Life is political. "Leave your politics at home" has been a driver of injustice and war crimes for ages. "I don't think we should murder Jews" was political speech and verboden in the Reich.
Work is the most significant part of our lives in terms of how much time it requires. It's a give and take - you can ask for concessions from your employer just as they can ask for concessions from you. It's not just "accept everyone and everything exactly as it was before", that's ludicrous.
And unionizing has been made political by corporations - it's simply a smart and legally protected right to improve workers' negotiation power in the face of huge corporations.
Hiring women and racial minorities at all, and then to particular positions, was a political issue for a long time. It still is, in many places and companies in the world (hiring a woman or minority to positions could get you killed). The idea that politics and people and corporations are not intimately intertwined is a reflection of privilege.
The fact that so many accept the maxim "life is political" is terrifying. Life is not political but we can imagine a life that is political and I doubt that kind of life is worth living.
Politics is necessary to structure the relations between people. But that doesn't mean that politics pervades every corner of life. You might as well argue that "life is about water" because we can't do without water.
I'm not saying that your kulturkritik perspective is without any value. It has value. But there are other perspectives that also have value, and you should seek them out. If you don't, you'll only have one perspective, which is an ideology. Ideological people do bizarre things like spying on their coworkers and then playing the victim when they get fired.
Politics is the negotiation of power, and the degree to which power is not relevant in your life is the degree to which politics is irrelevant. As for water politics, water is a matter of power and it's scary. But refusing to discuss the relationship between power and water does not make things any more or less ideological.
The failure to discuss power doesn't make things any more or less political, either. It just makes you mute.
The degree to which you reduce everything to power is the degree to which you impair your ability to think and speak. This is because thought and speech are faculties based on the ability to draw distinctions between things. In exchange for voluntarily diminishing your capacity to think and speak, you receive a one note answer to everything: "blah blah blah power blah blah privilege".
Some people's vision are the stuff of moral leadership, and others are the stuff of moral complacency. Some people make progress like Lawrence v Texas, and other people say "blah blah privilege, I'm so tired of hearing this stuff." But it's hard to believe they are the same person in one. One wonders whether you would hope that those who are suffering stop their shrillness because you are really tired of hearing about the blah blah privilege.
But from the outside perspective, America's democracy looks complacent. It appears as if a major aspect of the American political game is wondering whether black people or Latinos are going to vote more. What a game. There's a nasty smell here, and one wonders the degree to which people might carry on amid that nasty smell because they are so very tired of the blah blah.
America already has a culture of avoiding political talk in person. Is it working? Does American democracy smell healthier than ever?
And if second gen Latin Americans vote more conservatively and if more blacks start voting conservatively is that a good of a bad thing? (Compared to how they voted for people who are now lauded in the press and by Obama as good conservatives like Bush and Romney)
> But that doesn't mean that politics pervades every corner of life.
But it does, whether we like it or not. Everything from the media we consume, to the drugs we take, to how we expect our significant others to behave in a relationship, to what software we use - is political in one form or another. The politics isn't always national or party politics, though. For example, software freedom is a very strong and popular political goal among technologists, and because of that, proprietary software is political. The fact that some people are ignorant of that fact doesn't change it.
And "having one perspective" alone does not constitute ideology. Most people are extremely ideological; people forget that just because an ideology seems natural or is normal, it doesn't mean it ceases to be an ideology. Belief in the democratic state is ideology, freedom of speech is ideology, the US Constitution is ideology, the democratic process is ideology, the culture propagated in daily life is ideology. I think Althusser and Lefevbre made a very good point about how ideology reproduces itself and how everyday life is subsumed into ideological functions of the workplace or the state. Culture, like anything else, must reproduce itself, a dead culture is one that failed to reproduce itself. Within this reproduction we are making all kinds of choices (conscious or not) to keep certain elements of our society in moving forward.
Maybe you do want to think about the power relationship with parents and siblings and coworkers as things happen and as conversations take place. I don’t.
There may come times when I think this or that sibling is favored or given the short shrift, but not in every single interaction.
