mhoyeYou don't really need to be an activist or a saint or a leftist or a socialist or really much of anything to believe that black lives matter, or that trans rights are human rights, or to be anti-fascist, or to believe that your privacy is your dignity. All you really need to believe is that if a machine that can strip any person of their rights, agency, safety or privacy is permitted to exist at all, then somebody someday might point that machine at you. So that machine can't be permitted to be.
I spend a lot of time working on community safety, diversity and inclusivity at what I flatter myself to believe is a pretty important tech company, but if I'm really honest about why I do, my motives are just... selfish. I like meeting new people, I like trying new food, I believe that software is just a bunch of decisions and those decisions might not matter to people who don't have a say in them, so if we want to make software that matters to people, those people need to be in the room.
I mean, literally all you need to do is concede that other people are real people and their experiences are real experiences. That's it. And then ask yourself if the experiences forced on them are something you'd be happy being forced on you.
I work hard on this stuff but it's not because I'm a saint or an activist or a socialist or whatever, I'm a self-interested, middle-of-the-road, middle-aged white dude with some empathy and an ounce of foresight. This shit isn't complicated. Get to work.
Jeremy Kahn@mhoye thank you for speaking so much of my perspective.
Us middle aged fast talking American white dudes with a modicum of empathy have to activate our brethren first
mkb@mhoye Well put!
Fan of Shared Truth & Empathy@mhoye @gratefuldread Too late. The insurance pharmaceutical complex of Citizens United corporations are far ahead of the curve compared to Skynet.
TP
Seitansbraten