4 ms·

Because when you are a witness to something with which you disagree, speaking out and acting on it is a matter of making an opinion, and then attaching your ide

by numair 5y ago

Because when you are a witness to something with which you disagree, speaking out and acting on it is a matter of making an opinion, and then attaching your identity to that opinion. And thus, you might be a developer who only cares about the superiority of C++ over Scala, but now you’ve got to attach your identity to “I didn’t think it was okay for my boss to take our young female employees home if they got drunk at our office party” (this happens!) or whatever. Things seem totally benign until something goes wrong. Then all of this “advice” starts to look totally different as you watch everyone who should act and take a stand decide they need to “keep their identity small.”

refenestrator 5y ago
You could have the opinion without being a zealot about it to the extent that you're making up a guy to get mad at. If I saw my supervisor taking home a young female employee, I'd go right to HR about it, done, next question.
3np 5y ago
> and then attaching your identity to that opinion. This step is optional. The argument is that it is in your interest to do the former without the latter.
imgabe 5y ago
You can make an opinion without attaching your identity to it. I don't even know where to begin with that. Are you seriously incapable of holding an opinion without it entirely subsuming your identity? I think maybe you are viewing this from the perspective of your identity being how other people perceive you, rather than how you perceive yourself? Like if you pull a drowning child out of a river, do you now become "guy who pulls drowning children out of rivers" and you have to quit your job and patrol the rivers looking for drowning children, because this is your whole identity now?
nine_k 5y ago
> “I didn’t think it was okay for my boss to take our young female employees home if they got drunk at our office party” Since this is usually openly against the rules in nearly any company, of doesn't even take identifying with anything, it just takes following instructions. Also, while you keep your identity small, reducing it to zero might not be the wisest approach.
IncRnd 5y ago
I don't think you are using the proper words for what you are trying to convey. Forming an opinion doesn't attach one's identity to such transient factors.

by numair 5y ago

refenestrator 5y ago

You could have the opinion without being a zealot about it to the extent that you're making up a guy to get mad at. If I saw my supervisor taking home a young female employee, I'd go right to HR about it, done, next question.

3np 5y ago

> and then attaching your identity to that opinion. This step is optional. The argument is that it is in your interest to do the former without the latter.

imgabe 5y ago

You can make an opinion without attaching your identity to it. I don't even know where to begin with that. Are you seriously incapable of holding an opinion without it entirely subsuming your identity? I think maybe you are viewing this from the perspective of your identity being how other people perceive you, rather than how you perceive yourself? Like if you pull a drowning child out of a river, do you now become "guy who pulls drowning children out of rivers" and you have to quit your job and patrol the rivers looking for drowning children, because this is your whole identity now?

nine_k 5y ago

> “I didn’t think it was okay for my boss to take our young female employees home if they got drunk at our office party” Since this is usually openly against the rules in nearly any company, of doesn't even take identifying with anything, it just takes following instructions. Also, while you keep your identity small, reducing it to zero might not be the wisest approach.

IncRnd 5y ago

I don't think you are using the proper words for what you are trying to convey. Forming an opinion doesn't attach one's identity to such transient factors.