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What’s there to admire? This is common sense and he should have set these expectations from the start. why are people discussing politics at work?

by kkhire 6y ago

nemo44x 6y ago
It’s generally a small but vocal group. And I wouldn’t call it politics so much as activism. A sort of religious zeal has made its way into our institutions like schools and universities. Some people have taken to it like a missionary would religion and believe it’s their duty to spread the word everywhere at all times. The Inquisition was no different in this regard. You just have to read what the activism says. It says everything is racist, sexist, etc and that in every situation you must try and identify not if things were problematic but how they were. And then “do better”, etc. so it’s impossible for these people to separate their beliefs from their jobs. It’s far beyond politics and more a religion than anything. It would be as if a very Christian employee made it their goal to point out everything that isn’t within Christian morality and protesting the company to comply with the word of god.
- monoideism 6y ago
  > It’s far beyond politics and more a religion than anything. I believe this is a result of the fact that Americans have turned away from organized religion in recent years (note: I'm not religious myself). There seems to be something deep inside of most people that requires a shared spiritual experience. Wokism has emerged to fill that need.
  - aaronax 6y ago
    This article really fleshes out what this thread is discussing: https://www.devever.net/~hl/newchurch https://www.devever.net/~hl/newchurch
    - nemo44x 6y ago
      I think it has more cult dynamics than a church per-se. Seeing people end friendships and relationships with family members. “Unlearning” things, otherwise known as reprogramming. Seminars (that are expensive) and “required reading”. Obsessive recruitment of new people to initiate. And then of course if you question things you’ll be ostracized and exiled.
      - monoideism 6y ago
        I agree. It's more of a cult-type church than a mainstream church. That said, I think it's being driven by some of the same socio-spiritual needs.
      - ytwySXpMbS 6y ago
        I think this is painting a rather stereotyped view of people on the left. I share most of the views of the left, however don't end relationships with people over it, preach, or attend any seminars. I think you're seeing the vocal minority here, which is of course more outspoken as they care enough to talk about it. Apart from the most extreme people, I have had many productive conversations with people whose views were more left than mine and haven't been ostracised once.
        nitrogen 6y ago
        You are of course right that most people aren't like this. This thread is about those few who are, and how they can end up dividing everyone else, unwillingly, into accolytes versus enemies. It's not safe to say "I am left/center/right/whatever but I don't think this is the way to go about it" around this type. It is a separate axis from left-right, and is maybe correlated with the authoritarian-libertarian axis.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
    - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
      One of the guys that article cites clearly has some less savory beliefs about race (that I disagree with, people are mostly the same the world over) but man did he do a good job predicting the ideological battles lines of 2020 for someone writing in 2012.
      - nemo44x 6y ago
        Read "Kindly Inquisitors" if you'd like a very thoughtful defense of Enlightenment ideas as it pertains to knowledge and speech. If you're impressed with someones prediction from 2012 then you'll be more amazed with someones analysis from 1995. This book is a classic and the author, Jonathan Rausch is highly respected. https://www.amazon.com/Kindly-Inquisitors-Attacks-Free-Thought/dp/0226705765 https://www.amazon.com/Kindly-Inquisitors-Attacks-Free-Thoug...
        jackcosgrove 6y ago
        It wasn't so much a prediction as an observation of an incipient trend that went dormant and re-emerged. Post-modern attacks on Enlightenment ideals such as free thought and free speech were common on campuses in the late 1980s and early 1990s, then went dormant in the mid-90s, then re-emerged in the early 2010s.
        blaser-waffle 6y ago
        Soviet Union collapsed and China started retooling for capitalism. Foreign propaganda dropped off. Meanwhile in the US the 90s boom was kicking off and the US was exploding into global hegemony. Why protest and fight the man when communism was collapsing and there was more to gain from getting on board the winning team. In other words, the trend dropped off externally and internally there were a lot of reasons to assume that history was in fact ending and to jump on board with MURICA and FREEDOM.
      - baobabKoodaa 6y ago
        What is this in reference to? I went through the citations in the article and did not find anything from 2012.
  - iratewizard 6y ago
    The book Sapiens talks about this well. People have a limited number of relationships they can maintain in their head. The only way societies can form to be larger than that number is shared myth between people. University graduates are in large part taking on the role of clergy in this wokist cult. The cynical side of me sees it as America being transformed into an economic zone instead of a country. This is just what a religion looks like when you're binding people together in one large brutalistic finance zone.
  - nootropicat 6y ago
