Being unable to countenance good faith disagreement is not a persuasive argument against your ideology being a cult.
As an alternative approach, you can cut the gordian knot of being against anti-racism without being in favor of racism by simply noting that the thing is not what it calls itself.
This is a strawman, unmoored from evidence or reality.
Here's my read, based on your supporting the blog post and your two comments:
You've constructed this fantasy as a defence mechanism. You use the classification of those with earnest beliefs that you find threatening as worse at 'actual code' and obsessed with 'work groups', and on that basis you reject those beliefs without having to introspect.
As collaboration, design, and people skills become more valued as ways to produce better software alongside sheer lines-of-code output, you fear that the power you derive from skills is being diluted.
As the corporate world realises that people who aren't men or who aren't white might matter, need to be taken into account, and might have something to contribute, you fear that maybe some of what you got you didn't deserve quite as much as you thought, and the fear of being seen as privileged makes you want to cling onto your existing power all the more.
This is an opportunity for growth. You can choose whether to create resentful posts on HN, writing off anyone who cares as a leech, or you can engage with those underlying feelings and become a better human, and better at your job.
This is extraordinarily vicious, and yet entirely par for the course, a good example of the basically pro forma denunciation OP is arguing should be verboten in the work place.
... is political. What is that purpose, why is it common, and how does the joining work - these are the fundamental political problems.
> If you put other things above your fellows and mission, you're a mercenary, not a fellow.
Yes. At work, you are a mercenary. Your safety, family, health, concern for the decent treatment of your fellow humans, ought to come before your product. If the direction of the company you work for impinges on human decency, you shouldn't put that aside in favour of some weird 'fellowship' complex.
> It promotes people to stick to their beliefs rather than put them aside. [...] It attracts those who have their own interest and want a platform for their own interests
It's possible to have beliefs that aren't purely self-interested, an idea which seems so foreign to the author as to escape consideration entirely.
It's possible to have beliefs that help you achieve your 'mission' in a way that's compatible with your values. If laying down your belief that racism is harmful and wrong is necessary for you 'mission', then the mission is itself harmful and wrong, and no amount of 'fellowship' is going to change that.
>> Joining together for a common purpose
> ... is political.
I think the author is referring to the mission statement of companies. While some missions statements have political elements, I can see plenty of mission statements that give a common purpose and are not political. Examples: "Accellerate the advent of sustainable transport" -- Tesla, "Build the best CPU" -- Intel (?).
It is well known that a strong mission statement is an important motivation for people to join and continue to work at companies (e.g. Pink's Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose Framework). So to describe a company as a group of people who are joining together for a common purpose is not wrong.
(Of course, there are of course many more factors that influence work-place selection and motivation.)
Can you elaborate where you see this all rooted in politics?
There's a genre of opinion that sounds like "I don't want politics in my videogames/workplace/church/facebook group", which stems from an idea that politics is exclusively a thing that politicians do in government, coupled with a (mistaken) sense that 'being political' is a bad attribute.
In fact, 'being political' is non-normative - per wikipedia:
Politics is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations between individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status.
So, the first answer to your question is a pedantic one: "joining together for a common purpose" is by definition a political act.
The second, more nuanced argument, is that your even if it's not obvious, these mission statements are political:
- "Accelerate the advent of sustainable transport" - says that 1. sustainable transport is good; 2. sustainable transport isn't coming fast enough; 3. it's appropriate for a private company to influence the transport market
- "Build the best CPU" - 1. CPUs are a good thing to spend energy and finite resources on; 2. something about the validity of calling a cpu 'best'
and so on. I agree that having a clear mission which your employees are aligned to is crucial for morale and effectiveness; but the way that mission is chosen, who influences it, the way that it displays beliefs about what is desirable; and how it evolves over time all are all political.
common purpose and are not political. Examples: "Accellerate the advent of sustainable transport" -- Tesla
Tesla is extremely political if you want it to be. Exactly what you choose to mean by the word 'sustainable' has all kinds of political implications. The core argument for going electric and solar over internal combustion and coal power is rooted in the environmental movement and based on a belief in global warming and climate change. That is 'political'
Equally pushing for autonomous driving can be seen as taking stance against all the people that will lose their jobs if self driving cars and trucks become a reality. Clearly taking a stance for Capital and against The Workers. That is 'political'.
