[Swizec]

Here's what I don't understand, and I'm likely the weird one here: Why are political opinions considered private? Is it an anglosaxon thing? Is it a middleclass thing? It feels completely alien to me.

Where I come from politics (in one form or another) are the first thing you talk about with new people that you meet. It's the most fruitful ground for conversation that goes beyond mundane boring smalltalk nobody cares about.

I mean, isn't that the whole basis for democracy? That people discuss these things?

Hell, isn't most mainstream-but-not-quite-pop art political in nature?

[Cyberdog]

> Here's what I don't understand, and I'm likely the weird one here: Why are political opinions considered private?

People often keep their political opinions private in polite society simply because of what this whole thread is about - it's very easy for people who don't know you very well to judge you by the political opinions you spout and then possibly treat you more poorly because of that. This is why I tend to keep my mouth shut about political stuff at my workplace. (It doesn't help that I know that, statistically speaking, my opinion will be at odds with most of the others in my industry and location.)

[DrScump]

This.

And if you differ because you are more informed about the topic than your peers, that only makes the social isolation problem worse.

[TeMPOraL]

I think it's an age-old custom. There are two things that are off-topic for casual conversations with non-family-members - political and religious beliefs. People tend to tie them to their egos, and it pretty much always results in resentment. It's a general population equivalent of inexperienced developers arguing about merits of programming languages or text editors.

'pg actually wrote an essay about it once.

http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html