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You can be apolitical in that you are not interested in politics. But: 1. Doing so is a political decision. 2. Your views shape your perspective and there wil

You can be apolitical in that you are not interested in politics. But: 1. Doing so is a political decision. 2. Your views shape your perspective and there will be actions and omissions that you take that impact politics in ways that you are unaware of.

phpnode 6y ago
If everything is political then nothing is political and the term loses all meaning
- iovrthoughtthis 6y ago
  Perhaps that is because, in this instance the term “political” has 2 meanings which we need to tease out to see why your statement is false. 1. Political intent - acting or omitting to act because of a political view point. 2. Political outcomes - the results of actions or omissions to act which impact politics. I guess my point is that your actions and omissions have political outcomes whether you want them to or not. We should also agree what “politics” means. I’m not simply referring to the science of government but to the decisions around the distribution of power, resources and status in groups of people.
  - fwn 6y ago
    > I guess my point is that your actions and omissions have political outcomes whether you want them to or not. It does not even stop there. If we choose to understand what's political in this way everything that humans choose to relate to (even things that do not exist beyond human imagination) have, of course, probably some influence on political outcomes. Rain, an escaped alligator from the local zoo, the color of a button in a web form, etc. I think that this second idea of what's political is merely the realization that we can choose to view everything according to it's political impact. Like a pair of glasses we might wear or might want others to wear. ...to stick with my example: One might end up making a long term study on how news about escaped zoo animals affect election outcomes. That might lead to surprising results. It's just not always guaranteed to be a very productive use of time. I think there's probably a healthy middle ground here. It's not hard to argue that there's some reasonable moral expectations regarding company decision making. Like, don't construct gas chambers. (Local example from my German home region.) On the other side it's easy to see that insisting on questioning every minor decision will lead to almost instant gridlock. That's why I think that both radical positions are pretty hard to defend. A better society might hide behind pragmatic decision making with some reasonable, probably even academically shallow moral questioning of ones own actions. Not in corporate apathy or zealotry.
    - iovrthoughtthis 6y ago
      What is your point?
      - fwn 6y ago
        My point is your parent is right and you are wrong. Artificially extending what's seen as political to excess is a pointless exercise that removes all meaning and usefulness from the concept. That's bad because a shared understanding of some political sphere (which comes into existence through its boundaries) is really important for democratic discourse.
        joshuamorton 6y ago
        That sounds nice, but how, and as importantly who decides what those boundaries are?
        fwn 6y ago
        In a best case scenario those boundaries are continuously questioned in the democratic discourse. Some moral entrepreneur might argue: Politics should govern the bedroom for [reasons]! ... and others might object: No; the bedroom is a private sphere where politics has no say for [reasons]. ... and over time there should emerge a shared understanding of which aspects of life are political grounds and which are taboo. The bedroom case is mostly decided today. One side won (mostly LGBTQ&Friends) and now we see the bedroom as something that should be free from politics. ..like I think that the vast majority of people in the western world now sees sodomy laws as bad fit for modern democracies. But there are other issues that are more contemporary: The idea that speech is violence, for example, is prime moral entrepreneurship. Western societies regulate violence in a certain way and this equivalence would suggest to treat both equivalent, one way or the other. ... and it's far from decided how speech will be treated in the future and we all have many open arguments on the matter. It's a healthy thing for societies to continuously re explore their specific boundaries of politics. I have difficulties seeing the "everything is political"-trope as anything but the proposal to be reckless regarding the process of a shared understanding of the boundaries of politics.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
GoblinSlayer 6y ago
You can have political stance, you just don't need to put it everywhere.
- iovrthoughtthis 6y ago
  Sure but you can’t help the fact that your actions and omissions to act have political outcomes.
  - GoblinSlayer 6y ago
    People do make big sacrifices when they work for an employer. They literally sell a sizable fraction of their lives which they could spend doing something else.
- m12k 6y ago
