The Culture of Shut Up
There once was a remote village deep in the rainforest that had no contact with the outside world. And in this small village there were only three village elders who had the ability to speak. So they were in charge. And theyd have arguments. One would say, I support a womans right to choose. Another would say, I oppose a womans right to choose. And then the third would say, A real debate here on a womans right to choose. When we come back, Justin Bieber arrested!
Now if you were one of the many villagers who didnt have a way to speak, you just hoped that one of the three elders who could speak would make the argument you wanted to make. Sometimes they did, sometimes they didnt. And it was okay, but it bothered you that these three voices didnt really speak for everybody. They were, after all, pretty rich and all one color. (Green. These were green people.) And they didnt really understand what it was like to be aqua or purple or gay or poor like you were. Youre a gay poor purple person. They tried to cover the whole world, but generally they focused on what was on the minds of green people from the big cities who watched Mad Men and went to Middlebury.
And even as the elders spoke with confidence and seriousness, it felt like they kept getting it wrong. They invaded neighboring villages, occasionally the wrong village altogether. They trusted the CEOs of the village banks even after they plunged the village into a Great Village Recession and then went right back to village business as usual as if it never happened. They built a massive village prison system that punished non-violent village offenders at higher rates than anywhere else in the rainforest. They rigged the village economy against the interests of ordinary villagers in favor of those with close ties to the three elders, those who had donated money to their village campaigns, lobbied their village offices.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/04/the-culture-of-shut-up/360239/
Doctor_J
(36,392 posts)one might also expand this to the three elders being the only ones who could build fires. Thus were the remote villagers exposed only to the smoke signals from the same three.
cprise
(8,445 posts)Non-white-Christian-straight-male-wealthy people are getting trampled all over the globe, literally and figuratively, so that such people can 'do their thing' to us with impunity. Having worked under such people, reeking of hubris and privilege and NO-WAIT-I-KNEW-YOU-WERE-GAY-BUT-YOURE-NOT-PC-ARE-YOU???
I am sending out a donation to Mozilla today.
mac56
(17,564 posts)K & R
AverageJoe90
(10,745 posts)Nobody can deny that.
Here's the best part:
Then one day you found this rock and you realized that you could use the rock to write on a leaf. And so you developed a written language and taught it to everyone. And at the big village meetings, when the three elders at the front would have their arguments, villagers could participate. People would write things like, I agree with you and appreciate your position. Or I hope you get cancer and die. Or Heres a picture of what I ate for lunch. Or Please stop drawing pictures of food, no one cares what you ate for lunch. Or Check out this cat in a shoebox because adorable.
But it turned out by the time we finally had this great way to communicate in our hands, we were already so angry and suspicious that the rock and leaf became a way to vent our frustrations not just as the elders but at each other.
Bill says, I support single-payer village healthcare.
And then Mary writes, Bill is a faggot communist.
And then Ted says, I wont shop at Marys boutique until Mary apologizes to Bill.
Then Angela says, Stand with Mary against the assault on her freedom of speech!
And then Bill says, Angela is a racist.
And Jeff says, Anyone who shops at Marys boutique is a racist.
And Ted says, Check your privilege.
And Mary says, I dont remember who I am in this story but Im furious.
And then someone writes, FUCKK YOU TED!!1! in all caps with a bunch of typos.
Soon there were really only two kinds of messages people would writeeither vicious personal attacks, or self-righteous calls for apologyuntil eventually the villagers, angry and exhausted and sick of the noise and rancor just started pelting each other with the rocks until all the rocks were broken and all the leaves were shredded and finally in the silence, after the dust had settled, the villagers shrugged their shoulders, and turned back toward the smug and satisfied village elders who were just waiting for their chance to regain supremacyjust waiting for the moment when the villagers would come crawling back, desperate to be led, desperate for the reassuring simplicity of the old order, of the establishment, of the way things used to be.
Related Story
And thats the story of that village.
This has become all too true, sadly. Too much hardassery, not enough willingness to communicate in a respectful & agreeable manner.
With that said, though, I do applaud Mozilla's initiative to stand with the gay community.
n2doc
(47,953 posts)Fuck the poutrage. People's actions have consequences. I don't see these pundits spending time worrying about the UPS folks who were summarily fired for daring to try and Unionize.
shanemcg
(80 posts)for privately contributing to ANY political cause to me. I don't care what the issue is. Is anyone that gave money or signed a petition regarding prop 8 or, whatever it is, fair game and should lose their living? I doubt it would hurt this guy, but is the janitor fair game too? We already know saying anything regarding Israel is verboten, as Helen Thomas and others have shown us. I guess we have to add gay to the list of things you must toe an official line or you don't have the right to live and support yourself in the USA.