As Zizek asks, what do you do the day after the revolution?
Most people just want to go about their daily business. Most people don’t want to have on going never ending political processes like some revolutionaries do, just because they can’t abandon that mode.
I agree, "being political" as in defending and fighting for what is right comes at a cost and people (or companies) have other priorities as well. But be aware those wanting to move away from what we consider right will be thankful for our inaction.
Thing is, waiting usually makes problems worse. Divisiveness seems on a recent all time high already, and two political extremes won't just cancel each other making everything go back to normal. One of them will probably just win. That's how it went prior to the Reich, at least.
So yeah, increasing divisiveness makes defending the good parts of our current societies require more and more effort. Had we not let it get to were we are now we would have required a lot less "being political". Waiting will likely make it worse down the line.
Yes, politics is a never ending process. Since there will always be rules needing to be revised and people trying to use that processes to gain power. Again, allowing this to happen initially and undoing so later will require us to pay extra.
But yeah, obviously most people just want to live their lives not having to spend their valuable time (and more) on politics. Doesn't mean this is a great move. Even more so in times were shit is about to hit the fan.
> Maybe you do want to think about the power relationship with parents and siblings and coworkers as things happen and as conversations take place. I don’t.
Me neither. But being critical and analysing our desires and interests should be the supreme goal of any self-reflecting person. It is possible to enjoy media and relationships while being aware of what drives you to make certain choices, and importantly, what drives others to make choices. Why is your culture the way it is?
The fact that "everything is political" (a phrase I try to avoid using because of its ignorant lack of nuance) does not mean we have to constantly think about it. Climate change activists will use buses, Marx still got Capital published through a publishing company, and I still watch porn sometimes. The point is to be aware and critical about what you do, not necessarily while you do it.
Sure life is political. We can have protests, vote for candidates, engage in civil disobedience and all that.
What I don’t want is anyone making it a point to bring their personal politics to work. We have other forums for that.
Don’t politicize every part of our existence. I wanna go to work and provide some productivity to my employer. If I don’t like their politics I can vote at the ballot box, donate to causes, volunteer etc. I don’t need to bring my POVs to work. You may not like mine, I may not like yours. We don’t need this kind of confrontation at work.
Unionization is political but it’s on a different plane. It’s worker vs employer rather than potentially worker vs worker.
Do we really want to approach a time when one group of workers takes one side, another takes another side and they protest against each other and cause disruption to the vast majority who have no interest in getting personally involved?
Presumably both groups would have this “right” though be their opinions different.
I share your preference for keeping politics out of the office, but:
* In the US, and in Tech, I hardly think trying to organize a union is going to not have worker v. worker politics. "We should organize" involves all kinds of Why's and How's about which there are widely divergent opinions among today's workforce.
* Employers routinely bring politics into the office, for starters by funding Political Action Committees and lobbying for what they perceive to be in "the company's" interest. I actually heard a COO in an all-hands once say "yeah I guess we don't support the Democrats <chuckle>" -- so if your employer is going to make their support of Candidate X part of the work culture, is there any reason other than job security why I'd want to keep my support for Candidate Y under wraps?
> What I don’t want is anyone making it a point to bring their personal politics to work. We have other forums for that.
The American life has been completely subsumed into corporate culture. These other forums have either been rendered useless through an impossible-to-navigate political system that swallows any real momentum, been disbanded due to the nature of work requiring communities to fragment and move, or are facades for community like you see in Reddit or HN--posting isn't politics, people.
I have the same inclination with you that I don't want to hear other people's personal politics at work (likely for different reasons), but it's unavoidable when every company attempts to become your family. I don't really know what to do about it, but I don't think it's as easy as HN believes it to be.
In the 'old days', the maxim was to leave your politics with your club. The gathering of like minded people used to be more common. Political parties, were actual goups of people who regularly met to discuss and push their ideas. Likewise, hundreds of other semi-formal groups pervaded the cities and towns. There was local and personal dialouge that could not take place at work, nor was it felt proper. The online happening changed that all. People felt like they could be part of more than one group, but still clung close tribal assosiation with it, even though their influence was no longer present. And here we are.
