Think man vs women Black person vs police Boss vs employee
suddenly culture A breaks down because people in power get upset and then abuse their power. I guess you can say "they are only in charge of their emotions" but when people can be fired or killed, it stops being a thing.
I've been in culture A (the military / still identifying as male): and there is a good time for it, you don't care about someones feelings in the middle of the mission
I've been in culture B (civilian life / out as a transwoman): Culture B is nice because when done correctly (sure it's hard), it lets people show their own emotional vulnerability and allows others to understand and take into account that there are people out there that grew up with widely different experiences other than yourself.
Also when the default norm is basically white male culture, once you see it from the other side you realize how bad it actually is.
(I'm aware I will probably be down-voted)
A turns into war, bulling and tyranny, B turns into toxic cesspool of blame and playing a victim. Especially that there's a mechanism of self-selection, and people fed up with the group tend to leave.
If you're a parent you see a micro-versions of both almost all the time in kids interacting with each other.
Most people with reasonable life experience must have been involved repeatedly in groups with both A and B cultures, some of which worked great, and some of which were terrible. The difference is not in A/B but in particular group dynamics, their morals etc.
IMO, A healthy, well-rounded adult should be able to encompass and integrate both cultures and fluently switch them depending on the context and a need at hand, and not fall into worst version of any.
This is a great point! In power relationship, "culture A" is often one-sided. The boss says whatever he wants, and he boasts about an environment of openness or whatever. But the employees know that if they tried the same, they would get fired. So this only adds an insult to injury, not only you have to endure the manners of your boss, you also have to pretend that everything is okay and symmetric, when it obviously is not.
(When your boss insists that there is no hierarchy and everyone can freely speak their mind, this is your last warning to shut up. Hint: In genuinely safe environments, you usually don't need to remind people regularly that the environment is safe; they already know, based on their previous experience and observations. So if the boss doth protest too much...)
On the other hand, I believe it is perfectly safe to talk back to Linus Torvalds. In this case, the "culture A" really is symmetric. Ironically, the reason he is attacked is because it is safe to attack him. (If you need to publicly provide an example of toxic behavior, it is safer to name Linus than someone who could actually punish you for doing so.)
In real, I suppose almost no one would be a "culture A" or "culture B" absolutist. When Bob says something to James and James starts crying... most people would ask what exactly Bob said, and decide accordingly.
I suspect people usually want context-less rules if they plan to abuse them. If you enjoy bullying people, you have an incentive to promote "culture A"; if you enjoy playing victim and blackmailing emotionallly, you have an incentive to promote "culture A". Otherwise, you will probably agree that some things are okay and some are not okay, even if we wouldn't agree on where exactly the line is.
Resistance to a power structure is a conflict.
Personally, I want to be able to make this assumption, to have this trust. Because the A/B balance seems to be tipping.
But it's so easy to say "I feel Less Safe when you say X". It's only human to notice that some words and phrases take on power. Only human to want to use that power to protect yourself.
So instead of owning your own feelings, you own that of everyone in the group. And online, that's everyone. Some people online will claim injury even when there is none, or when they imagine they're speaking for others who are staying silent.
The result is a discourse so sanded-down and smooth that it achieves only the distinction of offending no one.
Isn't the issue that it allows bad actors to pretend to take offence and we don't have a mechanism of validating whether the offence is real or malicious?
I found the language the author used to describe each interesting. The "masculine"/"feminine" dichotomy seems to cause those in group B to take offense, in my experience, due to the "cultural norm to think masculine is strong/good and feminine is weak/bad". I like the "bro"/"inclusive" dichotomy because the "bro culture" is now a short-hand for "toxic" so those in group B feel "superior" (_such a bad word but not enough coffee yet_) and are then able to have a discussion about the dichotomy itself.
Something the Wife and I have butted heads against and something I had wished the author would have spent more time on was the dolling out of "responsibility points" during a disagreement. I, in group A, think that as long as I'm not saying "I will hurt you", I can _say_ whatever the fuck I want and you just need to get over it. I think this is how _everyone_ feels, even those in group B, but group A is just open about it. The Wife, however, feels that I should be responsible for what I say that isn't a part of the "group thing" (_once again, an emotional word to get my point across but a tad too far, I know_).
Example: If I say "I dislike your shoes", the Wife has _every right_ to be upset. However, I should not be held accountable/be given "responsibility points" for that. It's on them for being hurt by me not liking their shoes.
Just because I said something that hurt someone's feelings doesn't mean I'm _responsible_ for their feelings. If that is the case, what is stopping _any_ of us saying "You not giving me everything I want hurts me"? If _emotions_ are the end-all, be-all of importance, isn't being emotional until you get your way the ultimate strategy?
I am rambling now. Great article, timely reading for myself. Hope to see more conversation about this and to learn how I can be a better ally to culture B without having to give me my own desires/ideologies in culture A.
It's a balancing act of reasonability, and some people are indeed bad actors. Like people walking past eachother on the sidewalk, some people are (unreasonably) upset when not everyone gets out of their way. While we're responsible for making reasonable (but not absolute) effort not to bump into eachother, "reasonable" is socially determined. It can feel unsatisfactory without a game-proof absolute rule, but it really does work.
Like yourself, I have a partner that is a different culture than myself; I leaning towards A, and them to B.
It was a constant source of bickering for us because I'd never be able to express myself fully without affecting her negatively. Being too considered in my speech, would keep them calm but would leave me dissatisfied, which would make the next one worse. During fights, only after being sufficiently emotionally exhausted we'd come to accept each other's "incorrect" perspective and move on. We share a lot of values, so that isn't hard and we were quite happy on the whole.
