Transcription
[Music] [Applause]
If you mean pathology at work, it's quite simple. Just like with pathology in your life, if you are forced to do something that weakens and shames you, then don’t do it.
From the works of Frankl, I learned that chaos in a system is the result of people ignoring minor violations within it.
Here’s a thought: maybe you just need to endure and keep quiet. That might be good advice; you don’t need extra enemies or extra problems.
But here’s a daily question for you: are you selling your soul? The middle tier of the bureaucratic world is a collection of foolishness and tyranny. The reason they persist is that reasonable people remain silent when they should speak up.
Strangely, there are many more reasonable people than unreasonable ones, but they just don’t shout as loudly.
Let’s say something is driving you crazy at work. The first thing you need to do is be ready to find another job. I don’t think you need to find it immediately, but it’s worth preparing if possible.
Get ready to find a better job. Negotiations are impossible if you can’t send the other side away. You can only speak from a position of strength.
Give yourself room to maneuver; this is generally useful in life. Always leave room for maneuvering.
Second, think about whether something is troubling your soul. First, ask yourself: “Okay, there’s stress at work. Am I weak, lazy, useless, a liar?” You can start with that.
Then talk to your surroundings—your wife, friends, colleagues—and find out if you are really foolish or a liar, or if something bad is happening at work.
After all, if you exclude personal pathology as the cause of your dissatisfaction, then something might be wrong with the organization itself.
It’s possible that you need to say something before everything goes to hell. This can happen in companies faster than people expect.
By the way, when you decide to say something, it’s an adventure—a good adventure. You need to be careful and be prepared for it. It could become the best thing that ever happened in your life.
And if you’ve prepared and found the right words—this is a strategic battle. You can’t strike blindly.
Then you can find people who think like you, which means you haven’t just made something up; you’ve seen something real. You’re not crazy.
When you start doing something, ask yourself: does it empower you or weaken you? If it weakens you, then ask yourself: do I want to be weak?
The weaker you are, the more pressure you feel. Moreover, the weaker you are, the more irritated you become. The more terrible things you do, the more often you’ll yell at your wife, harm your children, and so on.
Being a doormat at work is no joke. I would say that as a citizen, you have a moral responsibility to fight against tyranny, no matter where it appears.
Part of what these stories teach us—if they teach us anything—is that if you strive for virtue, then check yourself every day. If you sincerely strive for virtue, lift your spirits; you are stronger than you think.
And they are not the worst.
Probably, I don’t have a good question. I think you first need to convince yourself that it’s not pointless. It may be difficult, but it’s not pointless.
If you have something to say, you will find the words, and they will have an effect. Maybe not in the way you want, but it’s worth noting that when choosing between two evils, the opportunity to enter paradise may not exist.
There is either tyranny or hunger; there are no other options. But the choice between these two is yours.
I would ask if you feel mental pressure because you are being forced to do something at work that you think will lead to nothing. You don’t respect yourself, and that’s not unfounded.
But what’s worse is that you are destroying yourself. You are breaking your own ideals. You are giving victory to weak and rotten people.
You need to resist. The right selection for this requires at least some preparation. You can’t go in blindly.
Act from a position of preparedness and strength. Why do you think you can’t drive them into corners? That’s a good deed.
The alternatives are bad. On a personal level, psychological degeneration—I’ve seen this in many patients who were driven to the point where their psychological and physical health completely collapsed.
A person was destroyed by this chaos, even though they were reasonable, and that’s terrible. The consequences are terrible.
If you don’t fight against foolishness on a local level, even if it seems trivial, it will grow until it becomes a social-level battle.
We already see confirmation of this, like Antifa, for example. Unresolved problems intensify, and then people conflict.
It’s better to argue than to conflict, unless you are seeking conflict. I understand why someone might seek it, but I don’t recommend it. It leads to nothing good.
So, I say it’s your duty. Maybe that’s why you decided to fight. You fight because it’s your duty.
Say what you want to say. You don’t even have to convey a specific idea to lead to action.
It seems to me that everything is like that. A guy from Google wrote a letter. I spoke with him today. He said he attended a seminar on cultural diversity.
He thought, “I disagree.” They asked for feedback, and he wrote this letter a month ago. There was no response from the company.
The letter circulated while interest grew. Then he saw the whole world. He just heard a lot of things he disagreed with, then wrote a lot of things he saw as truth.
Then he submitted the letter and said, “I think this is the truth.” Maybe it is the truth.
And he paid for it. How exactly, we’ll find out a bit later. In two years, he will be much stronger than he was two years ago.
No, they didn’t respond. You can watch the video; there’s the whole story.
Here’s just a summary. Yes, I noticed that it’s true. Maybe we shouldn’t wait for that future.
It would be good. I looked at this guy’s letter yesterday. Everything he said is reflected in the scientific literature.
It just so happened that someone was publicly fired from a giant corporation for expressing well-founded scientific facts.
For example, I often cite these in my lectures because I’ve read the books. It’s not that I’m happy about these facts.
For instance, the results of studies are so terrible that you can’t read them without a heavy heart. If I could reshape the world so that these facts stopped being facts, it would be tempting.
But science doesn’t work that way. Science doesn’t tell you what you want to hear; it only tells you what is.
He was fired for spreading current scientific knowledge about gender differences. That’s wrong.
As you said, it’s a big company; it controls information. How about doing everything we can so that these companies can’t impose ideologies unsupported by facts on the world?
You can support that fired guy. You can do it online; he will need money. He wants to sue Google.
[Applause]
Maybe we can convey to them that hiring a director of human resources who advocates for equality is not the best idea for a capitalist company.
Why hire your own enemy? I don’t understand.
Well, let’s see how it goes.
Let’s return to the individual. You need to voice your thoughts; that’s your beginning.
When you don’t voice them, you kill your unborn self. That’s what you do.
That’s what Cain did when he killed Abel. Therefore, the punishment was unbearable.
You have something that cannot reach the light—your truth. And this truth needs to be voiced because without it, you cannot live in the world.
The world is real, and to live in it, you need the truth. If you silence the truth, how can it fight against the hellish occurrences?
How else? For those who think, “Why speak out?”—it’s because if you don’t, the consequences, though not immediate, will be much worse.
That’s why.
Be brave, or at least be reasonable.
[Applause] [Music]