> What I don’t want is anyone making it a point to bring their personal politics to work. We have other forums for that.
And few forums affect us for 40 hours / week of working plus whatever impact they have outside of the workday. And few forums provide the opportunity that our employers do. Getting Google to care about climate change has far more of an impact than holding a sign up in the street does.
> If I don’t like their politics I can vote at the ballot box, donate to causes, volunteer etc.
Good luck - your employer can spend billions per year and make your efforts inconsequential.
> Unionization is political but it’s on a different plane. It’s worker vs employer rather than potentially worker vs worker.
I'm glad you've come around! But this is also potentially worker vs worker, as there are plenty of workers who are happy to not negotiate on a level playing field, and who are happy not to have things like healthcare or higher wages for all (there's a weird strain of authoritarian subservience in American workers).
> Do we really want to approach a time when one group of workers takes one side, another takes another side and they protest against each other and cause disruption to the vast majority who have no interest in getting personally involved?
This has already been happening with union protests for hundreds of years. Workers don't always agree and aren't always compelled to join a union. Corporations hired groups like the Pinkertons to attack unions and kill some disruptive workers (and your employer has recently hired a firm know for squashing unionization efforts...).
Nondisruptive protests do much less to effect change than disruptive ones. Rosa Parks was disruptive when she sat in the front of the bus, early unionizers were disruptive when they shut down factories and rail, unions and activists were disruptive when they marched for civil rights, or against murders and abuses by police and government. The US was founded on such principles - tossing tea into Boston harbor was a political, disruptive act, and I bet the workers on the ship were pissed about it the next day. None of these past actions were undertaken by a majority. A minority of people supported the patriots in the Revolutionary war and fewer still participated.
Some peoples mere existence is political, hiring black people or women is sometimes seen as playing some sort political card. And for the people who have been hired they must personally defend their presence.
If you are truly yourself without inhibition in a corporate environment, you are probably either boring or crazy.
Corporate wants to be perceived as authentic, but they mean something entirely different. And professionalism dictates that you either get it or don't. I am not fan of emphasized professionalism, but I restrict myself in the interest of the business from time to time. Because that are largely my interests too and that of my colleges if you have a cooperative relationship.
That said, I do think unions can be a worthwhile endeavor and they can be constructive, especially for larger employers. Googles actions strongly seem to hint that they disagree though and this could be a case where they just wanted to get rid of some inconvenient people.
Life is also metaphorical, psychological, physiological, illogical, physical, religious, worldly, sexual, etc... And the emphasis of one particular dimension is pathological.
And most of that stuff needs to be left at home. Work is a rarefied environment where we're paid for our time to focus on someone else's problem.
Waking hours, bud. 168 hours in a week. 56 of them, approximately, spent sleeping. 40/112 ("average" fulltime workload) is 36%. Commute adds another 4% on average. What single activity or type of activity are you doing for 40 hours per week other than working and sleeping?
And in tech and other skilled professions, how many of us go over 40 hours for keeping our skills up? Or for finding new positions? Or for education to enhance our careers? Work is clearly the most significant part of our lives.
Though of course it would be less than 40 hours if you spend part of it protesting your employer instead of working.
Those who work from multiple locations might understand this better, independent consultants maybe best of all: Work is a thing you do, not a place you go.
Now we've switched to talking about efficiency. Which is another matter - we spend 40 hours at work for some reason, but most of us don't need that much time to provide enough value to justify our salaries. Seems silly, right?
Work is the most significant part of our lives in terms of how much time it requires. It's a give and take - you can ask for concessions from your employer just as they can ask for concessions from you. It's not just "accept everyone and everything exactly as it was before", that's ludicrous.
And unionizing has been made political by corporations - it's simply a smart and legally protected right to improve workers' negotiation power in the face of huge corporations.
Hiring women and racial minorities at all, and then to particular positions, was a political issue for a long time. It still is, in many places and companies in the world (hiring a woman or minority to positions could get you killed). The idea that politics and people and corporations are not intimately intertwined is a reflection of privilege.