  That's an easy stance to have just as long as nobody is trying to politicize your gender, sexuality, skin color, ethnicity or other things that you literally can't do anything about or go anywhere without. Your skin color is either white or "political". Your gender is either male or "political". Your sexuality is either straight or "political". If you are not in the group that is protected under the status quo, then being asked to not "politicize everything" is the same as being asked to accept being stepped on. They didn't pick this fight, the people that decided to politicize their very person did.
  - derefr 6y ago
    I think you and at least the person you’re responding to are using different meanings of “political” here. When the people in this thread are arguing for being apolitical, they’re arguing for companies not being involved in seeking to lobby for change in formal, legislated power structures. They’re not arguing for companies to not take a stance in cultural power imbalances, because to them, power imbalances enforced by a government and power imbalances enforced only by social norms are not the same thing, and only the former is actually covered by the term “politics”, i.e. the thing that politicians do for their job. The latter, in most countries, is usually just called social — and there’s nobody arguing that companies should avoid taking social stances. Forming a company to do something is inherently a social stance — a stance in any culture-wars that might be shifted by the product or service the company provides. But forming a company to do something isn’t inherently a political stance. For a company to take a political stance, someone from the company would need to actually talk to a politician at some point, in their capacity as a representative of a company — i.e. to do the thing we call “lobbying.” Tangent: associating “politics” with attention paid to cultural, non-legislated power imbalances, is really mostly a US thing. I think this might be because most other developed, democratic countries have a lot fewer such cultural, non-legislated power imbalances; for painful historically-segregationist reasons, their entire populations are mostly formed out of what in the US would be considered a single mostly-uniform voting bloc. And so politicians in most countries, can’t really base their platforms on the cultural stances of any particular bloc — there’s not enough variation in such stances that highlighting one would win you any points. The US is unique in that it ended up as one country composed of many extremely-divergent blocs, but with there being basically no formally-recognized, legislated divisions between most such groups†. Compare to all-of-Europe or all-of-Asia (which are the most sensible comparisons, given the land areas involved): the people within those continents have long ago assorted into relatively-like-thinking groups, splitting off into their own smaller countries, historically not granting citizenship to those who are “not like them”, and so becoming each much more internally-uniform in both makeup and viewpoints. (And then, if one of those countries went on to conquer the other, the introduced power-imbalance would be a formal, political one, with real legislation — the sort of thing you do “politics” about — determining the relative power of the two sub-nations within the new merged nation.) † The US does have one formally-recognized, legislated division, where both sides explicitly sit at a negotiating table within government: that division being the one between native/indigenous Americans and N-generations-naturalized-immigrant Americans. And guess which group in the US isn’t heavily invested in the culture war? That’s right, the native population. Because they form a politically distinct group — effectively an annexed nation, as above — whose problems are raised to the level of actual politics, rather than social debate.
koheripbal 6y ago
It's very destructive to discourse to force people to polarize to one side or another. Most people when intimidated to "choose sides" will choose the side of the person NOT trying to pressure them into taking sides. To give you an idea of the types of historical figures that used the "you're either with us or against us" most famously... Benito Mussolini Vladimir Lenin George W Bush after 9/11 Recep Erdogan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You%27re_either_with_us,_or_against_us#Historical_quotations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You%27re_either_with_us,_or_ag...
- iovrthoughtthis 6y ago
  You are mischaracterising the point and assuming bad intent. What I am saying is that your actions and omissions have political outcomes whether you want them to or not.
  - refurb 6y ago
    Right, and the person you’re replying to is stating that many questionable political leaders have used that same argument to bully people into submission.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- bluntfang 6y ago
  >It's very destructive to discourse to force people to polarize to one side or another. Do you mind quoting the GP on where you feel like he's trying to force people to polarize and why that makes you feel that way? edit: Could those downvoting me please make an effort to help me understand parent comment's viewpoint instead of making low effort downvotes? I really don't feel like asking for clarification on something warrants a downvote without response.
- pjc50 6y ago
  It's also kind of destructive to say that people you disagree with are like Mussolini, but here we are.

