inherently wrong, but you should own this and understand that it isn't a morally superior or better position, it's just an arbitrary stance that might make sense for you, but it comes at a cost to others. > but it's miles better than the scenario where politics is allowed to invade every minute of everyone's life. I just want to note that, as someone who works at Google, its very easy to turn politics "off", so to speak. There are mailing lists and group chats I just don't access. I'm privileged enough to be able to do that because there are very few political issues that directly affect me. That isn't true for some of my coworkers. Those who are, to take one example, immigrants are directly affected by "politics" on the daily. And so avoiding discussion or interaction with politcal issues isn't possible for them. The same is true for coworkers who are Muslim, or who have undocumented family members. The political realities are inescapable for them. Asking them not to discuss those issues at work is like asking me not to discuss, say, a parent being hospitalized. They're real issues that affect and weigh on people. Forcing people to keep those things bottled up, especially when the company may be taking action that negatively impacts those people, isn't nice.
  - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
    But I think your framing is backwards here. * Banning politics from the workplace is a huge benefit to people whose views are less mainstream. In the presence of politics, people with non-mainstream views have to either lie about what they think or live under a constant cloud of controversy. * Banning politics from the workplace is the only way to keep your values independent of the political environment. If politics are allowed, you constantly have to monitor the political landscape to make sure following your company values won't make your employees rebel. * Your analogy does hold, and it would be unreasonable to have a rule where I'll be punished for chatting in the breakroom about how my cousin might be deported. But it would also be unreasonable for me to interrupt meetings with demands that the company must cancel its medical plan, because my dad has the same insurance and I don't think they're treating him right. More broadly, I don't think anyone actually wants or would benefit from politics in general in the workplace. The only people I've seen argue for it are confident that their politics will be popular, and that all political views they find offensive will continue to be forbidden.
    - joshuamorton 7y ago
      (fyi I really appreciate this thread of discussion, it's quite interesting) To your first point, this is only true if you're forced to participate. We have workplace social events, I sometimes choose not to participate. We have political arguments, I often disagree with the majority in those conversations. I simply don't engage when I'm not up for a debate. It's yet to be an issue. I'd agree that forcing people to express their political views is unreasonable, but that also isn't a position I've seen expressed except as a Boogeyman. To your second point, if your values are independent of the current political climate, you need to be able to discuss how your actions align with your values. If you're working in political spaces, this necessitates discussion of political issues. To be concrete, if your values are "don't be evil", you need to be willing to have the discussion on whether or not working with the Chinese government on a censored search tool is evil. This is a really complex question (and I use this example because I've heard great arguments in both directions), but if you censor political discussion, the organization can't be held accountable, because no one is allowed to ask. To your third point, I'm in agreement with your specific example, but asking a question about improving the healthcare policy at an all hands on HR issues would be warranted. Similarly, asking about access to gender neutral restrooms would be warranted even if it's political to some people. To your last bit, I'm not saying that you can't ban certain things for certain reasons. As an example, banning discrimination is okay, even though some discrimination might be political. In essence, I'm of the opinion that if you hold a belief strongly enough to ban dissent, you should be forthright about the belief. If your want to ban Republicans, or ban people who openly identify as trans (both of which are legal in various US jurisdictions), at least have the decency so say so and not hide behind banning "political discussion" or "political activism".
manigandham 7y ago
1) Surely you can see the difference between topics? Politics are not relevant to work. Office policies are. You can discuss and protest the latter if you want, but not the former. I'm sure you don't discuss porn habits and drug usage with your coworkers, do you? But of course it's fine to discuss working from home or new laptops. There is no paradox here. 2) I would prefer any feedback and protests be in private when are relevant to the company. You don't make a fuss and nobody else does either, so we can all work in peace and quiet. Most companies implement these rules for the sake of everyone. 3) "unless you're clear about what makes something political." This is exceedingly clear for the vast majority of people, except the activists who are making the fuss.
- joshuamorton 7y ago
  > Office policies are Perfect, so questions of what companies we contract with, how we do hiring and diversity, and what bathrooms people are allowed to use are all office policies and reasonable work discussion topics. Can you give examples of the kinds of things you object to then? Fwiw, I've known people who discuss their porn and drug habits at work. Hell I've known people who do drugs with their co-workers. > I would prefer any feedback and protests be in private when are relevant to the company Of course, it's only as a side effect that this undercuts the effectiveness of any activism. Are you familiar with the concept of "yes of course you can protest, but not like that" for all values of that? If the only acceptable forms of protest are ones that can be ignored with no consequences, you've just de facto silenced those who have concerns with the status quo. That's a very political decision, totalitarian ist to be specific. > This is exceedingly clear for the vast majority of people, except the activists who are making the fuss. If it's so clear, you should have no trouble making it explicit without relying on the word politics. Since you still seem to miss it, my entire premise here is that "politics" is a form of doublespeak and people who use it are generally unwilling to actually go on record with the views they want to censor, instead using it as a sort of "things that make me uncomfortable in the moment" catch-all, but without giving the same courtesy of banning "things that make me uncomfortable" to other people. So far your unwillingness to pin down exactly what you mean by political hasn't done much to dispell that thought.
  - 7y ago

SpicyLemonZest 7y ago

> the second is just an excuse to let your values implicitly bias the local Overton window without acknowledging that I can't speak for the original commenter, but I'm perfectly willing to acknowledge that. Banning politics is a difficult and inevitably biased rule. But the alternative seems to be that politics invades every minute of everyone's life, and that's completely intolerable unless you're fortunate enough to precisely align with your local mainstream.

