I've studiously avoided talking to anybody at work about politics, as it usually only serves to anger people if you don't agree. I've had a successful career of doing that.
In my time at Google, there were tons of people who felt they had the right answer, and had to convince everyone else who was wrong to come around to their views.
Policy is the surface level of a deep tree of rational beliefs. No one will ever be convinced of policy because each sees their favored policy as rational due to the underpinning structure of beliefs.
Discussions that don't begin with the core beliefs are bound to lead nowhere, you're right.
Do a historical survey of people who tried to suffuse politics completely through the lives of their followers. For completeness, look also at the actions of religions in the same way.
Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Politics, movements of any kind which demand the entirety of the lives of their followers are often perpetrators of the worst things.
As a counterpoint, look to times and places where people are free to be open, to be themselves, and to choose how they live. There is also a power in the dispersal of power. Many call this freedom.
Like that quote "you may not be interested in war, but ..."
The way Robert Heinlein put it was something like this: "The end product of politics is like the result of peristalsis. It's not very pleasant, but it's no less vital to your health and well being." I think this is a good analogy. Imagine having a cocktail party conversation with someone singularly obsessed with their digestive tract.
- are you eating meat or are you vegetarian?
- do you take a car to work or ride a bike or take public transportation?
- do you drink tap water or bottled water?
- do you send your kids to private or public school?
Now try discussing any of these in depth "without politics".
If you seriously cannot have conversations at this level without them turning into political discussions, you really need to reflect on your conversational habits. It is absolutely not normal or healthy if you can't talk about drinking water without it turning political.
My SO is a vegetarian. It comes up a lot, both with my friends (who are all meat eaters) and newly met people alike, but I seriously cannot think of one single time it has turned into a political issue.
If these topics are frequently turning political for you, it's on you.
In places where there's more political diversity, people aren't so uptight. They know there are others who aren't like them, that's OK, and we all sort of get on with our lives. I grew up in Illinois and it feels this way.
Whereas in northern California, the "muscle" of respectful tolerance doesn't get as much exercise. People are a lot more alike and if you stand out, it seems weird. Which is kind of ironic for a place that's supposedly bought into "diversity" or "tolerance".
1. What are our obligations to organisms we eat?
2. What are our obligations to each other?
3. Is vegetarianism an obligation? Why or why not?
I showed my SO this thread and she laughed at the notion that she apparently can't discuss her lifestyle (she takes a car to work and drinks tap water, too) without it being political.
I suspect, as another commenter said, that this is apparently a cultural aspect where I and those around me have always grown up talking to people about such topics without any of them becoming political, while apparently others have not had such 'training'.
Whether one sees a distinction between these two concepts may align with one's position on the spectrum between individualist and authoritarian. Or maybe not, I really don't know...
If so, then we would assume that people who see a distinction there would also see nothing wrong with different countries having different political orders, for example stronger gender roles, procreation being tied to marriage, and marriage being tied to household business? We might assume that authoritarians would want to stamp out such variations and individualists would assume that different cultures can organize things like marriage and business differently?
But that doesn't match our observations I think, so it has to be something different. Either that or everyone is secretly an authoritarian when it comes to disagreements regarding social order and ethics of relationships or when we decide to be because it is "really important."
Even so, I recognize that some authoritarian polities produce better lives for many of their subjects than some less authoritarian polities do. There's always room for improvement. A situation in which husbands don't beat wives because the people are educated in humane fashion is strictly superior, in my estimation, to one in which husbands don't beat wives because that would invite devastating punishment from the state. Even that latter situation is strictly superior to one in which husbands do beat wives and the state reserves its devastating punishments for other purposes.
However, that is not to say that the society blessed by humane education should make war on either of the other two, or on some society like our own in USA that is in some sense an average of all three. Humane culture is best spread by example, not by the sword.
For example how do you weigh the draining of capital by foreign companies agains the purported benefits of liberating people from family and family business expectations (which my wife by the way definitely does not want to be liberated from)?
That said, my SO and I travel frequently (and due to the nature of our work, our friend group is very varied in terms of where they come from, with several of them being ex-SFers/ex-NYCers, etc). I honestly can't think of any increased politicization when talking with non-Texan friends versus Texan friends.
Texas is a far more sane place than these cities.
There, now I know as much as I need to about my coworker's diet. We're here to work and if you're going to be a member of a _diverse_ community with a shared goal you're going to need to accept that other people live their lives differently than yours and that's ok. I don't need to know the reason my coworker is a vegetarian I just need to let them know if my cookies that I brought to work contain animal products.
If you refuse to get along the result will be internal strife and the shared goal, a successful company, a working community, etc. will fail.
Our culture has become a toxic stew caused by everyone forgetting to mind their own business; partially because people think that because politics does have a part of everything people do (hence the etymology of the term), that it gives them the right to control others. Fascism is the end result.
Completely agreed on that point. In fact that's how politics should be discussed.
But if we consider politics to be "what should we do as a society?" then you can't avoid political discussions in those topics still, right? You can only seek to discuss such topics tolerantly and maturely, I think.
The whole point is you don't have to discuss any of those in depth.
I guess we treat the avoiding taboo topics more like not driving on the lines, and less like driving over a minefield. We generally avoid for safety's sake, and don't expect things to blow up immediately if there is a bit of driving over the line.
(Hell, we even talk about guns and gun control!)
1. I was commuting between Sweden and Denmark when the refugee crisis (people fleeing our efforts at proxy civil war in Syria, and our efforts at direct war in Iraq and Afghanistan) caused the Swedes to have to close their borders. This was not controversial. Migrationverket could not house the number of refugees who showed up and so refugees were sleeping on the street in Sweden in November. This lead to hours of lost time every day and eventually the loss of a contract that lead to the commute, and eventually after that, to a stagnation in my work (I left Sweden for Germany in part for that reason). You would see whole families with nothing trying to get somewhere they would have some sort of chance.
2. My kids have been subject to some harassment due to the fact that they are mixed SE Asian/White, and therefore could probably pass for Afghan. This was true in both Sweden and Germany.
3. Now the lines to get things like work permits or blue cards renewed are getting longer and longer (because of capacity shortage in civil servants) which means that when I go to get this renewed, I need to plan six months to a year in advance. A large problem here is the fact that the refugees are impacting the immigration service departments. Its to the point I am considering giving up US citizenship for German citizenship just to get around that problem.
There are of course more. Not getting into the amusing problem Sweden has with hand grenades and plastic explosives (organized crime gangs scaring each other late at night by setting off bombs and grenades, though I suppose that's better than drive-by shootings).
For a long time my oldest hated Germany after that. I actually feel bad because both of being part of the Berlin tech boom that is causing rents to rise really fast (and price many Germans out of the city) and also for the fact that refugees are being used to undercut wages (I know of too many cases of refugees being paid under minimum wage to ignore that dynamic).
But that doesn't excuse ranting at my kids as they are walking down the street.
Oh wait. Nevermind.
I can understand that the company will not tolerate anyone publicly disagreeing with its political stance but it is a natural thing for their employees to discuss the politics of their employer between them.
Though given the little tolerance of large companies for disagreeing their politics (not just in the Silicon Valley), the said employees would be well advised to not do so in writing.