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Comment by iovrthoughtthis | Hacker News Reader

Perhaps that is because, in this instance the term “political” has 2 meanings which we need to tease out to see why your statement is false.

1. Political intent - acting or omitting to act because of a political view point. 2. Political outcomes - the results of actions or omissions to act which impact politics.

I guess my point is that your actions and omissions have political outcomes whether you want them to or not.

We should also agree what “politics” means. I’m not simply referring to the science of government but to the decisions around the distribution of power, resources and status in groups of people.

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> I guess my point is that your actions and omissions have political outcomes whether you want them to or not.

It does not even stop there. If we choose to understand what's political in this way everything that humans choose to relate to (even things that do not exist beyond human imagination) have, of course, probably some influence on political outcomes.

Rain, an escaped alligator from the local zoo, the color of a button in a web form, etc.

I think that this second idea of what's political is merely the realization that we can choose to view everything according to it's political impact. Like a pair of glasses we might wear or might want others to wear.

...to stick with my example: One might end up making a long term study on how news about escaped zoo animals affect election outcomes. That might lead to surprising results. It's just not always guaranteed to be a very productive use of time.

I think there's probably a healthy middle ground here. It's not hard to argue that there's some reasonable moral expectations regarding company decision making. Like, don't construct gas chambers. (Local example from my German home region.)

On the other side it's easy to see that insisting on questioning every minor decision will lead to almost instant gridlock.

That's why I think that both radical positions are pretty hard to defend. A better society might hide behind pragmatic decision making with some reasonable, probably even academically shallow moral questioning of ones own actions. Not in corporate apathy or zealotry.

What is your point?

My point is your parent is right and you are wrong.

Artificially extending what's seen as political to excess is a pointless exercise that removes all meaning and usefulness from the concept.

That's bad because a shared understanding of some political sphere (which comes into existence through its boundaries) is really important for democratic discourse.

That sounds nice, but how, and as importantly who decides what those boundaries are?

In a best case scenario those boundaries are continuously questioned in the democratic discourse.

Some moral entrepreneur might argue: Politics should govern the bedroom for [reasons]! ... and others might object: No; the bedroom is a private sphere where politics has no say for [reasons].

... and over time there should emerge a shared understanding of which aspects of life are political grounds and which are taboo.

The bedroom case is mostly decided today. One side won (mostly LGBTQ&Friends) and now we see the bedroom as something that should be free from politics. ..like I think that the vast majority of people in the western world now sees sodomy laws as bad fit for modern democracies.

But there are other issues that are more contemporary: The idea that speech is violence, for example, is prime moral entrepreneurship. Western societies regulate violence in a certain way and this equivalence would suggest to treat both equivalent, one way or the other.

... and it's far from decided how speech will be treated in the future and we all have many open arguments on the matter.

It's a healthy thing for societies to continuously re explore their specific boundaries of politics.

I have difficulties seeing the "everything is political"-trope as anything but the proposal to be reckless regarding the process of a shared understanding of the boundaries of politics.

> It's a healthy thing for societies to continuously re explore their specific boundaries of politics.

To rephrase: through political action (such as activism, lobbying and campaigning), societies should continuously reevaluate what topics are within the political sphere.

If how we decide what is or is not "acceptably" political is itself a political process, how can you honestly say certain things aren't political.

Claiming that bedrooms "aren't" is naive. There are still absolutely exist people who have and are and will continue to try and control what people can do in their bedrooms. Just because one side, and the side you presumably agree with, appears to have won the argument for now, doesn't mean that things are finished.

There are lots of things that I think should be outside of the realm of politics: basic human rights, white supremacy, a woman's right to choose. And yet.

So we return to the original question: how come those topics are "political", but in your opinion "bedrooms" aren't? (And would someone in the UK agree with you? They probably would, despite laws that affect them).

Who decided that bedrooms were off limits but uteruses weren't? How? Why? Can I change that? Those are all political questions.

And when you start into this meta-discussion of how do we make something political? The answer is pretty straightforward: you find people who are that there's an issue and you make noise about it.

When lots of people see a problem and make noise about it that problem becomes political. Disagreements, on a societal scale, are politics. So "this shouldn't be political" isn't much more than "I don't think the status quo is worth spending resources on". And, well, the people who think there's a problem will disagree on that. And thus: politics.

Yeah there are things that I wish we didn't disagree about, but I also am willing to stand by my convictions and say I disagree, instead of hiding behind "this isn't even a discussion, you're not allowed to bring up this complaint because this isn't acceptable politics". If you're fine with the way things are, say that.

> through political action (such as activism, lobbying and campaigning), societies should continuously reevaluate what topics are within the political sphere.

No that's not what I've said. I talked about discourse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discourse

This difference is important since the discourse is in itself not framed by any material boundaries. This difference also answers your question on whether political action deciding on the scope of politics might be incoherent.

> Claiming that bedrooms "aren't" [political] is naive. There are still absolutely exist people who have and are and will continue to try and control what people can do in their bedrooms.

A shared understanding of what is political does not require every single person to agree on the scope of politics. In the end it's all about relative stability, not unanimity or majority or something like that.

> Just because one side ... won the argument ... doesn't mean that things are finished.