joshuamorton 7y ago
And that's fine. It's a choice. One I personally disagree with, but at least it's a deliberate choice. But if you make such a deliberate choice you need to be frank about it: you're making a tradeoff between, let's say, tranquility and openness, and favoring tranquility at a cost to people whose views are less mainstream. Or (under an alternate definition of political), you're making the choice to accept without argument the whims of the current government, in other words making company values dictated by the environment instead of by the company itself. This is, again, not inherently wrong, but you should own this and understand that it isn't a morally superior or better position, it's just an arbitrary stance that might make sense for you, but it comes at a cost to others. > but it's miles better than the scenario where politics is allowed to invade every minute of everyone's life. I just want to note that, as someone who works at Google, its very easy to turn politics "off", so to speak. There are mailing lists and group chats I just don't access. I'm privileged enough to be able to do that because there are very few political issues that directly affect me. That isn't true for some of my coworkers. Those who are, to take one example, immigrants are directly affected by "politics" on the daily. And so avoiding discussion or interaction with politcal issues isn't possible for them. The same is true for coworkers who are Muslim, or who have undocumented family members. The political realities are inescapable for them. Asking them not to discuss those issues at work is like asking me not to discuss, say, a parent being hospitalized. They're real issues that affect and weigh on people. Forcing people to keep those things bottled up, especially when the company may be taking action that negatively impacts those people, isn't nice.
- SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
  But I think your framing is backwards here. * Banning politics from the workplace is a huge benefit to people whose views are less mainstream. In the presence of politics, people with non-mainstream views have to either lie about what they think or live under a constant cloud of controversy. * Banning politics from the workplace is the only way to keep your values independent of the political environment. If politics are allowed, you constantly have to monitor the political landscape to make sure following your company values won't make your employees rebel. * Your analogy does hold, and it would be unreasonable to have a rule where I'll be punished for chatting in the breakroom about how my cousin might be deported. But it would also be unreasonable for me to interrupt meetings with demands that the company must cancel its medical plan, because my dad has the same insurance and I don't think they're treating him right. More broadly, I don't think anyone actually wants or would benefit from politics in general in the workplace. The only people I've seen argue for it are confident that their politics will be popular, and that all political views they find offensive will continue to be forbidden.
  - joshuamorton 7y ago
    (fyi I really appreciate this thread of discussion, it's quite interesting) To your first point, this is only true if you're forced to participate. We have workplace social events, I sometimes choose not to participate. We have political arguments, I often disagree with the majority in those conversations. I simply don't engage when I'm not up for a debate. It's yet to be an issue. I'd agree that forcing people to express their political views is unreasonable, but that also isn't a position I've seen expressed except as a Boogeyman. To your second point, if your values are independent of the current political climate, you need to be able to discuss how your actions align with your values. If you're working in political spaces, this necessitates discussion of political issues. To be concrete, if your values are "don't be evil", you need to be willing to have the discussion on whether or not working with the Chinese government on a censored search tool is evil. This is a really complex question (and I use this example because I've heard great arguments in both directions), but if you censor political discussion, the organization can't be held accountable, because no one is allowed to ask. To your third point, I'm in agreement with your specific example, but asking a question about improving the healthcare policy at an all hands on HR issues would be warranted. Similarly, asking about access to gender neutral restrooms would be warranted even if it's political to some people. To your last bit, I'm not saying that you can't ban certain things for certain reasons. As an example, banning discrimination is okay, even though some discrimination might be political. In essence, I'm of the opinion that if you hold a belief strongly enough to ban dissent, you should be forthright about the belief. If your want to ban Republicans, or ban people who openly identify as trans (both of which are legal in various US jurisdictions), at least have the decency so say so and not hide behind banning "political discussion" or "political activism".

manigandham 7y ago

1) Surely you can see the difference between topics? Politics are not relevant to work. Office policies are. You can discuss and protest the latter if you want, but not the former. I'm sure you don't discuss porn habits and drug usage with your coworkers, do you? But of course it's fine to discuss working from home or new laptops. There is no paradox here. 2) I would prefer any feedback and protests be in private when are relevant to the company. You don't make a fuss and nobody else does either, so we can all work in peace and quiet. Most companies implement these rules for the sake of everyone. 3) "unless you're clear about what makes something political." This is exceedingly clear for the vast majority of people, except the activists who are making the fuss.

joshuamorton 7y ago
> Office policies are Perfect, so questions of what companies we contract with, how we do hiring and diversity, and what bathrooms people are allowed to use are all office policies and reasonable work discussion topics. Can you give examples of the kinds of things you object to then? Fwiw, I've known people who discuss their porn and drug habits at work. Hell I've known people who do drugs with their co-workers. > I would prefer any feedback and protests be in private when are relevant to the company Of course, it's only as a side effect that this undercuts the effectiveness of any activism. Are you familiar with the concept of "yes of course you can protest, but not like that" for all values of that? If the only acceptable forms of protest are ones that can be ignored with no consequences, you've just de facto silenced those who have concerns with the status quo. That's a very political decision, totalitarian ist to be specific. > This is exceedingly clear for the vast majority of people, except the activists who are making the fuss. If it's so clear, you should have no trouble making it explicit without relying on the word politics. Since you still seem to miss it, my entire premise here is that "politics" is a form of doublespeak and people who use it are generally unwilling to actually go on record with the views they want to censor, instead using it as a sort of "things that make me uncomfortable in the moment" catch-all, but without giving the same courtesy of banning "things that make me uncomfortable" to other people. So far your unwillingness to pin down exactly what you mean by political hasn't done much to dispell that thought.
- 7y ago