What kinda of things are people talking about?
This is the reality of working for large tech companies in the US, just with Trump instead of Johnson.
That said, one thing we have to consider is the environment in which the discussion takes place. At work people shouldn't have to get stressed with non-work related things, that's not in the interest of the company nor of the employees. So even if you know you can have respectful deep conversations of controversial current day politics with your colleagues, a better question would be, should you even have those conversations at work?
I feel for people that suddenly need to discuss such topics, it means that they probably don't have IRL friends or friends outside of work if they really feel that they have to talk about no-work related issues at a work lunch. It's sad.
I don't think it's a matter of ideas vs persons. Already I hear that speech and ideas are violence, and violence requires fighting back (by complaining to HR that you made them feel unsafe). Of course, you cannot keep quiet either, because "silence is violence" too.
> It's unfortunate discussions can't be kept over ideas and policies instead of veering towards persons.
This is a sensible expectation, and I think that's what reasonable people should be able to do. However, my experience tells me that there's nothing to win by having such conversation in work environment, so I'd prefer them to be avoided altogether. However, both the company as an institutions, and many individuals working on it, are insisting that the employees have these discussions, no matter how irrelevant it is for the actual job. This is the reality on the ground in most big US tech corporations.
> I feel for people that suddenly need to discuss such topics, it means that they probably don't have IRL friends or friends outside of work if they really feel that they have to talk about no-work related issues at a work lunch. It's sad.
I don't think that this is the case. In my experience, it's the more social people who are insisting on having these conversations. I think this is because the more social people are better at gauging social climate, and the purpose of these conversations, often purportedly about diversity and inclusion, is to enforce uniformity and exclusion of people with alternative views.
To me this might be the best example of a 'meme', in Dawkins' sense of the word, that I'm aware of.
- It's short
- It rhymes
- It gives new territory to a powerful word
- It creates an in-group signal
- It's self-amplifying, and most importantly
- It's ridiculous
It's absolutely destined to go far beyond it's own merit by outcompeting everything in its domain on 3+ metrics.
It also helped me understand one possible reason why so many broken slogans are rising to the top. There are many factors in totality of course, but the ones that are ridiculous drive engagement from everyone, the proponents to echo and the opponents to mock.
Note that a working ingroup signal needs to be costly.
Something that sounds idiotic to the outgroup means people can't just casually say it, and it creates clear divisions.