phpnode 6y ago

If everything is political then nothing is political and the term loses all meaning

iovrthoughtthis 6y ago
Perhaps that is because, in this instance the term “political” has 2 meanings which we need to tease out to see why your statement is false. 1. Political intent - acting or omitting to act because of a political view point. 2. Political outcomes - the results of actions or omissions to act which impact politics. I guess my point is that your actions and omissions have political outcomes whether you want them to or not. We should also agree what “politics” means. I’m not simply referring to the science of government but to the decisions around the distribution of power, resources and status in groups of people.
- fwn 6y ago
  > I guess my point is that your actions and omissions have political outcomes whether you want them to or not. It does not even stop there. If we choose to understand what's political in this way everything that humans choose to relate to (even things that do not exist beyond human imagination) have, of course, probably some influence on political outcomes. Rain, an escaped alligator from the local zoo, the color of a button in a web form, etc. I think that this second idea of what's political is merely the realization that we can choose to view everything according to it's political impact. Like a pair of glasses we might wear or might want others to wear. ...to stick with my example: One might end up making a long term study on how news about escaped zoo animals affect election outcomes. That might lead to surprising results. It's just not always guaranteed to be a very productive use of time. I think there's probably a healthy middle ground here. It's not hard to argue that there's some reasonable moral expectations regarding company decision making. Like, don't construct gas chambers. (Local example from my German home region.) On the other side it's easy to see that insisting on questioning every minor decision will lead to almost instant gridlock. That's why I think that both radical positions are pretty hard to defend. A better society might hide behind pragmatic decision making with some reasonable, probably even academically shallow moral questioning of ones own actions. Not in corporate apathy or zealotry.
  - iovrthoughtthis 6y ago
    What is your point?
    - fwn 6y ago
      My point is your parent is right and you are wrong. Artificially extending what's seen as political to excess is a pointless exercise that removes all meaning and usefulness from the concept. That's bad because a shared understanding of some political sphere (which comes into existence through its boundaries) is really important for democratic discourse.
      - joshuamorton 6y ago
        That sounds nice, but how, and as importantly who decides what those boundaries are?
        fwn 6y ago
        In a best case scenario those boundaries are continuously questioned in the democratic discourse. Some moral entrepreneur might argue: Politics should govern the bedroom for [reasons]! ... and others might object: No; the bedroom is a private sphere where politics has no say for [reasons]. ... and over time there should emerge a shared understanding of which aspects of life are political grounds and which are taboo. The bedroom case is mostly decided today. One side won (mostly LGBTQ&Friends) and now we see the bedroom as something that should be free from politics. ..like I think that the vast majority of people in the western world now sees sodomy laws as bad fit for modern democracies. But there are other issues that are more contemporary: The idea that speech is violence, for example, is prime moral entrepreneurship. Western societies regulate violence in a certain way and this equivalence would suggest to treat both equivalent, one way or the other. ... and it's far from decided how speech will be treated in the future and we all have many open arguments on the matter. It's a healthy thing for societies to continuously re explore their specific boundaries of politics. I have difficulties seeing the "everything is political"-trope as anything but the proposal to be reckless regarding the process of a shared understanding of the boundaries of politics.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

GoblinSlayer 6y ago

You can have political stance, you just don't need to put it everywhere.

