Not doing

IN THE CARTOON, two frogs lounge in a cauldron, fire building below, elbows perched over the edge like they’re at the pool. If the cartoon is from the previous century, one of them is smoking a cigarette. If it’s more recent, the cigarette is swapped out for a cocktail glass with a paper umbrella, a cherry resting heavily at the bottom. The other frog is wearing shades. A speech bubble rises from their heads with words about enjoying the water, or what a nice hot day it is.

I’ve come to think there’s something fundamentally wrong about this image, about the notion that when faced with an existential threat we lounge and numb ourselves, pretending that the water getting warmer is nice, actually. But we’re much more likely to cooperate with our end than to sit idly and watch it pass. A more realistic image would show the shades-wearing frog turned around, reaching over the edge of the cauldron, piling more wood on the fire below, building it up, the other frog sipping while egging them on.

In Let This Radicalize You, Kelly Hayes and Mariame Kaba write,

Governed by fear, people are largely cooperative with systems that produce torture, mass death, and annihilation. That is the greatest danger that fear poses: not panic amid disorder, but cooperation with an order that we ought to find unspeakable—one that is actually poised to bring about our own extinction.

We are awash in cooperation with these days: hospitals abandon trans people, universities capitulate to extortion, corporations ditch their DEI commitments so fast you’d think they couldn’t wait to do it. Senior leaders at seemingly every tech company commit to AI benchmarks they know they cannot hit, while their engineers and designers execute one anti-pattern after another in order to juke the stats. The worst social media network fills up with “How I used AI to supercharge my productivity” posts, as people go about avoiding their own mortality by forgetting how to live. Meanwhile, the story goes that this is all inevitable, because that’s how the story always goes when there’s no other justification for harm done: “it cannot be prevented” is both the watchword of the AI is coming for your job crowd and the people peddling thoughts and prayers after every mass shooting. Often, these are the same people.

We may not have any clear paths out of the cauldron. It’s wide, and deep, and the exits are trapped. But neither do we need to feed the flames. In your work, you will be given a lot of orders. They may, more frequently now, be given in the tone of an ultimatum, of something that brooks no dissent. But you are not a machine to be programmed; you are not an automaton, no matter how convenient it would be for others if you were. You get to choose to do, or not do, everything you bring your hands to. You get to choose how to do it, and who to do it with.

And you can say no. You can refuse to follow an order. You can say why an order is wrong, or call attention to the harm it will bring. You can propose alternatives. You can gather with others and make your own demands, or strategize together about how to break out of this particular eddy. You can do this with people in your organization as well as with those elsewhere, many of whom are dealing with the same challenges in their orgs. You can share your wisdom and observations, letting them out into the world where they can do work, instead of letting them burn you up inside.

I’ve had countless conversations this year with people at their wits’ end with nonsense edicts: to use AI in work where it isn’t even remotely suited; to ship AI to people who do not want it; to performance manage good workers out the door simply because they won’t commute to an office to sit on video calls; to pretend that “race neutral” policies aren’t obviously the opposite; to enforce impossible metrics on arbitrary timelines, and so much more. This is gaslighting at an industrial scale. At some point, the only response that will save your sanity is a hell no.

There will be consequences, of course. But there will be consequences no matter what you do. That’s what it means to be alive and living—everything you do makes change in the world. The choices we make are never between safety and risk, because there is no truly safe path; as long as you are alive you are at risk of harm. The choice is, rather, between kinds of risk, between what it is you’re reaching for when you take the risks you do.

Most employment in the US is what is known as “at will.” Legally, that means both you and your employer can end the job at any moment, for any reason or for no reason at all. But to “will” something is to choose it, to exercise the mind and body towards an act. Every choice you make in your work is an act of will, an act of your will, and the collective will of the people you make those choices with. And will is a powerful thing! The story of inevitability is a story that wants you to forget that you have the will to change things; but the future remains, as ever, unwritten.

One word of caution: cynicism may seem like a useful weapon in times like these, but it cuts both ways. To follow orders cynically lets you off the hook: you can say, I know this is foolish, but I have to do it, so I will do it at arms length, my spirit stretching away from my hands. In that way, you can convince yourself you’re not really doing a thing even as you’re doing it. Often, the most cynical person on the team is also the most compliant. And over time, it’s corrosive; you’re trading your creativity and intellect for a resentful submission. When you spot the cynic surfacing within you, take a break, move your body, haul your spirit back into your bones. Ask yourself: how can I help the people I care about? Then go.