Andrew Sullivan, in the second part of his weekly tri-partite column, laments the infiltration of a flawed philosophy into college and corporate HR office that is threatening liberal democracy:
The full text and documents of James Damore’s class-action lawsuit against Google make for fascinating reading. Throughout, the company’s policies are close to indistinguishable from those of many elite colleges, and indeed of more and more of corporate America (including many media companies). It is, of course, a great idea for Google to include as many people as possible from as many diverse experiences and backgrounds as possible — in order to recruit the very best employees.
But the “social justice” movement is about much more than that. It’s about replacing and subverting what it regards as “white male dominant” culture. And how does Google define “white male dominant culture”? According to a Google HR department handout, cited by Damore, some of the nefarious qualities “[v]alued by U.S. white/male dominant culture” include: perfectionism, individual achievement, objectivity, meritocracy, and a “colorblind racial frame.” And it is important to push back against all of them. …
Where on earth will this lead us? When you can identify the enemy by sight because of the color of their skin or their gender, fighting against a system quickly becomes a fight against individuals, whether that is the intent or not. That’s why it is going to be very interesting to see the gory details of Harvard’s admissions process in the current lawsuits — both private and from the Justice Department — in defense of individual Asian-American applicants, allegedly rejected because they are of the wrong race.
Well, in the corporate arena, those corporations controlled by a flawed philosophy, in HR or or corporation wide, will be unwilling participants in a social experiment called Survival of the Fittest. No doubt my reader has heard this one before, but as Janet Factor once noted,
Evolution is a substrate-neutral algorithm. It works its magic just as well on computer programs or political soundbites as it does on DNA.
Or corporate competition. If this new philosophy is indeed more flawed than that currently underlying liberal democracy – and, given its apparent internal contradictions and general incoherency, I tend to agree with Andrew that it is flawed and inferior – then those corporations will lose the talent that makes their collective efforts successful.
I recall, many many years ago, a financially painful lesson. I was invested, if memory serves, in Lucent Technologies, a telecommunications company. One day, I read about some bizarre requirement from their HR department, of which the exact nature now escapes me, but in general it fell into the category of disrepute as engendered by my generally skeptical nature – that is, it sounded like dumb bullshit. All employees were required to cooperate with this requirement.
And, a short while later, the stock price fell sharply on news of under-performance. I eventually lost money on the investment. And I recall, even now, not realizing that the news had been a pivotal signal to me. Lucent went on to shrink from 165,000 employees to 35,000 and then merge with Alcatel, which was generally considered a failure.
Andrew wonders where this will lead us? The corporate world is not monolithic, so we can assume there will be winners and losers. I am not invested in Alphabet, the parent to Google, and given this news, I would not consider an investment in Alphabet until that philosophy is either given a better defense, a revision, or is ousted from Alphabet.
Can you imagine a world without Google? Better get started on oiling up the imagination machine, because that world may be coming faster than you think. All it would take is Google faltering in their technical expertise, and technical expertise is what leaves a company the fastest when unbelievable bullshit starts flying around the corporation. I know engineers. They’ll put up with bizarre religious beliefs, but when something labeled “progressive” but obviously idiotic comes along and is embraced by corporate, they’re gone.
