6 ms·

>I don't think the answer is a return to 20th century "no politics at work" Why not?

by mk81 5y ago

madrox 5y ago
Because the genie is out the bottle. For better or worse, many tech companies have worked hard to make your workplace your social hub in an effort to retain employees and get them to work longer hours. That's already happened, so now we have to deal with the good and bad that came from that. Going backward to how things were is as realistic as uninventing Twitter.
- chitowneats 5y ago
  That dynamic has not existed since March 2020.
  - cutemonster 5y ago
    I.e. since covid-19 (just in case someone finds this discussion 20 years later and wonders what was special about that March month)
    - pgwhalen 5y ago
      I'm curious if Americans won't really understand the meaning of that in 20 years. I feel like it would be equivalent to saying "September of 2001", and surely Americans now understand what that refers to.
- koheripbal 5y ago
  As someone who worked in tech in the 20th century, we also worked long hours, fyi. We didn't connect with coworkers outside work, I think, because social media didn't exist and so we held on more to earlier friendships longer and actually were more open to acquainting ourselves to new strangers we met in public. The old "can I have your number" days. I think politics were present in the office much, because pre-social media, there was no conduit to get bombarded with hyperbolic political messages. ...and thus those people who were very political were not invited to social gatherings more frequently. ...something you can't do as easily on social media.
- mk81 5y ago
  Personally think this pushback by companies will continue and that those companies that successfully avoid "woke at work" will be spectacularly more effective at delivering products and services their customers want. We'll see.
betwixthewires 5y ago
Because this experiment has obviously failed and this attempt to create a less toxic work environment through activism has resulted in a thinly veiled attempt to create a more toxic work environment for those who do not want to conform to neo-marxist orthodoxy.
- permo-w 5y ago
  >neo-marxist orthodoxy This is one my main gripes with conservatives right now. You go to any of the places you congregate and alongside the more reasonable scepticism towards woke culture, there’s this constant talk of the rise of “neo-marxism” I have seen zero evidence for this. None Besides very basic issues like minimum wage, on the whole, the new left does not care about economics. There’s the occasional “bad capitalism bad” meme or tweet, but that’s the extent of it This whole neomarxism shit just seems like a confluence of: 1. it’s bait to conservatives, so it gets attention 2. If you don’t like BLM etc, it’s much easier to just label them as marxists, rather than actually dismantle their flimsy ideology 3. it’s probably partially a reaction to the media calling Trump a fascist In conclusion, it’s convenient for a lot of the right to confuse identity politics with marxism, and it puts me off because it’s lazy and ignorant
  - thu2111 5y ago
    Not quite. BLM in particular is called Marxist because the people who actually organize that movement have called themselves "trained Marxists" and the British BLM website for a while claimed their goals involved overthrowing capitalism and the nuclear family. If you don't think BLM is Marxist that's understandable because those facts didn't get much attention, but, they definitely are. Adopting a clenched fist as a logo should be another hint. At any rate, it's mostly because Marxism is not really an economic ideology, even though communism is often presented as an alternative to capitalism. Communism is arguably not an economic system at all given the absolutely minimal detail Marx provided about how a communist economy was actually meant to work. Marxism is best understood as a packaged set of views about the current state of the world and human nature, the correct/perfect state of the world and human nature, and a plan for how to get from here to there. A key component of Marxist thought is that the current state of the world is one of "alienation" (today we would say oppression), in which a small minority subtly oppress the majority in such a way that the majority don't realize they're oppressed. But if they were to realize, they could rise up and via a revolution overthrow their oppressors. This would establish a transient state (the dictatorship of the proletariat) that would eventually, once society was finished being transformed, sort of melt away leaving communism as a kind of superior form of existence in which there's no oppression, human nature has fundamentally changed and as a consequence everyone is equal. It's that last bit that gets the bulk of the attention because, firstly, the rest is kind of vague, and secondly, the socialist revolutionaries were expected to deliver obvious, real-world benefits for their revolution and focused on the "everyone is economically equal" bit as something that could be achieved via large scale government action. But to Marx that was only one part of it. The rest was about human nature. The modern left, especially in Silicon Valley, is easily identifiable as a new variant of this basic ideology: - Society is split into oppressors (white men) and everyone else (women, other races). People are always one of these groups and cannot move between them. Many oppressed people don't believe they're oppressed, but that's because they've been deceived and it's very important to make them realize that white men are oppressing them. - People are either really good, or really bad, and people who are really bad (anyone who doesn't subscribe to this ideology) need to be suppressed, expelled, or silenced in various ways. - The world is suffering under vaguely defined oppressive forces (Marx: imperialism, the Woke: patriarchy/systemic racism). If these forces are defeated, humanity will be elevated to a superior form of existence. - Exceptionally aggressive "with us or against us" tactics are legitimate and even required to reach this state. There are a bunch of other similarities, but that's the gist.
gnopgnip 5y ago
Because "no politics at work" isn't neutral, it means supporting the status quo by way of defining what counts as "politics". Is calling someone by their preferred pronouns, or wearing a mask during the pandemic politics?
- refenestrator 5y ago
  I feel like there's a vast, decent middle ground between deliberately misgendering your coworkers and the current inquisition-style shitfest.
  - gnopgnip 5y ago
    Being deliberately misgendered at work is a real issue, the law doesn't prohibit it in many states. Look at cases like Meriwether v. Hartop, a professor was disciplined for deliberately misgendering a student repeatedly, then successfully sued the university
    - permo-w 5y ago
      Should it be illegal? Is it illegal to call someone by the wrong name, or age, or race? Should it be? I don’t think we should be making rudeness illegal. On the other hand, professors absolutely shouldn’t be able to sue their institution for punishing them for it. There’s a middle ground
      - gnopgnip 5y ago
        No one is claiming it is illegal to call someone the wrong name or age or race. The question in this case is "should it be illegal to discipline an employee for deliberately misgendering a student?" At least one federal circuit court found that it is illegal for the university to discipline a professor for deliberately misgendering a student multiple times. This is all to say, being deliberately misgendered by a coworker is a real problem. A private employer would not be required by law to fire or discipline an employee who was doing the same thing as this professor. So for the employer, deciding whether or not to discipline an employee who deliberately misgenders a coworker is "a political issue"
w0de0 5y ago
I doubt it was ever so simple. Maybe for a halcyon moment when incomes were rising and ideology was sparse on the ground - the 50s and early 60s - politics had little part in work, in as much as most people still agreed. But they all agreed on horrible things, like how to treat women in the workplace with disrespect. People are politics, especially in a free land like ours. No politics at work is unrealistic, I believe.