Yes, I see this political dimension for Tesla -- on a different topic than racism -- but I give you that point.
However, there _are_ plenty of Mission Statements that are a political, just look at your local craftsman or industrial suppliers: "making plumbing work at your home", "creating the best concrete foundations", "selling the best shoes", etc. those are not "fundamentally" or primarily political missions.
Is that how you characterise the activism at bandcamp, which said "maybe this racist list of 'funny names' is racist, and maybe we shouldn't do that?"
Because, to write off 'how about not being racist' as "saying the right words and dis-empower Gen-X", or "[using] a platform for their own interests" is ...
racist.
And being anti-racist is political activism, and that's good.
> If laying down your belief that racism is harmful and wrong is necessary for you 'mission', then the mission is itself harmful and wrong, and no amount of 'fellowship' is going to change that.
Absolutely! I did not see anyone at Basecamp questioning this.
Agree, maybe I should have been more explicit about the argument I'm trying to make:
- The OP's argument is irrelevant to bandcamp, since the antiracism at bandcamp was actually not directed at the 'mission' at all
- If we instead consider the hypothetical that OP is responding to - that being antiracist is in conflict with your 'mission' - then it was a bad mission anyway, and maybe you should change it so that it no longer conflicts with antiracism.
To complicate this further, "The City" or "The City of London" refers to a small area in central London where a lot of banks and financial institutions are headquartered. London as a whole is called "London" or "Greater London", but not "The city of London".
In the UK, "The City" is often used to refer to the London financial industry, much like "Westminster" is used to refer to the central government.
"Town" refers to urban centres in general, not just London.
I just asked a member of high society (my current employer) as to whether 'Town' is used to refer to London. His reply was exemplary:
> Only obnoxious wankers from London will, small minded people [...] will also talk about 'their little house in the country' when they mean it is barely on the outskirts of a city!
As somebody from the true North (with family originating in the North of Scotland) the way people refer to places always intrigues me. I once had a friend who referred to Southport (population 90k), where he grew up, as a small town.
I think most people don't actually have a real concept of the hamlet -> village -> town -> city relationship and so the words are easily repurposed. However I do not think doing this is somehow bad, or incorrect.
I'm from Ireland. In the version of English I grew up with, we refer to the nearest big town or city - wherever the business, social and cultural life of the area is concentrated, basically - as "town." We would say, for instance:
- "I'm going into town."
- "Let's meet in town."
- "Is there anything going on in town tonight?"
When I lived in the south-east of Ireland, "town" referred to the central business district of the nearby city of 50k inhabitants. When I lived in Dublin, "town" was Dublin city centre. And if I lived in or near London, "town" would refer to areas of central London.
It really has nothing to do with whether the place qualifies as a village, town, city or what have you.
Which was my point. There are at least two different uses for the words, and they are more relevant to some people than others. Neither is 'incorrect'.
A Google Books search for "in town for the season" gives a result in Memoirs of a Peeress (1837) [0] which unambiguously refers to London. (The difficulty is not so much finding an example, as finding an example which explains which town is referred to, since it's "obviously" London)
Go read any of Dorothy Sayer's Peter Wimsey novels --- not only are they excellent, but they're an interesting insight into upper-class cultureof the 1920s. The main character says this a lot.
It's not a bug. It's a design issue of the legend not explaining the output in a way that works for me. Anyway, it's ok with me to enter into the bug tracking system on my behalf.
I think the years there are the most up-to-date available for those particular axes - certainly the unemployment data is sourced from the census which is only carried out once a decade.