iovrthoughtthis 6y ago
Sure but you can’t help the fact that your actions and omissions to act have political outcomes.
- GoblinSlayer 6y ago
  People do make big sacrifices when they work for an employer. They literally sell a sizable fraction of their lives which they could spend doing something else.
m12k 6y ago
That's an easy stance to have just as long as nobody is trying to politicize your gender, sexuality, skin color, ethnicity or other things that you literally can't do anything about or go anywhere without. Your skin color is either white or "political". Your gender is either male or "political". Your sexuality is either straight or "political". If you are not in the group that is protected under the status quo, then being asked to not "politicize everything" is the same as being asked to accept being stepped on. They didn't pick this fight, the people that decided to politicize their very person did.
- derefr 6y ago
  I think you and at least the person you’re responding to are using different meanings of “political” here. When the people in this thread are arguing for being apolitical, they’re arguing for companies not being involved in seeking to lobby for change in formal, legislated power structures. They’re not arguing for companies to not take a stance in cultural power imbalances, because to them, power imbalances enforced by a government and power imbalances enforced only by social norms are not the same thing, and only the former is actually covered by the term “politics”, i.e. the thing that politicians do for their job. The latter, in most countries, is usually just called social — and there’s nobody arguing that companies should avoid taking social stances. Forming a company to do something is inherently a social stance — a stance in any culture-wars that might be shifted by the product or service the company provides. But forming a company to do something isn’t inherently a political stance. For a company to take a political stance, someone from the company would need to actually talk to a politician at some point, in their capacity as a representative of a company — i.e. to do the thing we call “lobbying.” Tangent: associating “politics” with attention paid to cultural, non-legislated power imbalances, is really mostly a US thing. I think this might be because most other developed, democratic countries have a lot fewer such cultural, non-legislated power imbalances; for painful historically-segregationist reasons, their entire populations are mostly formed out of what in the US would be considered a single mostly-uniform voting bloc. And so politicians in most countries, can’t really base their platforms on the cultural stances of any particular bloc — there’s not enough variation in such stances that highlighting one would win you any points. The US is unique in that it ended up as one country composed of many extremely-divergent blocs, but with there being basically no formally-recognized, legislated divisions between most such groups†. Compare to all-of-Europe or all-of-Asia (which are the most sensible comparisons, given the land areas involved): the people within those continents have long ago assorted into relatively-like-thinking groups, splitting off into their own smaller countries, historically not granting citizenship to those who are “not like them”, and so becoming each much more internally-uniform in both makeup and viewpoints. (And then, if one of those countries went on to conquer the other, the introduced power-imbalance would be a formal, political one, with real legislation — the sort of thing you do “politics” about — determining the relative power of the two sub-nations within the new merged nation.) † The US does have one formally-recognized, legislated division, where both sides explicitly sit at a negotiating table within government: that division being the one between native/indigenous Americans and N-generations-naturalized-immigrant Americans. And guess which group in the US isn’t heavily invested in the culture war? That’s right, the native population. Because they form a politically distinct group — effectively an annexed nation, as above — whose problems are raised to the level of actual politics, rather than social debate.

koheripbal 6y ago

It's very destructive to discourse to force people to polarize to one side or another. Most people when intimidated to "choose sides" will choose the side of the person NOT trying to pressure them into taking sides. To give you an idea of the types of historical figures that used the "you're either with us or against us" most famously... Benito Mussolini Vladimir Lenin George W Bush after 9/11 Recep Erdogan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You%27re_either_with_us,_or_against_us#Historical_quotations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You%27re_either_with_us,_or_ag...

iovrthoughtthis 6y ago
You are mischaracterising the point and assuming bad intent. What I am saying is that your actions and omissions have political outcomes whether you want them to or not.
- refurb 6y ago
  Right, and the person you’re replying to is stating that many questionable political leaders have used that same argument to bully people into submission.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
bluntfang 6y ago
>It's very destructive to discourse to force people to polarize to one side or another. Do you mind quoting the GP on where you feel like he's trying to force people to polarize and why that makes you feel that way? edit: Could those downvoting me please make an effort to help me understand parent comment's viewpoint instead of making low effort downvotes? I really don't feel like asking for clarification on something warrants a downvote without response.
pjc50 6y ago
It's also kind of destructive to say that people you disagree with are like Mussolini, but here we are.