>I don't think the answer is a return to 20th century "no politics at work" Why not?

by mk81 5y ago

>I don't think the answer is a return to 20th century "no politics at work" Why not?

Because the genie is out the bottle. For better or worse, many tech companies have worked hard to make your workplace your social hub in an effort to retain employees and get them to work longer hours. That's already happened, so now we have to deal with the good and bad that came from that. Going backward to how things were is as realistic as uninventing Twitter.

chitowneats 5y ago
That dynamic has not existed since March 2020.
- cutemonster 5y ago
  I.e. since covid-19 (just in case someone finds this discussion 20 years later and wonders what was special about that March month)
  - pgwhalen 5y ago
    I'm curious if Americans won't really understand the meaning of that in 20 years. I feel like it would be equivalent to saying "September of 2001", and surely Americans now understand what that refers to.
koheripbal 5y ago
As someone who worked in tech in the 20th century, we also worked long hours, fyi. We didn't connect with coworkers outside work, I think, because social media didn't exist and so we held on more to earlier friendships longer and actually were more open to acquainting ourselves to new strangers we met in public. The old "can I have your number" days. I think politics were present in the office much, because pre-social media, there was no conduit to get bombarded with hyperbolic political messages. ...and thus those people who were very political were not invited to social gatherings more frequently. ...something you can't do as easily on social media.
mk81 5y ago
Personally think this pushback by companies will continue and that those companies that successfully avoid "woke at work" will be spectacularly more effective at delivering products and services their customers want. We'll see.

betwixthewires 5y ago

Because this experiment has obviously failed and this attempt to create a less toxic work environment through activism has resulted in a thinly veiled attempt to create a more toxic work environment for those who do not want to conform to neo-marxist orthodoxy.