There was a point about a year ago where some acute external stress started to weigh down on us, and we were increasingly getting worse at resolving those arguments. I tried to take their feedback at face value, by trying to be accommodating of their stated needs. But that too failed miserably. In fact I was now being similarly emotionally devastated, for things that usually would be a quick quarrel. Because of all the extra emotional work I was trying to do, and didn't have the stamina for.
We recognized it was a deteriorating condition, so somehow my partner brought up the idea of going through The 5 Love Languages book. Neither of us had read it before, but the audiobook was on YouTube, so it couldn't hurt. Long story "short", that book has revolutionized the way we communicate. It was night and day difference within a week, and we haven't been happier.
My key takeaway from the book wasn't that we were different cultures (while that is still true). It was that there are some very simple but powerful techniques, that allow you and your partner to store much more emotional energy in your reservoir (book calls it "love tank") so communication mismatches can be handled much more gracefully. In the end, we can approach disagreements in either style, depending on subject.
The traditional meaning allows you to have a society. You can live next to someone who you disagree with.
The new meaning is a profoundly negative one. It means that if you are tolerant, then there is something wrong with you, because you are tolerating bad ideas. A society that embraces the second definition doesn't seem like it will last very long.
The traditional definition allows conversations to take place. It gives people space to grow and change their minds. It puts people as more important than ideals.
The new definition makes ideals more important than people. It requires cancelling people if they believe the "wrong" things, or at least unfashionable things.
Because practically, aren't ideas tied to people? I don't think you can have an idea survive without people keeping it alive. So how do you express intolerance for "bad" ideas without letting that expression bleed into an intolerance for the people propagating the "bad" idea?
Take a certain popular religion, for instance. This religion can be judged as evil if you are secular or pro-reason (as opposed to faith). But individuals who practice this religion do so as individuals, and may place more emphasis on certain parts of their religion over others according to their own personal values. In fact it's impossible not to place emphasis on certain aspects of a religion or philosophy when adopting it - even religious zealotry implies an emphasis on perfect obedience and adherence. You can tolerate, accept, or even like a person holding an idea that you can't tolerate due to your own beliefs, for the personal values and virtues exhibited by the individual which are reflected in their emphasis of certain parts of their beliefs.
Ideas, tolerance, and their cross-sections are not binary.
If you have a highly dynamic group, meaning it changes every year, then you should consider culture B to reduce alienation. If you have a static group consider culture A to improve cohesion and cooperation.
A smart and intelligent manager can accommodate both simultaneously and realize that there is a happy medium between the two. As the culture matures, ie people stay around for a long time, it will go from B+ to A+ naturally.
So true..but even making these statements will get you cancelled or fired these days.
However: "B in a healthy way requires huge skill" ... it requires more than skill it requires magic.
When people are allowed to determine, arbitrarily, that they have been 'transgressed' by some other action, they will abuse that any which way. Or at least some people will.
The 'threshold' for 'intolerance' will move consistently in a direction until the offended party can claim power.
The workplace becomes a system of control based on who stepped in front of who.
The best people usually are easy going people who have played team sports: they are competitive but relaxed and confident, not afraid of the unknown or competitive, not vindictive or aggressive. They've also had their teammates take them down a notch when they get out of hand, but propped up as well. They know the odd 'equal' dynamic of a team. They are impossible to offend: think Rugby players who bite and punch each other in the privates - and then out out for beers with each other after the game.
For a professional domain, I think 'World A' is much more appropriate. Basically 'World A without Jerks' is the objective, or more positively: "World A Nice People".
Jostling and mocking is fine in it's place, so long as people know when not to.
Any place that goes full 'World B' will lose track of their objectives and collapse into a spiral of ridiculous introspection unless the organisation itself is ultimately deeply 'B' oriented, like an NGO.
Two Canadian examples:
1) Not well known: Canadian PM Justin Trudeau is a Rugby Player. That guy gets his 'Easy Going Alpha' charm from that kind of confidence.
2) The 'We Charity' (all about the power of 'We' to change the world for the better!) is the most 'B type' of place imaginable. Even their charter is warm and fuzzy.
They sponsored a tour by a young Black woman to talk around Canada, in order to share her story about racism - literally a empathetic 'Type B' activity. The story as written wasn't quite suitable for the initiative, they tried to work with her to create a workable narrative (ie speech writing) and she accused the charity of some devious stuff, and a ton of knives came out for the founders of the charity.
So the most well-intentioned people on earth, back stabbing each other over the bits and bytes of racism messaging because people's feelings were getting stepped on. It's not an easy issue obviously, but it's still odd to see the supposedly sensitive types ravage each other.
A final example - CNN literally yesterday published a piece indicating the term 'Master Bedroom' among other things could be deemed offensive and of course we are now arguing about 'light and dark terms' as being racist in the context of anything i.e. 'white hat / dark hat'. While there are some decent intellectual concerns, for the most part, this is not about 'offence' it's about 'power'.
Nobody was ever offended by the term 'Master Bedroom'. But if we can show some arbitrary linkage of the term to 'Slavery' - then the 'theoretically offended' can wield power by forcing others into a ridiculous conformity of their own making. These issues will not stop at common words and the thread will be pulled upon until the sweater unravels or the pulling stops. Everything is a transgression if we want it to be.
Edit: I should add in all self awareness the danger of 'Type A' environments is are the more traditional, bold-faced power grabs via communication: acerbic, vindictive, abusive, belittling etc.. I don't mind people yelling, and don't mind if someone gets yelled at occasionally if they really screwed things up, however, it's too easy for that to be abused by the person with more power and you can develop 'fear hierarchies'.
