(09-26-2023, 11:46 PM)Schmoe Wrote: I keep my opinions mostly to myself while at work, except for a select few I've known for years, and have come to know are like-minded.
I kind of understand where that guy is coming from, to an extent. I'm not saying disregard any and all conversation with people who you haven't known for years, but with people I rarely interact with, I tend to keep it safe. "How bout those Eagles!" Predictable, probably boring, but safe
Everyone is different, but that's how I like it, for the most part. We had a new girl who I was training. People seem to want to tell you their life story right away anymore. I'm standing there thinking, Christ, are you buttering me up to write your story or something?
She was a good example, because the more she spoke, the less I liked her. Bashed Trump at every turn, and said she wished AOC would run for president. I said something along the lines of, they're both equally loathsome, and you'd think we could do better in a country of 325 million. I kept all conversations work-related after that, and she quit after a short while anyway.
There are always going to be those people who overshare - lol.. I'm sure my husband would say I have a tendency to the same at times, though I do attempt to keep work on a more professional level.
As I was reading your post I remembered when I was working. I hated sports but I used to read the sports pages daily during football season so I could sound like I knew what people were talking about... lol. But it worked in that for those coworkers you didn't really know it was a safe topic.
I was thinking that perhaps it's the art of small talk which has been lost, and to a degree it likely has, but as Ninurta in the post above yours brings up everything is political now. Football is no longer anything more than a political topic now, what with so many boycotting sports.
We are likely loosing our common spaces, and our differences are ever widening gulfs.
We can talk about hobbies, but I think the gulfs are getting too wide to cross.
I was on a hobbyist forum for years. The forum was a place politics wasn't allowed unless it was directly related to the hobby and then it had to be to the point so the forum itself was a pretty safe place. Because it was a hobby forum, there was a group of us that had one another's addresses and real information because we'd mail one another things.
Most of those on the political left post 2015 would occasionally make political comments and generally if it was a one off comment it would be left alone, only if it started a fight would it be removed from the lounge area threads. One by one I watched everyone on the political right get banned due to taking the bait and getting drawn into a fight.
One of forums permanent members was an elderly Catholic woman, harmless in every way. One of those in our little group called her a racist among other things one day. I sent a PM to ask WTF and he went off on how people on the political right should be killed - literally killed - for our political views.
I actually got scared. You can't really help but kind of know where everyone stands politically anymore even if politics isn't the topic and he was literally, whether he realized it or not, PMing me telling me I deserved to die, and that if he could he'd be happy to do so with his bare hands.
This is someone who knew my name and had my address and if he'd been paying any attention at all knew where I stood politically.
I left that forum over it. I realized this pretense of all being friends was nothing but a lie I had bought into.
However, I tell myself that's just online where people rant and that's it. But I do wonder how much that bleeds into real life too.
I wonder how to find our common bond again, those topics that have the potential to bring us together - at least around the water cooler. A bond that prevents us from wanting to kill those who vote "wrong". Whether it's even possible.
(09-26-2023, 08:11 PM)Ninurta Wrote: There have always been, at least within my experience, those whose opinions could brook no dissent. What we are seeing now, I think, is the increase of those types of people. Once upon a time, when I was younger, there were two subjects one did not breach in polite company - religion and politics. The reason for that prohibition is that those two subjects tend to allow for no dissenting opinion, and tempers flare during their discussion rather quickly if dissent is expressed.
What we seem to be seeing now is that EVERYTHING is starting to fall under one or the other of those two headings, sometimes both, and therefore conversation has been correspondingly truncated to keep it within those two subject areas, which has considerably shrunk the common area where discussion used to take place.
That is the result of confusing social issues with political issues (from both sides of the political spectrum) and thinking that morality can be legislated. It cannot. One's moral compass comes from within, and cannot be imposed from without. That attempt just leads to clashes and frictions. Religion and politics should NEVER be mixed, no matter what your politics or religion are. We are seeing the results of that attempt right now, before our very eyes.
Politics are becoming more polarized as Left Wing authoritarian philosophies become more prevalent in what was once a freedom-loving nation The clash between those two opposing stances is one of the things we are seeing that is being taken as an inability to converse... and literally everything is becoming a political football, where dissent cannot be allowed - from either side.
Compounding that is the fact that many things that were always secular discussions are taking on the aura of religious thought, where deviation from the proposed story line cannot be allowed. "Climate change" is one of those "New Religions", and is a political football as well. Bad combination. When a subject cannot be questioned, cannot bear any criticism.
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As always you give a lot to consider...