    I think this article is going to interest you: https://gist.github.com/jart/b73868081a5e1a1c5cf0 https://gist.github.com/jart/b73868081a5e1a1c5cf0 >Finally, our parasite will employ a strategy of politicization, insisting that everyone in a society be involved in the contest for political power. Since our memetic parasite is already bound to one or more political factions, politicization leaves no one with the option to ignore it, and simply live their lives. Neutrality is not acceptable. All those who are not actively infected, and who do not openly endorse the parasite, are by definition its enemies. And they will be crushed. The safest thing is to play along, and raise your children in the faith - even if you don't really believe, they will. >At this point we've established, at least to my satisfaction, that >(a) there is such a thing as Universalism; >(b) Universalism is an educationally-transmitted tradition that works just like any theistic religion, and is best understood as a descendant of Christianity; >Universalism, again, is a mystery cult of power. Its supreme being is the State. And all of the Universalist mysteries - humanity, democracy, equality, and so on - cluster around the philosophy of collective action. Christianity has been a state religion since Constantine, of course, but it always also included magical and metaphysical mysteries, which the advance of science has rendered superfluous at best, embarrassing at worst. So Universalism, unlike its ancestors, is not concerned with the Trinity or transubstantiation or predestination.
    - Pils 6y ago
      Obviously the solution to workplace politicization is...dissolving the federal government and appointing Eric Schmidt the CEO of a newly founded business-state? > One day in March of this year, a Google engineer named Justine Tunney created a strange and ultimately doomed petition at the White House website. The petition proposed a three-point national referendum, as follows: 1. Retire all government employees with full pensions. 2. Transfer administrative authority to the tech industry. 3. Appoint [Google executive chairman] Eric Schmidt CEO of America. https://thebaffler.com/latest/mouthbreathing-machiavellis https://thebaffler.com/latest/mouthbreathing-machiavellis
    - kazoomonger 6y ago
      TBH, that article doesn't really make any sense. Saying "because ideology A shares a few attributes with my favorite ideology, it's really just a subset of my ideology" doesn't really make sense. Also, I don't understand how he thinks that pacifism or communalism are unique to christianity. That's just a bizarre claim. It's also weird how he's aware of the oversimplification involved in classifying birds and bats in the same category, and then he immediately goes off and says the equivalent of "both a birds and planes have wings and a tail, therefore planes are a subset of birds". While that statement can be true from a certain point of view for certain uses ("can this thing fly?"), in the end it's just a bad analogy and bad reasoning. Which is all not to say that the point I think you're driving at from your selection in that article can't be correct. I would agree that post-religion, people will pick up causes to fight for and act in ways that are reminiscent of fundamentalist religions, but that doesn't mean the fundamental truth is that they're all variations of religion. The fundamental truth is some people just enjoy picking up causes that let them justify bad behavior. This used to include religion a lot more in the past, and now that humanity is moving beyond it, we're discovering new ways to justify the same old behavior that we've always had.
  - SavageBeast 6y ago
    Thats a frightening and original idea Id never considered. Your observation makes lot of sense the more I think about it.
  - nitrogen 6y ago
    I came to this realization when someone at a job was waving and thumping Cracking the Coding Interview like I remember people doing with the bible when I was growing up. I was a missionary in a "past life", non-religious non-believer now, and I know religion when I see it.
  - WJW 6y ago
    There seems to be an obvious counterexample in the rest of the Western nations (ie Canada, Australia, most of western Europe) that have experienced a similar reduction in organized religion but have not seen a corresponding rise to political division. Certainly not to the degree that the USA has.
    - 392c91e8165b 6y ago
      Good point. My explanation for the discrepancy is that Canada, Australia and western Europe are more homogenous racially and ethnically than the US is, which makes them less vulnerable to the excesses of an ideology or religion-substitute that revolves around race and ethnicity. On some of the troop carriers going to Vietnam, soldiers starting fighting each other along racial lines; in response, the US military started a major initiative to promote racial tolerance in their training of soldiers and in their personnel policies. Similarly, according to my theory, the leaders of the other major institutions of the US realize that the performance of their institution depends on the different races getting along or at least not openly fighting each other, so they will exhibit a weaker tendency to push against a radical belief system that prioritizes racial tolerance than their counterparts in more homogenous countries will. Also, starting with the Puritans of England, the western Europeans that chose to emigrate to the US were on average more religious than those who chose to remain in western Europe.
      - Khaine 6y ago
        Your assumption would be wrong. Australia is highly diverse. One in four of Australia’s 22 million people were born overseas; 46 per cent have at least one parent who was born overseas; and nearly 20 per cent of Australians speak a language other than English at home[1] I think the key differentiator, is Australia, Canada and Britain have parliamentary democracies. [1] https://humanrights.gov.au/our-work/education/face-facts-cultural-diversity https://humanrights.gov.au/our-work/education/face-facts-cul...
        blaser-waffle 6y ago
        "Overseas" is kind of useless as a descriptor. When I was living in Melbourne, I knew a lot of kids with German, Italian, Macedonian, and Serbian backgrounds, most spoke their respective languages. But on the street they were just generic white christian Aussies who were out to slam a few beers and grab a chick parm. Not generic Anglo, but still very white and very western.
- 9HZZRfNlpR 6y ago
  It just filled the gap of religion disappearing, people want to belong in groups. Maybe broad categorization but this religious activism seems to be more of an American thing, Europe is definetly more diverse when it comes to different issues.
  - jackcosgrove 6y ago
    > religious activism seems to be more of an American thing I would argue it's a Reformed Protestant thing. Reformed Protestantism is the religious scaffolding of American culture.
- voxl 6y ago
