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I came from a family of coal miners and moved to the bay for a tech job. The second paragraph is more of the truth than I think people want to admit. People ar

I came from a family of coal miners and moved to the bay for a tech job. The second paragraph is more of the truth than I think people want to admit. People are nice, but they are also wankers. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with them a lot of the time, it’s just they are extremely, extremely naive and sometimes in their naive ness and lack of perspective say incredibly offensive things. You have to shrug it off like you are part of the in group even though they just insulted your family. No one told me about this part of the job in college.

tpoacher 5y ago
Much of this comes down to 'theory of mind' though. I wouldn't be surprised if someone in that group misguidedly said the same about you, and that you'd be utterly shocked to hear it. At the end of the day, I feel a good number of these problems have more to do with poor communication rather than tribalism. And as Scott Adams likes to say, you can't fix what you don't talk about. So perhaps shrugging things off is not as noble as you think it is, because that makes you complicit in perpetuating that problem. One of my most mature and eye-opening moments was when I realised that if someone mistreats you, but they seem unaware of it, and you don't tell them this is the case, then when they do it a second time and you get pissed off, you are in fact the asshole in this scenario, not them. Because if you implode a year later when it has happend for the Nth time, and you call them an asshole for having done it N times, they will very reasonably be upset you didn't trust them enough to set that boundary from day 1 when it first happened, but simply assumed they were naturally an asshole and not worth your time. Whereas if you immediate point your boundaries as soon as they're crossed, this leads to respect and mutual understanding, because you care enough about the engagement to set respectful rules for it. I have never met anyone since who didn't appreciate me setting clear, reasonable, respectful boundaries as soon as they crossed a line. Not only that, this tends to lead to people feeling more comfortable to share their own boundaries, which has more than once shown me my own stupidity when dealing with people, and I was more than grateful for them letting me know in a respectful manner.

tpoacher 5y ago

Much of this comes down to 'theory of mind' though. I wouldn't be surprised if someone in that group misguidedly said the same about you, and that you'd be utterly shocked to hear it. At the end of the day, I feel a good number of these problems have more to do with poor communication rather than tribalism. And as Scott Adams likes to say, you can't fix what you don't talk about. So perhaps shrugging things off is not as noble as you think it is, because that makes you complicit in perpetuating that problem. One of my most mature and eye-opening moments was when I realised that if someone mistreats you, but they seem unaware of it, and you don't tell them this is the case, then when they do it a second time and you get pissed off, you are in fact the asshole in this scenario, not them. Because if you implode a year later when it has happend for the Nth time, and you call them an asshole for having done it N times, they will very reasonably be upset you didn't trust them enough to set that boundary from day 1 when it first happened, but simply assumed they were naturally an asshole and not worth your time. Whereas if you immediate point your boundaries as soon as they're crossed, this leads to respect and mutual understanding, because you care enough about the engagement to set respectful rules for it. I have never met anyone since who didn't appreciate me setting clear, reasonable, respectful boundaries as soon as they crossed a line. Not only that, this tends to lead to people feeling more comfortable to share their own boundaries, which has more than once shown me my own stupidity when dealing with people, and I was more than grateful for them letting me know in a respectful manner.