permo-w 5y ago
>neo-marxist orthodoxy This is one my main gripes with conservatives right now. You go to any of the places you congregate and alongside the more reasonable scepticism towards woke culture, there’s this constant talk of the rise of “neo-marxism” I have seen zero evidence for this. None Besides very basic issues like minimum wage, on the whole, the new left does not care about economics. There’s the occasional “bad capitalism bad” meme or tweet, but that’s the extent of it This whole neomarxism shit just seems like a confluence of: 1. it’s bait to conservatives, so it gets attention 2. If you don’t like BLM etc, it’s much easier to just label them as marxists, rather than actually dismantle their flimsy ideology 3. it’s probably partially a reaction to the media calling Trump a fascist In conclusion, it’s convenient for a lot of the right to confuse identity politics with marxism, and it puts me off because it’s lazy and ignorant
- thu2111 5y ago
  Not quite. BLM in particular is called Marxist because the people who actually organize that movement have called themselves "trained Marxists" and the British BLM website for a while claimed their goals involved overthrowing capitalism and the nuclear family. If you don't think BLM is Marxist that's understandable because those facts didn't get much attention, but, they definitely are. Adopting a clenched fist as a logo should be another hint. At any rate, it's mostly because Marxism is not really an economic ideology, even though communism is often presented as an alternative to capitalism. Communism is arguably not an economic system at all given the absolutely minimal detail Marx provided about how a communist economy was actually meant to work. Marxism is best understood as a packaged set of views about the current state of the world and human nature, the correct/perfect state of the world and human nature, and a plan for how to get from here to there. A key component of Marxist thought is that the current state of the world is one of "alienation" (today we would say oppression), in which a small minority subtly oppress the majority in such a way that the majority don't realize they're oppressed. But if they were to realize, they could rise up and via a revolution overthrow their oppressors. This would establish a transient state (the dictatorship of the proletariat) that would eventually, once society was finished being transformed, sort of melt away leaving communism as a kind of superior form of existence in which there's no oppression, human nature has fundamentally changed and as a consequence everyone is equal. It's that last bit that gets the bulk of the attention because, firstly, the rest is kind of vague, and secondly, the socialist revolutionaries were expected to deliver obvious, real-world benefits for their revolution and focused on the "everyone is economically equal" bit as something that could be achieved via large scale government action. But to Marx that was only one part of it. The rest was about human nature. The modern left, especially in Silicon Valley, is easily identifiable as a new variant of this basic ideology: - Society is split into oppressors (white men) and everyone else (women, other races). People are always one of these groups and cannot move between them. Many oppressed people don't believe they're oppressed, but that's because they've been deceived and it's very important to make them realize that white men are oppressing them. - People are either really good, or really bad, and people who are really bad (anyone who doesn't subscribe to this ideology) need to be suppressed, expelled, or silenced in various ways. - The world is suffering under vaguely defined oppressive forces (Marx: imperialism, the Woke: patriarchy/systemic racism). If these forces are defeated, humanity will be elevated to a superior form of existence. - Exceptionally aggressive "with us or against us" tactics are legitimate and even required to reach this state. There are a bunch of other similarities, but that's the gist.

gnopgnip 5y ago

Because "no politics at work" isn't neutral, it means supporting the status quo by way of defining what counts as "politics". Is calling someone by their preferred pronouns, or wearing a mask during the pandemic politics?

refenestrator 5y ago
I feel like there's a vast, decent middle ground between deliberately misgendering your coworkers and the current inquisition-style shitfest.
- gnopgnip 5y ago
  Being deliberately misgendered at work is a real issue, the law doesn't prohibit it in many states. Look at cases like Meriwether v. Hartop, a professor was disciplined for deliberately misgendering a student repeatedly, then successfully sued the university
  - permo-w 5y ago
    Should it be illegal? Is it illegal to call someone by the wrong name, or age, or race? Should it be? I don’t think we should be making rudeness illegal. On the other hand, professors absolutely shouldn’t be able to sue their institution for punishing them for it. There’s a middle ground
    - gnopgnip 5y ago
      No one is claiming it is illegal to call someone the wrong name or age or race. The question in this case is "should it be illegal to discipline an employee for deliberately misgendering a student?" At least one federal circuit court found that it is illegal for the university to discipline a professor for deliberately misgendering a student multiple times. This is all to say, being deliberately misgendered by a coworker is a real problem. A private employer would not be required by law to fire or discipline an employee who was doing the same thing as this professor. So for the employer, deciding whether or not to discipline an employee who deliberately misgenders a coworker is "a political issue"

w0de0 5y ago

I doubt it was ever so simple. Maybe for a halcyon moment when incomes were rising and ideology was sparse on the ground - the 50s and early 60s - politics had little part in work, in as much as most people still agreed. But they all agreed on horrible things, like how to treat women in the workplace with disrespect. People are politics, especially in a free land like ours. No politics at work is unrealistic, I believe.