  Yikes, talk about MAGA propaganda. Trump is a proto fascist, if Americans don't want to be apart of the new axis of evil they better be activists. This has nothing to do with calling everything racist or sexist, the fact that you think so has me suspicious of your views on the world.
  - username90 6y ago
    This might come as a shock to you, but a large majority dislike political correctness no matter what group they belong to. They just go through the motions because they are attacked if they don't. > While 83 percent of respondents who make less than $50,000 dislike political correctness, just 70 percent of those who make more than $100,000 are skeptical about it. And while 87 percent who have never attended college think that political correctness has grown to be a problem, only 66 percent of those with a postgraduate degree share that sentiment. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/large-majorities-dislike-political-correctness/572581/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/large-majo...
    - chillwaves 6y ago
      Can you explain to me what constitutes "political correctness"? From where I stand, it just means treating people equally and not being an asshole. ETA: In considering all the worries of modern living, I have never once been concerned with using the wrong words for a group of people. Am I really the exception? It seems easy to call people by the terms they prefer. Not sure about which terms to use? Then I just ask. I am struggling to see the burden of being "PC".
      - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
        The poll didn't define it, so not all respondents necessarily understood it the same way, but in my experience it's generally used to refer to speech codes requiring people to take great care in how they speak and write to avoid accidentally giving offense. The recent controversy about the USC professor who said 那个 in class, for example, would be a typical example.
- C1sc0cat 6y ago
  Politics by definition is activism.
- spollo 6y ago
  I'm curious, in the various responses to this comment people are really getting into this interesting concept of certain political ideologies replacing the church, and resembling a religious fanaticism in their application of these ideologies. My understanding is that we have had secular societies before, eg. the Soviet Union, China, which explicitly try to reduce practicing religion. Did this same kind of "new semi-religion appears to fill the void" event occur in those societies? Is it the particular "holy sacrements" that the west has adopted that is unique? Or are we unique in even having something arise the "fills the religious void"?
  - novok 6y ago
    Heh yes it did. The cultural revolution and mao's little red book being spread everywhere are prime examples in China. Eventually as the new converts temper their zeal as it hits against reality, but if it's a wave it can make a society do crazy things.
  - skinkestek 6y ago
    Read up on the Reign of Terror during the French revolution. They were very secular and extremely violent and even evil (making shows out of drowning believers etc). As much as the Catholic Church has something to answer for with the witch processes around here etc, they are small guys compared to the secular/atheists of the French Revolution. Same goes to some degree for USSR and to a large degree for Khmer Rouge.
    - zajio1am 6y ago
      Reign of Terror during the French revolution was neither secular nor atheistic. They have state religion 'Cult of the Supreme Being', which was deistic. Robespierre himself was deist and opposed to atheism.
      - skinkestek 6y ago
        Ok, I'll not argue about that even if I still think the topic is arguable. Anyways in case you are right it probably makes GPs point even stronger: when established religions are chased away quasi-religions - and often extremely dangerous ones - take their place.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
vowelless 6y ago
> What’s there to admire? Which other Silicon Valley company is doing this?
- throwaway4715 6y ago
  Facebook
CarelessExpert 6y ago
> why are people discussing politics at work? Probably because the work these companies do is frequently political. Let's be clear: What Coinbase is saying is, we the founders, who set the company's mission, and are doing so with a clear political view (rooted in libertarianism and so forth), are allowed to use the company to further our political ends. But the staff? Sorry, you have no voice. Maybe that's fine. The clear message to staff is: you are either onboard with our mission, or you can leave. But let's not pretend companies and workplaces are apolitical. That's, at best, deeply naive. Frankly, I wonder how much of what we're seeing now is due to the destruction of unionized labour, which were organizations explicitly designed to channel the political views of employees into collective action. Absent those structures, a) you get this bizarre perception that the workplace is apolitical (it's not), and b) staff no longer have a path whereby their views and values can be channeled and expressed.
- smooth_remmy 6y ago
  There's a group you forgot to consider: the investors. What do the investors think? They are free to usurp the founders if they feel that Coinbase is not paying proper homage to social justice.
  - CarelessExpert 6y ago
    Certainly true, though to me that only reinforces my point. Investors invest in companies based on their perception of the value of a company, and that perception is of course coloured by political views. Heck, we have an entire financial movement called Socially Responsible Investing, something which is nakedly political and a clear acknowledgement that politics cannot be, and has never been, divorced from business. I find it infinitely more strange to think that workplaces can be apolitical at all. Choosing to work for Palantir or Coinbase or The Gates Foundation or Amazon is (in part) a political decision. It may not be a conscious or intentional political decision, but it's a political decision nonetheless. How could anyone think otherwise?
    - chillwaves 6y ago
Aunche 6y ago
It's easiest just to go along with the popular opinion so you don't stick out. Given that all the most valuable companies are taking stances about social issues, I'd wager that it's profitable to do so. I think it's admirable for being honest with his apolitical stance as opposed to just going along with the flow.

