It is still like this in most neighborhoods in the US, but it does require being outside and actually talking to them... which does seem rarer today.
This sounds nice, but what if your neighbor's political views are an existential threat to you personally? What if they don't want you to live in their neighborhood because of the color of your skin, or if they don't think you're a fit parent because you let your kid wear certain clothes? There are some things about which we can have friendly disagreements, like Laffer curves, school vouchers, the death penalty, environmental regulations, or whatever. But there are other disagreements which mean we cannot be friends.
> what if your neighbor's political views are an existential threat to you personally?<p>Then you are uniquely placed to show them you're not the baddie they thought you were. Say hello, introduce yourself, smile and wave, bring cookies or stuff from your backyard garden once in a while, be personable.
Then you live next to them and let them borrow a cup of sugar or ask to borrow one from them and collect their mail while they’re away and thank them when they let you know you left a light on when you left for work the other day. And realize that your hangups, quirks, and beliefs are just as offensive to them as theirs are to yours but that doesn’t mean either one of you is. Or a good neighbor that can’t crack a beer and just live next door to one another.
The essay makes a token gesture toward this (<i>"privilege and power dynamics play a complex and unavoidable role"</i>), but ultimately Marco, who is a rich straight white male unaffected by any meaningful or existential prejudice, is willing to overlook those views (which do not impact him) as things that do not matter.
This is still the case today, if you let it be. I am friends with many neighbors with differing views from my own and literally <i>do</i> have them over for dinner, invite them to my toddlers' birthday parties, etc.<p>I don't recognize the things the author describes here - awareness of hot takes, opinions about coffee shop owners... they strike me as features of the online world, but not the offline one I inhabit.
This is such a uniquely US thing.<p>Maybe the healthier past wasn’t one where nobody talked about politics. Maybe it was one where disagreeing about politics didn’t automatically make someone your enemy.<p>As someone from the Netherlands, I find this especially strange. You can call the leader of the party your neighbour voted for every name under the sun, preferably involving some kind of disease, because that’s our style, and still have a beer together afterwards.
Too bad Marco quit Twitter, I enjoyed following him.
I'm a pretty left wing person. Most of my friends are a lot more conservative. We can talk anything including politics and disagree without breaking apart our relationship. Last night out it was abortion and Lindsay Clancy, before that colonialism, race/IQ and labor rights. I guess it helps that we all think the people in power right now are corrupt.<p>If your friendships can't handle a debate that's a skill issue.
In my experience it’s not the conservatives who end relationships over disagreements. In fact, I’ve never heard of a conservative kid disowning their parents, family, or friends because of their liberal views.
Thought this would be a cool story about Dylan and Morrison :(
From the timing, this seems to be a vaguepost in support of Omarchy and DHH.
> And I can’t help but feel that maybe we were better off before we knew everyone’s hot takes on everything<p>He says this, while implying his conservative neighbors, who did nothing but be wonderful neighbors to him and his family except have different political opinions, should, in fact be publicly shamed by people he agrees with. But now they’re not shoveling his snow anymore, so maybe it’s time for a mea culpa.<p>Did he feel this way when he shamed Y Combinator? When saying alternative political stances are reprehensible, regressive, and aggressive.<p>The world he helped create is uglier. Now he’s not happy that he crapped in the sandbox and no one wants to play with him.
I think you misread the post. He's saying that his ignorance was great, and maybe we should go back towards that.<p>I don't think Tumblr was particularly influential on the neighbors aspect. It never reached that kind of broad base. Twitter did though. Unless you just mean social media broadly?
I struggle with this. Where I live, it's harder nowadays to compartmentalize how someone votes from their core values. What we used to call "politics" now encompasses some fundamental aspects of how we observe and process our daily lives.
> What we used to call "politics" now encompasses some fundamental aspects<p>That's less true IRL if you just talk to people and be personable. There's something about seeing someone face to face and chatting that helps you intuitively understand you have a lot in common with them (or not) - and regardless of their political opinions either way.<p>I find that the sorts of life choices people make and the character they have as a result is a far better discriminator of what they actually have in common (or don't) with others.
It might help to realize that this is a uniquely American affliction. People almost anywhere else simply don't consider politics (or race or gender for that matter) to be nearly as important.<p>This would then let you see your neighbors as people. What you claim are core values are nothing of the sort. They are misconceptions invented by your in-group to dehumanize the out-group. In reality people's core values are: their kids, their health, love, belonging, a sense of purpose. The rest is just a puppet master hijacking these core values for organizing a crowd.
It always did, we just had the norm that in a liberal democracy, we put that to the side for our dealings with people. Same thing as religion -- a huge deal that shapes people's values and attitudes about the most core aspects of life -- and there was a norm of "no politics or religion" in polite conversation.