Funny, you can write and say any nasty thing you want or make whatever humiliating law you want against poor and working poor people. That won't cost you anything. That's just free speech. Don't even get me started on smokers, you'll even get a pat on the back for attacking them, plus let's raise their taxes again to pay for something like childhood education while we moralize about how much they are costing us! Best of both worlds.
If this is the way life is going to be played in the US from here on out, I'd be for a law allowing full privacy in what you support or don't support, just like no one has the right to know how you vote.
Just to be clear, I don't make enough money to donate to any cause, I do sign lots of petitions though on just about anything. I believe people have a right to be heard, even if they don't have any money to purchase free speech.
KoKo
(84,711 posts)It can work both ways when we start to do that. And, sounds like something the ACLU would want to take up.
Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)Even if he was forcefully fired, there isn't a whole lot of legal ground for them to stand on, if any...
uriel1972
(4,261 posts)I never knew I had no right to withdraw my patronage from someone because I disagreed with their view on how to treat people. I would have been content with an apology and a sign of good behaviour, he didn't have to resign.
Plus it didn't deny him a job.
What you are saying is we have no right to boycott a product or service. That's scary.
Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)and for someone that high on the ladder to contribute to such an odious cause, it's perfectly reasonable to ask if his personal politics are reflected in corporate policy, and if GLBT folks are given fair treatment in the workplace+hiring process...
There's nothing strange about it...
shanemcg
(80 posts)Like if somone contributed to NAMBLA I could see it, having sex with kids is wrong.
It is not illegal to support or not support a piece of legislation last time I checked.
As I tried to note in my first post, there seems to be plenty of odious viewpoints its perfectly fine to hold. What makes this prop so important that not contributing in the right direction means you shouldn't be able to make a living?
Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)and nobody is trying to arrest him or put him in jail...
But the board of directors is perfectly justified to ask themselves: "In light of this new revelation, is *this* the kind of person we want to be the public face of leadership for our corporation? If we support him, are we really prepared to deal with the P.R. shitstorm, the boycotts and potential lawsuits?"
This guy can "make a living" doing any number of things at any number of companies (or even self-employment) -- It just won't be at Mozilla...Let's stop pretending that this guy won't be able to pay his utility bills or buy next week's groceries now that he's no longer CEO at Mozilla...
shanemcg
(80 posts)This is ridiculous and I am all for people's donations to whatever cause they support remain anonymous if this is the way the US is going to roll from here on out
Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)Yeah, he was certainly informed that if he didn't resign, he wouldn't get any support and his job would be made 'difficult'...
But if he wanted to prove a point and refuse to resign, that was well within his right...
shanemcg
(80 posts)That's it. To save them an ongoing shit storm.
Pretty adult of him and says a lot about what kind of person he is, regardless if he donated to Prop 8 or not. Whatever the "proper" way to feel about it should have been. I'm not a Californian and I don't really think the issue commands such a constant national attention, especially in view of the fact that we are nearly a fascist dictatorship at this point. That occupies my thoughts most of the time.
I guess I'm just a one issue at a time guy and for all the claims I see otherwise, it sure doesn't seem like our representatives or any one else can focus on more than one issue at a time.
Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)He knew his situation was untenable and indefensible in all regards...His supposed maturity or lack thereof had nothing to do with it...
You also don't have to be a Californian to see that a public figure financially supporting a discriminatory law (or anything polarizing) can come back and bite him in the ass...
You do realize that CEOs over the decades have been forced out for a lot less than this, right?
shanemcg
(80 posts)Say there is a bill to legalize gay marriage and also in the bill is a rider to start building the San Andreas Faultline Nuclear Power Station.
Would it be ok then to donate against the bill or would you still have to support it in violation of how you feel about nuke plants on fault lines to not be shunned or destroyed professionally?
I think this is a very dangerous path we're heading down and will have unforeseen consequences. Just like drug testing and how people made fun of me for saying it was a slippery slope, chalk one more up for me for being exactly right on something. If you do not see how this could backfire on you in just the sort of scenario I laid out above, then I can't help you.