What’s there to admire? This is common sense and he should have set these expectations from the start. why are people discussing politics at work?

by kkhire 6y ago

What’s there to admire? This is common sense and he should have set these expectations from the start. why are people discussing politics at work?

nemo44x 6y ago

It’s generally a small but vocal group. And I wouldn’t call it politics so much as activism. A sort of religious zeal has made its way into our institutions like schools and universities. Some people have taken to it like a missionary would religion and believe it’s their duty to spread the word everywhere at all times. The Inquisition was no different in this regard. You just have to read what the activism says. It says everything is racist, sexist, etc and that in every situation you must try and identify not if things were problematic but how they were. And then “do better”, etc. so it’s impossible for these people to separate their beliefs from their jobs. It’s far beyond politics and more a religion than anything. It would be as if a very Christian employee made it their goal to point out everything that isn’t within Christian morality and protesting the company to comply with the word of god.

monoideism 6y ago
> It’s far beyond politics and more a religion than anything. I believe this is a result of the fact that Americans have turned away from organized religion in recent years (note: I'm not religious myself). There seems to be something deep inside of most people that requires a shared spiritual experience. Wokism has emerged to fill that need.
- aaronax 6y ago
  This article really fleshes out what this thread is discussing: https://www.devever.net/~hl/newchurch https://www.devever.net/~hl/newchurch
  - nemo44x 6y ago
    I think it has more cult dynamics than a church per-se. Seeing people end friendships and relationships with family members. “Unlearning” things, otherwise known as reprogramming. Seminars (that are expensive) and “required reading”. Obsessive recruitment of new people to initiate. And then of course if you question things you’ll be ostracized and exiled.
    - monoideism 6y ago
      I agree. It's more of a cult-type church than a mainstream church. That said, I think it's being driven by some of the same socio-spiritual needs.
    - ytwySXpMbS 6y ago
      I think this is painting a rather stereotyped view of people on the left. I share most of the views of the left, however don't end relationships with people over it, preach, or attend any seminars. I think you're seeing the vocal minority here, which is of course more outspoken as they care enough to talk about it. Apart from the most extreme people, I have had many productive conversations with people whose views were more left than mine and haven't been ostracised once.
      - nitrogen 6y ago
        You are of course right that most people aren't like this. This thread is about those few who are, and how they can end up dividing everyone else, unwillingly, into accolytes versus enemies. It's not safe to say "I am left/center/right/whatever but I don't think this is the way to go about it" around this type. It is a separate axis from left-right, and is maybe correlated with the authoritarian-libertarian axis.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    One of the guys that article cites clearly has some less savory beliefs about race (that I disagree with, people are mostly the same the world over) but man did he do a good job predicting the ideological battles lines of 2020 for someone writing in 2012.
    - nemo44x 6y ago
      Read "Kindly Inquisitors" if you'd like a very thoughtful defense of Enlightenment ideas as it pertains to knowledge and speech. If you're impressed with someones prediction from 2012 then you'll be more amazed with someones analysis from 1995. This book is a classic and the author, Jonathan Rausch is highly respected. https://www.amazon.com/Kindly-Inquisitors-Attacks-Free-Thought/dp/0226705765 https://www.amazon.com/Kindly-Inquisitors-Attacks-Free-Thoug...
      - jackcosgrove 6y ago
        It wasn't so much a prediction as an observation of an incipient trend that went dormant and re-emerged. Post-modern attacks on Enlightenment ideals such as free thought and free speech were common on campuses in the late 1980s and early 1990s, then went dormant in the mid-90s, then re-emerged in the early 2010s.
        blaser-waffle 6y ago
        Soviet Union collapsed and China started retooling for capitalism. Foreign propaganda dropped off. Meanwhile in the US the 90s boom was kicking off and the US was exploding into global hegemony. Why protest and fight the man when communism was collapsing and there was more to gain from getting on board the winning team. In other words, the trend dropped off externally and internally there were a lot of reasons to assume that history was in fact ending and to jump on board with MURICA and FREEDOM.
    - baobabKoodaa 6y ago
      What is this in reference to? I went through the citations in the article and did not find anything from 2012.
- iratewizard 6y ago
  The book Sapiens talks about this well. People have a limited number of relationships they can maintain in their head. The only way societies can form to be larger than that number is shared myth between people. University graduates are in large part taking on the role of clergy in this wokist cult. The cynical side of me sees it as America being transformed into an economic zone instead of a country. This is just what a religion looks like when you're binding people together in one large brutalistic finance zone.