There I agree. I don't think the concept of "finished" exists in any human context.

> Who decided that bedrooms were off limits but uteruses weren't? How? Why? Can I change that? Those are all political questions.

This question on who specifically might make a specific decision seems to be a reoccurring theme in our dialogue. In modern societies that's usually a multitude of interlinked processes. Very rarely there's an isolationable agent/action relation relationship. ...and that's, of course, a good thing.

> ... this isn't even a discussion, you're not allowed to bring up this complaint ...

Who forbade you anything, by the way? I don't get why this conversation should be so confrontational or accusatory.

I have no strong feelings on any of the many crossroads in debating social science epistemology or democratic theory in general.

Politics is how groups make decisions (literally that's the definition). Discourse with the intent to influence how a group makes a decision is political discourse.

> Who forbade you anything, by the way? I don't get why this conversation should be so confrontational or accusatory.

You've said that certain topics are not acceptable. Presumably this means one can't discuss them. Maybe you don't intend to enforce this beyond the force of your moral condemnation, but you're still saying "you're a bad person if you bring up this topic because it's not part of the political discourse and we're only discussing political stuff".

Politics is many different things depending on who you ask. Obviously. Luhmann wouldn't agree with Foucault who wouldn't agree with Rousseau who wouldn't agree with Arendt, etc.

In our previous conversation I'd argue that politics as power relations or as a specific set of societal institutions might be the most productive definitions just because both are compatible with our main argument.

Nobody said they can't discuss something. It's a good example though:

You might believe that someone who argues that something does not belong in the sphere of politics does not want to or is unable to discuss something at all primarily because you already very strongly believe that politics necessary includes everything.

If you were to step back from that premise for a second you would see that there might be other human endeavors, think science, philosophy, math .. and that those are discussed by people completely without any connection to politics (..or as you would probably argue: they're willfully ignorant of the political dimension of their actions and might even be motivated by subversive, ultraconservative intentions.)

I just of course can't make you realize that this is only one very specific worldview out of many. ..which might have its place and usefulness but probably wasn't meant to act inhibiting on its enthusiasts.

Some do believe that every action needs to be reflected according to its compliance with some religious dogma. For them, ignoring the religious dimension in any action is very suspicious, because they are able to see a religious component in any action. Surely others must appear as stupid or willfully ignorant to them.

They're driven by a specific set of religious premises and that's completely okay. We just wouldn't want them to be literally unable to understand that there are other worldviews out there with their own premises.

A strong conviction is born through the understanding of its opposing ideas.

> You've said that certain topics are not acceptable. [...] you're still saying "you're a bad person

Oh dear goodness, where? Would you mind to quote me on that?

Because I don't think any of this is true.

You seem to agree with me despite denying it. Everything is political, there are complex interrelated systems by which decisions get made and people hold power. Arguing that some things aren't within the sphere of acceptable political discourse is naive and pointless since you can't actually enforce it at all.

You’re constructing a hypothetical “what-if” that sometimes could be true, but is not guaranteed to be true.

I could just as well say “no one should ever argue anything because then people could argue about every little thing and it would be impossible to do anything at all.”

I don't think it's a hypothetical. Overpoliticization is already at this point. There was a week or so at my company where a slack bot would automatically scold us for not being inclusive if we used the word "guys".

What is the situation at your company currently?

There's still a soft ban on some terms like "slave", "whitelist", etc., but "guys" is allowed again.

On a recent project we decided to use the term “main” instead of “master” for our primary branch.

At first I was like “ugh” - not a big fan of that kind of language change, but then I was like, well, if it does matter to some people, what is my investment in this particular term anyway?

I could see how it gets trickier as a company policy, as opposed to something chosen collectively by the group.

Nonetheless, with everything going on in the world right now - and I say this as an advocate of free speech and of freedom of expression in art - this seems like such a small thing to stress about.

Tbh if this is your big fear then I’d say maybe read more news?

Being excoriated for an honest slip Of the tongue or absent mindedness is a different story though and there are definitely people that do that.

In some ways I think the conversation to be had around changing how we use certain language is equally or more valuable than the change itself :).

If anything, I'd say the news is what causes me to be concerned in the first place. I don't personally know anyone who's been fired for not using precisely the right language, but I've read a lot of news stories about it.

I feel like that's kind of a manager-conversation thing, plus, like many policies, will depend on the workplace culture to begin with.

IMHO the tricky bit is that, there is both an honest and genuine way to express concern around using "precisely the right language", so to speak, and, a malicious, not-an-honest-partner-in-the-conversation, gum-up-the-works way.

And also, I guess a "this-is-all-unpleasant-and-I-just-don't-want-to-think-about-it-or-think-about-the-historical-context-for-why-we-are-talking-about-this-in-the-first-place-I-have-enough-on-my-plate-as-it-is" kind of way.

Of course there is also virtue signaling or what have you; that's a thing. Human foolishness has no bias.

Obviously HN is not the right place for discussing specifics, but, IMHO, that's maybe the only way to have a real conversation around this stuff. Which takes trust and a shared safe space.

Which can be hard to come by these days.

That said, IMHO my patience decreases a bit, sadly, every day when I read the news. There's a context to all this, after all. And a very real history.

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