Third Rail
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Today we will explore a political concept that can very much be applied to our personal lives as well. I’m talking about the metaphor of the third rail in politics.
The metaphor comes from the world of railways where the third rail is often electrified and touching it will result in death. In politics this is interpreted as a stance or a position that when adopted can lead to political suicide of a candidate and although rare can affect the party he represents.
Abortion in US
While abortion is a widely contested topic in US politics there are still a few third rail topics that are not usually meddled with by both major parties.
This situation has changed recently but historically, it has been true.
For example, in the case of access to abortion to rape victims there used to be immunity from major candidates of both parties. For a candidate to take a stance against this position will result in the damage to his/her political career.
This happened back in 2012. As soon as a politician from Missouri who took a stance that is considered the third rail, his political career was dead. And he got widespread criticism from people on both sides of the aisle.
Pushing to the Third Rail
There are a lot of issues that were not on the third rail until recently but they were pushed towards it strategically by political parties, media houses etc. The opposite is also possible.
The way to do that would be to expand the Overton Window of what is acceptable.
For example, Portugal changed the game on its head when it comes to drug policies. A stance that was untouched by politicians just a few decades ago, went through successfully with a lot of support from the population.
Everyday Applications
If you are part of a professional setup, there are a few things that might simply be too holy or unholy to even be discussed.
For example, you can debate about what level of experience a person needs to have (factor) if he/she has to be promoted to the CXO level. However, you can’t discuss if someone’s relationship status can be a factor in he/she getting promoted.
But remember that just a few decades ago, marital status especially for women was a major deterrent in them getting equal opportunities at the workplace.
And it was just a few years ago, when women who got pregnant were looked over when it came to promotion without most people even blinking an eye, sometimes they would even be fired from their job.
In essence, these were things that were accepted practices but through consistent strategic nudges the topics were then pushed onto the third rail.
On the dystopian front, we went from personal space and privacy being one of the most important aspects of life and being a non-negotiable to casually accepting that being tracked is part of the online experience.
Affecting Change
If you believe that there are things that should be part of the discussion but it is in the third rail, then you can start by making small nudges towards that position.
For example, if you want your office food to be completely vegan, then start by making a specific meat consumption a taboo. Not all meats, but one specific meat.
Tip over a small domino first and keep levelling up.
In this case, you can choose to start by advocating that consumption of a certain type of meat is against certain people’s values so avoiding that meat for office outings would be respectful to those people. Once that is achieved, you can push it a little further by asking people to avoid that meat at the office cafeteria.
This way, you can progress to eventually turning the opinion at the office.
However, if you started with “office meals should be vegan”, people will panic and you’ll have no backers. But by taking a gradual approach, people who supported you in your initial stance will likely support you further down the line.
I used the vegan example, but I believe that given enough flexibility you can probably do this with more or less anything.
Another workplace example would be new software adoption. For example, if your entire office is using Microsoft Excel and you want them to shift to Airtable/Google Sheets then you are better off taking small steps promoting the use of Airtable/Google Sheets.
Maybe start by creating a minor automation on Google Sheet that a lot of people use. And as more and more people start using it, you can level up by handling a small project completely on Google Sheets.
But if you started off with “hey, let’s shift to Google Sheets.” you would not have any buy-in from your team.
So that’s it! What are your thoughts on the third rail? Let me know by replying to this email.
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