- nootropicat 6y ago
  I think this article is going to interest you: https://gist.github.com/jart/b73868081a5e1a1c5cf0 https://gist.github.com/jart/b73868081a5e1a1c5cf0 >Finally, our parasite will employ a strategy of politicization, insisting that everyone in a society be involved in the contest for political power. Since our memetic parasite is already bound to one or more political factions, politicization leaves no one with the option to ignore it, and simply live their lives. Neutrality is not acceptable. All those who are not actively infected, and who do not openly endorse the parasite, are by definition its enemies. And they will be crushed. The safest thing is to play along, and raise your children in the faith - even if you don't really believe, they will. >At this point we've established, at least to my satisfaction, that >(a) there is such a thing as Universalism; >(b) Universalism is an educationally-transmitted tradition that works just like any theistic religion, and is best understood as a descendant of Christianity; >Universalism, again, is a mystery cult of power. Its supreme being is the State. And all of the Universalist mysteries - humanity, democracy, equality, and so on - cluster around the philosophy of collective action. Christianity has been a state religion since Constantine, of course, but it always also included magical and metaphysical mysteries, which the advance of science has rendered superfluous at best, embarrassing at worst. So Universalism, unlike its ancestors, is not concerned with the Trinity or transubstantiation or predestination.
  - Pils 6y ago
    Obviously the solution to workplace politicization is...dissolving the federal government and appointing Eric Schmidt the CEO of a newly founded business-state? > One day in March of this year, a Google engineer named Justine Tunney created a strange and ultimately doomed petition at the White House website. The petition proposed a three-point national referendum, as follows: 1. Retire all government employees with full pensions. 2. Transfer administrative authority to the tech industry. 3. Appoint [Google executive chairman] Eric Schmidt CEO of America. https://thebaffler.com/latest/mouthbreathing-machiavellis https://thebaffler.com/latest/mouthbreathing-machiavellis
  - kazoomonger 6y ago
    TBH, that article doesn't really make any sense. Saying "because ideology A shares a few attributes with my favorite ideology, it's really just a subset of my ideology" doesn't really make sense. Also, I don't understand how he thinks that pacifism or communalism are unique to christianity. That's just a bizarre claim. It's also weird how he's aware of the oversimplification involved in classifying birds and bats in the same category, and then he immediately goes off and says the equivalent of "both a birds and planes have wings and a tail, therefore planes are a subset of birds". While that statement can be true from a certain point of view for certain uses ("can this thing fly?"), in the end it's just a bad analogy and bad reasoning. Which is all not to say that the point I think you're driving at from your selection in that article can't be correct. I would agree that post-religion, people will pick up causes to fight for and act in ways that are reminiscent of fundamentalist religions, but that doesn't mean the fundamental truth is that they're all variations of religion. The fundamental truth is some people just enjoy picking up causes that let them justify bad behavior. This used to include religion a lot more in the past, and now that humanity is moving beyond it, we're discovering new ways to justify the same old behavior that we've always had.
- SavageBeast 6y ago
  Thats a frightening and original idea Id never considered. Your observation makes lot of sense the more I think about it.
- nitrogen 6y ago
  I came to this realization when someone at a job was waving and thumping Cracking the Coding Interview like I remember people doing with the bible when I was growing up. I was a missionary in a "past life", non-religious non-believer now, and I know religion when I see it.
- WJW 6y ago
  There seems to be an obvious counterexample in the rest of the Western nations (ie Canada, Australia, most of western Europe) that have experienced a similar reduction in organized religion but have not seen a corresponding rise to political division. Certainly not to the degree that the USA has.
  - 392c91e8165b 6y ago
    Good point. My explanation for the discrepancy is that Canada, Australia and western Europe are more homogenous racially and ethnically than the US is, which makes them less vulnerable to the excesses of an ideology or religion-substitute that revolves around race and ethnicity. On some of the troop carriers going to Vietnam, soldiers starting fighting each other along racial lines; in response, the US military started a major initiative to promote racial tolerance in their training of soldiers and in their personnel policies. Similarly, according to my theory, the leaders of the other major institutions of the US realize that the performance of their institution depends on the different races getting along or at least not openly fighting each other, so they will exhibit a weaker tendency to push against a radical belief system that prioritizes racial tolerance than their counterparts in more homogenous countries will. Also, starting with the Puritans of England, the western Europeans that chose to emigrate to the US were on average more religious than those who chose to remain in western Europe.
