alt Hacker News> 4. Be part of bigger things
> Being part of bigger things makes us feel valued. Find communities and projects to be part of. Start your own. It could be online or in the real world.
Make sure the groups don't get politically active one way or the other. Today's social landscape is made significantly worse by political polarization dragged to the extreme - fuelled by short form content silos and bubbles. (Tiktok, Instagram, etc.)
Ban politics strictly in the spaces you create, and don't be part of the ones that lean one way or the other - unless you are actively looking to take part in politics.
This was not the case even ten years ago. But now, is.
Replies
I think this is wildly wrongheaded. The socially polite "no politics" is a critical insulator allowing normally non-socially acceptable behavior to grow.
I am convinced it is those in power not wanting an informed populace.
We are not in uninteresting times. People need to be engaging in world around them, not ignoring it.
A: "My neighbors are scared"
B: "Don't talk about that, we might get testy because I think your neighbors should be scared."
It would be more useful to say that communities should be organised around a set of principles and be ruthless about sticking to them.
The issue isn't so much that groups become "political" (which is a hard standard to define) as much as they lost focus on a goal (like being a book club) and morph into an in-group, an out-group and a set of memes used to identify the in-groupers and ostracise the out-groupers.
The point of most political memes is to identify a small group who are coordinating to try and control a larger mass of people. When the local book club becomes a conduit for them that is obviously toxic for a general member joining because of the joy of reading. A book club community should prioritise books and including people if and when they enjoy books.
Or don't join groups where you disagree on politics. There's no excuse, really. My own family is enough already
Inquiry: what do you define as politics?
Example: is a trans person in your community political for using their preferred pronouns? Going to their preferred bathroom? Is a gay person political for mentioning their same sex spouse? Is an immigrant political for discussing their immigration process (“sorry can’t make it I have an apt with the embassy”)? Is tits or gtfo political?
I’m not trying to be contrarian this is simply my experiences running like a board game group or something. It’s easy to say no politics but then someone’s normal (eg. My name is Helen, where’s the woman’s restroom?) can cause someone to refuse (“that is clearly a man”!) and now you have a mess on your hands as an organizer.