[sneak]

> What isn't your job is taking moral stances on things, having political opinions, provoking what others might see as unnecessary conflict, in any form.

This is wrong, and how you end up with flying drone face recognizing skullpopping murderbots. "I just work here" is an abdication of adult responsibility to self, family, and society.

It's not some idealistic stance, it's the truth. It's how we ended up with concentration camps in the USA multiple times, and why many companies are gearing up to build more right now.

[GolfPopper]

I think you're both right and wrong. You're right that avoiding responsibility for the outcome of one's own work is wrong, and is how you end up helping to make the world around you a horrible place. At the exact same time, the previous poster is also right - you stick your head up because what your employer is doing is wrong (maybe not "personally enabling concentration camp right now" levels of wrong, but on the path to it all the same) and you will end up seeing your career and the lives of those who depend on your destroyed (as you lose the ability to keep body and soul together) without making a damned bit of difference to the final outcome.

In America, we've built our culture around collective abdication of responsibility for anything and everything, on almost any axis imaginable. The only way anyone with wealth and power ever faces justice is if they injure those with even more wealth and power.

It's easy to say, "if enough people just stood up for what was right, things would change", but how do you get from here to there without asking countless people to sacrifice their families on the altar of "maybe it will get better if you do, but don't count on it". At least in America, I think it will take widespread pain among the public before risking change becomes worth it.

It's awful to think about, but I think that's the heart of it: we (Americans) have built is a system where it is so easy to go from having everything (by historical standards) to having nothing (by current standards) that hardly anyone is willing to risk rocking the boat, even as it sinks and we all drown.

[brailsafe]

Yes, it's a sad reality, but a reality nonetheless. There is very little worth risking everything for, and most people's everything is pocket change to anyone who has the real influence. Make the best choices you can, but realize when it'll cost much more than it'll gain.

[Aeolun]

Absolutely, and 90% of people will happily do so. So your personal ‘line in the sand’ is just completely and utterly irrelevant (aside from your own satisfaction)

[BriggyDwiggs42]

I think this stance is mired in the big picture but ignores small altruism. Neighbors who sheltered jews during the holocaust didn’t alter the system, but they saved real lives. Clandestine action for the better, in line with one’s convictions, can be genuinely worthwhile.

[brailsafe]

That's a fair point too, I was mostly talking specifically about work culture though, and intensely agree with doing good things for people on an individual or community level. That's exactly what you can control and has a real impact. Do it at work too, just do it within your sphere of influence, don't have a savior complex.

[Aeolun]

Sure, but that relies on you being able to do so by yourself. If you are trying to hide the jews in a barn with fifteen others and one of them talks, you may have done a good thing, but it was ultimately meaningless.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t take that stand anyway, it’s just frustrating and doesn’t bring any actual benefit to the people impacted by the thing you refuse to do.

[brailsafe]

I think GolfPepper had a decent interpretation.

Yours is a particularly extreme example I guess, but I didn't say it was a happy reality, I don't agree, and I agree.

It's not your job unless it's your job, but otherwise it's not your job, that's basically it, and sometimes in life it's your job to make the war machine, or if it's in your power to not make the war machine, then don't. If you're taking care of kids, it's your job to take care of kids, not have a moral stance on what your labor is going to. You're not the Angel of Death, and ideally you should do whatever you can to not be. These are the tricky bits of life.

Edward Snowden stuck his neck out, and while he may have won a virtue medal and might be chilling these days with a wife and kids as Russians, what he probably should have done was nothing, that's a sacrifice you make for an overvalued sense of personal heroism imo. Now he's beholden to Putin.

If you've already ascended some ranks and can make decisions that are good for people more broadly, great, that's part of your job.

[aguaviva]

Now he's beholden to Putin.

Sucks for him, and it can't possibly be good for the US either.

But the Obama administration should have known better before pushing him into that hole.