The health of democracy requires that individuals be able to speak their mind and advocate their beliefs.
This doesn't work if their livelihood is controlled by a group of hyper-intolerant political totalitarians.
What GitHub is doing is giving individuals rooms to breathe, think, and live. It's preventing the rule of the intolerant minority, the forced homogenization of thought and suppression of dissent. We banned these things from the government long ago; this is a good step towards reducing the power of non-governmental power centers in corporations to coerce speech and thought of people around them.
As a free-thinking person this would make me much more likely to want to work for GH. At a place like Google I know I'd have to be deeply closeted as others flagrantly denigrate my identity and ideas around me. Here at least everyone can be closeted together, and live in a pluralistic way with different beliefs alongside each other.
This is how we suppress constant political conflict. You just aren't allowed to go after people for who they are or what they believe; we accept differences. And reducing political speech at work helps with that.
At my place of work, when I brought up my opinions on diversity/inclusion/gender neutral speech, I was verbally bullied, and resent this still, after 3 years of working there. Talking politics at work is not democracy, because people with dissenting opinions get silenced by belligerent activists. I applaud gitlab for refusing to be arbiter of morals
>It's preventing the rule of the intolerant minority...
If a majority want to discuss politics and political change, isn't this just an intolerant majority enforcing their politics on everyone?
Unless someone is the type of person who would never advocate for any change no matter what happened to them, from being made King to being made a slave, then they aren't actually apolitical. Everyone who doesn't want to discuss politics or thinks they aren't political are just saying that the current political status quo fits their views.
The default state is still a state, its not a null option. You wouldn't be apolitical if the current politics said your parents had to be executed when they hit 50 and your children had to be turned over to the state so they could best determine their use, would you?
That's a hyperbolic statement, but the intent is to show that being "apolitical" about current politics has no distinction between agreeing with the current politics. If you start telling people they can't discuss their politics because "we want to be uninvolved in politics" what you are really saying is, "My politics are in charge and the status quo. Your opinion needs to be silenced"
Your hyperbolical example notwithstanding, I disagree. Being apolitical isn't about promoting status quo, it's about being indifferent to the status quo and the whole space of adjacent options.
If I'm apolitical about issue X, it doesn't mean I'm a happy supporter of current state of X. It means I don't care whether it stays the way it is, or changes to any of the possible alternative states that are within the Overton window around X.
To use a clarifying analogy: if there's a C++ project in the company, and somebody asks me for the opinion about whether to rewrite it in Java, and I say "I don't care, I'm indifferent about this issue", it doesn't mean I support the project staying as is. It means literally what I said - go ahead and rewrite it in Java, or Python, or COBOL. Whatever, I just don't care. This is what being apolitical about an issue means.
And back to politics - I have a right to care or not care about whatever I please. You can try to convince me to care about some thing you care about, but you have no right to force me to care, and trying to do it makes me only want to oppose you out of spite. The "apolitical means just supporting status quo" meme is essentially a manipulative attempt at forcing people to care about something they don't, a rehash of the old "if you're not with us, you're against us".
>If I'm apolitical about issue X, it doesn't mean I'm a happy supporter of current state of X. It means I don't care whether it stays the way it is, or changes to any of the possible alternative states that are within the Overton window around X.
You don't have to be a happy supporter. You can be an extremely unhappy supporter if you still think the status quo is better than other options.
Saying "I don't care", is just an opinion and doesn't affect anyone. Saying "I don't care, so nobody else is allowed to talk about the subject" is implying that your world view and opinions supercede others. If you were in a group that agreed on a mechanism for deciding what could be talked about, then it would make sense for everyone in that group to follow the decision. That's not whats happening though. The people who are okay with the status quo are telling the unhappy people to be quiet, because it makes the currently okay people feel uncomfortable.
Why would anyone who disagrees with the status quo stop talking about it solely because other people didn't like it?
The situation is different. People who are apolitical on a topic tend to stay away from discussions on the topic, but do not actively prevent others from having those discussions. Except some of those who are into politics like to have this discussion everywhere, all the time. At work, at school, at church, at the bar, everywhere. Left unchecked, this makes loudest, most emotional people infect every aspect of everyone's lives with discussion on their pet topic. That's why apolitical people fight to have "safe spaces" like the workplace, where everyone is actually supposed to be working, and not constantly getting derailed into politics by someone with an axe to grind.
You have the picture of the battleground completely wrong on this. It's not apolitical people shutting down oppressed minorities. It's a minority of people with an opinion on a topic fighting it out with a different minority with a different opinion on the subject, and both sides try to recruit followers to their side from the larger population of people indifferent to the issue, using the "if you're not with us you're against us" argument. Whereas what the larger population wants to say to both groups is, "fight it out among yourself and leave as alone, and for the love of everything that's holy, mind the collateral damage".
(See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21276788 for another take on how a political side feels to both those who disagree with it and those who just want to be left alone.)
> The health of democracy requires that individuals be able to speak their mind and advocate their beliefs.
Exactly.
> This doesn't work if their livelihood is controlled by a group of hyper-intolerant political totalitarians.
Exactly. Hence why we need to acknowledge the right to speak your mind.
> a place like Google I know I'd have to be deeply closeted as others flagrantly denigrate my identity and ideas around me.
The Google case is interesting. Maven was pretty equivalent to a peaceful demonstration. Management had one opinion, (many) employees had ethical objections and eventually got their way.
Damore's case was.. messier, and more relevant to your point. Then again, this policy would just subject everyone to the same thing, while sacrifing the previous benefits. And it's all ultimately enforced by humans anyway, so if anything I'd expect it to lead to further polarization.
> Here at least everyone can be closeted together, and live in a pluralistic way with different beliefs alongside each other.
Many decisions don't have a neutral option. This policy just means that you won't have any say once those crossroads become relevant.
This doesn't work if their livelihood is controlled by a group of hyper-intolerant political totalitarians.
What GitHub is doing is giving individuals rooms to breathe, think, and live. It's preventing the rule of the intolerant minority, the forced homogenization of thought and suppression of dissent. We banned these things from the government long ago; this is a good step towards reducing the power of non-governmental power centers in corporations to coerce speech and thought of people around them.
As a free-thinking person this would make me much more likely to want to work for GH. At a place like Google I know I'd have to be deeply closeted as others flagrantly denigrate my identity and ideas around me. Here at least everyone can be closeted together, and live in a pluralistic way with different beliefs alongside each other.
This is how we suppress constant political conflict. You just aren't allowed to go after people for who they are or what they believe; we accept differences. And reducing political speech at work helps with that.