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Comment by harlanji | Hacker News Reader

I wish I could explain this to people, as a major reason for being homeless in SF. I have many right-wing views and am as authentic as possible, which leads to severe ostracization in most environments. Kicked out of all friend groups post-Trump. I get along with the police, actually thought it’d be funny to apply to a PD last night. Obviously saying that I am ostracized for having right wing views and attitudes is triggering to 90% of people here. I stay because I am non-soy vegan/jain, and also attend a lot of meetups and lay low. I do get kicked out and picked on for frivolous reasons/litmus tested. I am a non-Churchian Christian, really at a loss for where to find leads into a coding job. Before Trump my career was great, now I am lucky to work 8 hours a week of odd jobs. We really need to work on accepting authenticity.

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I've met people who feel treated like you before. They were usually rather obnoxious in their display of their political opinions. I'm not saying you are, but you might want to stick to living by your views instead of letting everyone know what they are at the earliest opportunity. Just be more diplomatic about it, both sides will benefit without anyone changing their views.

yes, that's a subtle but important point. be rather than tell. being is self-directed, while telling is externally-directed. that is, it's trying to exert power on others, and most folks don't like that.

with that said, there is an asymmetry in viewpoints that gets lost in the tribalism of ideologies: while both can be short-sighted/misguided (in different ways), many right-wing/conservative positions are about preserving the status of the already powerful, while left-wing/liberal positions are about empowering the disempowered. robin hood, not the sheriff of nottingham, is the hero we generally root for.

You’re probably right about the OP, who has managed somehow to alienate his way into homelessness, a rather extreme case.

On the other hand, selection bias. For every “out and proud” right-winger in the valley getting lynched by an angry mob, there’s hundreds more conservatives, libertarians and even centrists keeping their heads down and trying to avoid political conversations because they know that being their “authentic selves” in such a situation would be a career-limiting move.

Authenticity is orthogonal to expression. Authenticity is about owning your values and understanding your self.

Authenticity is not sharing your political opinions with the world. Sharing opinions is about controlling your image.

You can hold political views of any stripe and be well accepted by people whose opinions clash with yours.

Authenticity is not broadcasting your opinions about the world, it's not compromising on your values in order to fit in. Political views are imperfectly derived from values; they're derivative and less important and should be freely modified as you acquire experience, new perspectives, and more information.

Values and authenticity, in contrast, stem from internal discourse and exploration.

Personally I can respect people who are open about their viewpoints, so in that way I appreciate authenticity. But when I strongly disagree with their viewpoints I still may not want to hang out with them. I wouldn't want to have Adolf Hitler in my book club, despite him being unapologetically authentic. I expect the people who rejected you feel the same (hopefully to a lesser degree than if you were literally Hitler).

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