    - Khaine 6y ago
      Your assumption would be wrong. Australia is highly diverse. One in four of Australia’s 22 million people were born overseas; 46 per cent have at least one parent who was born overseas; and nearly 20 per cent of Australians speak a language other than English at home[1] I think the key differentiator, is Australia, Canada and Britain have parliamentary democracies. [1] https://humanrights.gov.au/our-work/education/face-facts-cultural-diversity https://humanrights.gov.au/our-work/education/face-facts-cul...
      - blaser-waffle 6y ago
        "Overseas" is kind of useless as a descriptor. When I was living in Melbourne, I knew a lot of kids with German, Italian, Macedonian, and Serbian backgrounds, most spoke their respective languages. But on the street they were just generic white christian Aussies who were out to slam a few beers and grab a chick parm. Not generic Anglo, but still very white and very western.
9HZZRfNlpR 6y ago
It just filled the gap of religion disappearing, people want to belong in groups. Maybe broad categorization but this religious activism seems to be more of an American thing, Europe is definetly more diverse when it comes to different issues.
- jackcosgrove 6y ago
  > religious activism seems to be more of an American thing I would argue it's a Reformed Protestant thing. Reformed Protestantism is the religious scaffolding of American culture.
voxl 6y ago
Yikes, talk about MAGA propaganda. Trump is a proto fascist, if Americans don't want to be apart of the new axis of evil they better be activists. This has nothing to do with calling everything racist or sexist, the fact that you think so has me suspicious of your views on the world.
- username90 6y ago
  This might come as a shock to you, but a large majority dislike political correctness no matter what group they belong to. They just go through the motions because they are attacked if they don't. > While 83 percent of respondents who make less than $50,000 dislike political correctness, just 70 percent of those who make more than $100,000 are skeptical about it. And while 87 percent who have never attended college think that political correctness has grown to be a problem, only 66 percent of those with a postgraduate degree share that sentiment. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/large-majorities-dislike-political-correctness/572581/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/large-majo...
  - chillwaves 6y ago
    Can you explain to me what constitutes "political correctness"? From where I stand, it just means treating people equally and not being an asshole. ETA: In considering all the worries of modern living, I have never once been concerned with using the wrong words for a group of people. Am I really the exception? It seems easy to call people by the terms they prefer. Not sure about which terms to use? Then I just ask. I am struggling to see the burden of being "PC".
    - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
      The poll didn't define it, so not all respondents necessarily understood it the same way, but in my experience it's generally used to refer to speech codes requiring people to take great care in how they speak and write to avoid accidentally giving offense. The recent controversy about the USC professor who said 那个 in class, for example, would be a typical example.
C1sc0cat 6y ago
Politics by definition is activism.
spollo 6y ago
I'm curious, in the various responses to this comment people are really getting into this interesting concept of certain political ideologies replacing the church, and resembling a religious fanaticism in their application of these ideologies. My understanding is that we have had secular societies before, eg. the Soviet Union, China, which explicitly try to reduce practicing religion. Did this same kind of "new semi-religion appears to fill the void" event occur in those societies? Is it the particular "holy sacrements" that the west has adopted that is unique? Or are we unique in even having something arise the "fills the religious void"?
- novok 6y ago
  Heh yes it did. The cultural revolution and mao's little red book being spread everywhere are prime examples in China. Eventually as the new converts temper their zeal as it hits against reality, but if it's a wave it can make a society do crazy things.
- skinkestek 6y ago
  Read up on the Reign of Terror during the French revolution. They were very secular and extremely violent and even evil (making shows out of drowning believers etc). As much as the Catholic Church has something to answer for with the witch processes around here etc, they are small guys compared to the secular/atheists of the French Revolution. Same goes to some degree for USSR and to a large degree for Khmer Rouge.
  - zajio1am 6y ago
    Reign of Terror during the French revolution was neither secular nor atheistic. They have state religion 'Cult of the Supreme Being', which was deistic. Robespierre himself was deist and opposed to atheism.
    - skinkestek 6y ago
      Ok, I'll not argue about that even if I still think the topic is arguable. Anyways in case you are right it probably makes GPs point even stronger: when established religions are chased away quasi-religions - and often extremely dangerous ones - take their place.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

