I discuss controversial topics in person with my close friends, and I don't feel any poorer for it.
I say your politics, whatever they are, make me feel hurt, scared, and angry.
Obviously you can't argue with this; my feelings are my feelings and are thus inarguable.
Therefore, by your basic rule, you are no longer allowed to even state any of your political beliefs, because such would make me feel hurt, scared, and angry. And it doesn't matter what your beliefs are or how you arrived at them or what reasoning is behind them. Because according to you, maintaining my feelings, no matter how fragile or hypersensitive or unreasonable they may be, is an absolute imperative and all other values must be sacrificed to achieve that goal.
Now I've got total control over the speech of anyone around me. I can shut down anyone, making any statement on any topic. I need only declare that I feel hurt, scared, or angered by that statement - and such inarguable declarations have absolute unappealable power to silence.
See the problem here? It's obvious you can't run a society this way. It just becomes a race to the bottom of people being more and more hypersensitive to gain power. At a certain point, people do need to be told to grow a thicker skin.
Not really. This only works if your opinions are part of the current zeitgeist. If not, then nobody will really care what some loner is hurt by, and will probably just avoid talking to you, period.
> At a certain point, people do need to be told to grow a thicker skin.
OK, but that doesn't work. It only makes people angrier and even more determined to exclude you.
If someone, in your place of business, says "what you just said was hurtful and offensive", then yes, I think maybe you shouldn't say it. Or at least take pause and consider why what you said may be hurtful.
None of that prevents your ability to say what you want outside the office.
That will offend them even more of course, which is why companies that don't have tough management will all be wrecked by this social strategy in the coming years. Google is already clearly far gone. At some point employees that constantly claim to be offended need to be told they'll be fired if they don't toughen up.
On one hand, I would argue that getting angry because someone doesn't share your views is unprofessional. On the other, I would like to point out that the point of this article is that this is a one-way street: If Progressives experience any of these emotions in reaction to your political views, those views are unwelcome. If conservatives/libertarians/etc. experience those emotions in reaction to your views, then that's just too bad for them.
Even if just 10% of a company was like that, unless management intervened to stop it, that'd be enough to ensure they were the only voices that got heard regardless of the true balances.
The CEO has brought his religion to the workplace to the detriment of many of his employees, and as a result I am both hurt (by being "enemied") and scared (for the long-term existence of 1st-Amendment protection for my religious practice, given the company's legal activism). Is it still true in this case that "insisting that people grow a thicker skin won't work"?
I'm one worker bee among thousands, sitting on the opposite coast in a different office from the CEO, with (last I counted) 8 layers of management between me and the CEO. If any change is going to happen, it's much more likely that the change will be delivered to my employment status, so I keep my head down and learn to tactfully avoid subjects that could get me in hot water for simply being different from the folks in power. A kind of "script switching", if you will.
* Your boss parading his religion around and making you feel othered, while probably legal, is uncool.
* Though I would be remiss if I didn't point out that across America, it's by and large the Christian viewpoint that's flaunted at employees. I feel bad for you, but I'm also happy that you've been given an opportunity to understand why this is bad.
* You're protected from being _discriminated against_ based on his religious beliefs.
* That law being "paraded" is the one that protects you from your boss discriminating against you based on his religious beliefs.
2. While I understand what you're trying to say, I don't think you'd be remiss, and in fact, I found it a bit presumptive to assume that I advocate for Christian viewpoints being "flaunted at employees" and that I somehow need "an opportunity to understand why this is bad" as though I didn't already.
3. While it's true that as a public secular institution, the company can't make hiring decisions based on religious beliefs, there appears to be no protection from being intentionally treated poorly on a systemic level (and no regard for "behaving" unless I wanted to pony up and lawyer up against my employer)
4. The law being "paraded" is the one that would have permitted religious clergy in religious institutions to make business decisions based on religious values (i.e. I can't sue a rabbi for refusing to host my pork BBQ event on Saturday night at a synagogue).
Marc Benioff is not so good at hiding his religious intolerance.
(I understand that "Christian" and "Buddhist" are very broad categories, and that there are myriad forms contained within each of them...)
"Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." (John 14:16).
It is a core doctrine of Christianity that there is exactly one path to righteousness, which is through acknowledgement of personal sin and personal inability to pay the penalty for said sin, acceptance of the payment offered by Jesus Christ as the only way to pay that penalty, and submission to the Christian God as the only divine sovereign God.
Bhuddism is, from what I understand, a pluralistic religion, where there are many paths to enlightenment, and where many of those paths involve seeking something from within ones' self.
These are at odds as much as two signs saying "there is exactly one door to this room" and "there are many doors to this room".
To the extent that this is true generally of Christians (even by the narrow definition as those groups holding to the doctrines espoused in the Apostle's and Nicene Creeds, which excludes many groups that describe themself as Christian) it is arguaby only trivially true. While there are certainly Christians who hold to a narrow view of exclusivity where only that which is within the visible bounds of the Christian Church can be holy and only those people within it's visible bounds may be saved, many (and the official doctrine of the largest organized Christian group) do not.