🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <37EBAB41.958B6FE3@cup.hp.com>,
 on Fri, 24 Sep 1999 09:48:01 -0700,
 Alan McGowen <amcgowen@cup.hp.com> writes:
>jbs@yktvmv.watson.ibm.com wrote:
>
>> In article <37E97654.DE6DC1FD@cup.hp.com>,
>>  on Wed, 22 Sep 1999 17:37:41 -0700,
>>  Alan McGowen <amcgowen@cup.hp.com> writes:
>>          <deletions>
>> >This is increasingly unlikely to be the standard mode of life, given the
>> >demographic
>> >changes afoot on Earth.  I live and work in Silicon Valley. I am the only
>> >native speaker
>> >of English in the building I live in. At many times in my carreer I have been
>> >the only
>> >"American" in my work group.  The world I live in is completely "multicultural"
>> >
>> >(except that we are mostly engineers.) Xenophobia would be catastrophic under
>> >such conditions, and could not be tolerated in any form by any employer. In
>> >short,
>> >it's a feeling from a dead world.
>>
>>          This is exaggerated.  There are no perfect employees.
>> Employers will tolerate all sorts of undesirable behavior from
>> employees as long as it is counterbalanced by sufficient desirable
>> behavior.  Mild forms of xenophobia can and will be tolerated by
>> employers without catastrophe.  Most workplaces contain pairs of
>> people who don't particularly like each other (for whatever reason)
>> and work gets done anyway.
>
>Simple dislike of one person by another isn't necessarily xenophobia.
>Xenophobia is fear/hatred of people who are different (often "racially")
>from oneself, and refusal to cooperate with them. An employee who
>refused to work with another person because of their race, creed etc.
>could not be tolerated.

         Obviously you don't say that is the reason, you may not even
be consciously aware that is the reason.  You are correct that simple
dislike isn't necessarily xenophobic.  This is why it is difficult
to do anything about xenophobia masked as simple dislike.  This may
be detectable statistically but that does not help much in dealing
with individual cases.
         Also the zero tolerance policy for overt prejudice has more
to do with American law and mores than strict economic necessity.
         Alan McGowen continued:
>A xenophobia which is "mild" enough, or controlled enough,
>not to result in unacceptable behavior would be tolerated, this
>is true. It would bother only the person who felt it.

         There is plenty of behavior (rebuffs of invitations to
off work social activities for example) which employers will
tolerate and which will still bother others.
         Also it is only mild controllable xenophobia which is
plausibly innate.  A virulent unconditional xenophobia would not
have been adaptive even in stone age society.
         Alan McGowen continued:
>>          Also some forms of xenophobia are not undesirable from an
>> employer's point of view.  For example if xenophobia makes it harder
>> for employees to form unions or to look for other employment employers
>> (even Silicon Valley employers) will not consider this a catastrophe.
>
>Most people change jobs out here every 2 or 3 years. Shearer apparently
>works at IBM and I work at HP. Employees at these companies tend to
>stay in the same company for their whole careers. There are many reasons
>for this, but think I xenophobia against competitors is not really high on the
>list.

         Well in my case I am somewhat uncomfortable in unfamiliar
environments.  This makes me a bit reluctant to change jobs or travel
abroad.  You may want to call this something other than xenophobia but
it certainly seems related to me.
         Alan McGowen continued:
>People often do go to competitors. There is of course sometimes a sense of
>rivalry, and this is encouraged for obvious reasons. But I've also worked with
>IBM people in cases where HP and IBM had some common goal. I've found
>that (surprise, surprise) IBMers are just like HP engineers. It wouldn' t be
>unthinkable for me to work there, by any means. [That one is *definitely*
>"not my employer's opinion"  ;-)]

         This is not surprising.  Some aversion to new environments was
probably adaptive in stone age society (as new environments might
contain unfamiliar hazards).  However even in stone age society new
environments could not be avoided entirely so people had to be able
to handle them when necessary.
         Alan McGowen
>>          More generally while humans are undoubtedly not designed
>> for modern society, you can design (or attempt to design) modern
>> society to function satisfactorily with humans as they are (with
>> their stone age heritage).  I think this makes more sense then
>> declaring some human traits obsolete and pretending this will
>> cause them to vanish.
>>
>
>I agree. I 'm not suggesting that xenophobia is vanishing; I'm suggesting
>that it is no longer optimal for our situation.

         I am not convinced that the amount of xenophobia which is
plausibly innate is grossly suboptimal today.
         Alan McGowen continued:
>>          Humans as they are, are not necessarily so ill-suited to
>> the modern world as you might think.  Humans have the capacity to
>> cooperate as this was adaptive in stone age society as it is today.
>> Also stone age society was not so simple with different behaviors
>> being appropriate for different circumstances.  So humans have
>> evolved a capacity to select from a variety of behaviors.  Society
>> can be set up to encourage the selection of desirable behaviors
>> and discourage the selection of undesirable behaviors.
>>                         James B. Shearer
>
>Obviously we are not so ill-suited to the modern world as to prevent it
>from being here.  That wasn't my point.  My point was that human nature
>was not *optimized* for modern conditions. This is understandable in terms
>of natural selection. It is a mystery in terms of benevolent  Design.

         I don't think this is quite right.  I don't think the real
problem with human nature today is that it was not optimized for
modern conditions.  I think the real problem is that human nature was
optimized from the point of view of individuals not the point of view
of society as a whole.  I am not convinced that traits such as
selfishness and greed are any less optimal for individuals now than
they were in stone age times.  I suppose you can make a case that
such traits are now more dangerous for society as a whole.
                        James B. Shearer