vowelless 6y ago

> What’s there to admire? Which other Silicon Valley company is doing this?

throwaway4715 6y ago
Facebook

CarelessExpert 6y ago

> why are people discussing politics at work? Probably because the work these companies do is frequently political. Let's be clear: What Coinbase is saying is, we the founders, who set the company's mission, and are doing so with a clear political view (rooted in libertarianism and so forth), are allowed to use the company to further our political ends. But the staff? Sorry, you have no voice. Maybe that's fine. The clear message to staff is: you are either onboard with our mission, or you can leave. But let's not pretend companies and workplaces are apolitical. That's, at best, deeply naive. Frankly, I wonder how much of what we're seeing now is due to the destruction of unionized labour, which were organizations explicitly designed to channel the political views of employees into collective action. Absent those structures, a) you get this bizarre perception that the workplace is apolitical (it's not), and b) staff no longer have a path whereby their views and values can be channeled and expressed.

smooth_remmy 6y ago
There's a group you forgot to consider: the investors. What do the investors think? They are free to usurp the founders if they feel that Coinbase is not paying proper homage to social justice.
- CarelessExpert 6y ago
  Certainly true, though to me that only reinforces my point. Investors invest in companies based on their perception of the value of a company, and that perception is of course coloured by political views. Heck, we have an entire financial movement called Socially Responsible Investing, something which is nakedly political and a clear acknowledgement that politics cannot be, and has never been, divorced from business. I find it infinitely more strange to think that workplaces can be apolitical at all. Choosing to work for Palantir or Coinbase or The Gates Foundation or Amazon is (in part) a political decision. It may not be a conscious or intentional political decision, but it's a political decision nonetheless. How could anyone think otherwise?
  - chillwaves 6y ago

Aunche 6y ago

It's easiest just to go along with the popular opinion so you don't stick out. Given that all the most valuable companies are taking stances about social issues, I'd wager that it's profitable to do so. I think it's admirable for being honest with his apolitical stance as opposed to just going along with the flow.