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Back in the early 2000’s, I landed upon a dream job straight out of college. I was lucky enough to have started my career during the last gasp of the old order, where I took advantage of the company’s presentation at my campus to gave my resume to one of the speakers, who passed it along and got me an interview. It was the boomer “smile and solid handshake” strategy, and worked magnificently. I went through about eight years there, with the expected bumps and bruises acquired in early professional life. After a few years, the program I spent most of my time in completed, and there was a new project opening up that was a joint venture with another corporation.
With that project came new management, and the relatively dynamic and versatile problem solving environment turned into a mass of red tape and bureaucracy. The new managers were striver jackasses who played hardball at the slightest pushback, and all my efforts to create the infrastructure to do my job was shut down by risk-averse committees. Optimism turned to frustration, frustration turned to anger, and anger turned into despondency as the months passed by.
One morning, after working with the team at change management to create a source control space to actually check in my work properly. It was denied by upper management because they were working to get another system in place. The estimated time of completion for this system was one year. I remember not even being angry, not despondent, not much of anything. It was just a blank nothing, like a light switch went off. From that moment I totally emotionally detached from the organization. I sent out resumes and left two months later.
Every system needs buy-in to function properly. Every system needs to have the means to redress grievances and ensure said system has the capability of fulfilling needs. While there is always tension between your wants and what is feasible, there has to be a mechanism to dissuade tensions. Whether you are talking about a government, a business, a local chapter of a charity organization, or a marriage, there needs to be a discourse to manage tradeoffs between parties. While the ideal is every member engages in a positive manner with an inner confidence they are being heard and concerns are being addressed, the truth is negative engagement works too. Even if a person is cynical to leadership and the future of an organization, the fact he is complaining and making sharp retorts shows he is still engaged. Even thoughts of getting revenge on a certain hated figure or dreams of taking the entire institution over shows an unsevered connection that is binding him down, whether such aspirations are healthy or not.
For many men, a negative relationship to the world is their chosen lot in life. They go to a job they hate but somehow can’t leave, live in a town they despise but can’t get themselves to move away from, or trapped with a wife whose conversations have deteriorated to subtle barbs at each other. They may hate everything about their situation, but their own frustration becomes the albatross that kills any prospect of changing their circumstances. Things are bad, but never get bad enough.
Then there are the men who live through such circumstances, recognize it as hell on earth, and, in a moment of clarity, find all of their emotional energy drained away in an instant. Suddenly the anger directed at the boss or co-worker dissipates, and nothing remains. The fury at the busybody with his constant red tape melts away. They become, cease being thorns on his side. The tormentors become irrelevant, like their existence doesn’t matter at all.
There was a viral video some time ago of a woman recounting her divorce. The couple suffered hard times from the beginning and were enmeshed in marital counseling. The husband was all in, doing everything in his power to save the marriage. The woman admitted to the therapist she wanted a divorce anyway and explained how she saw all emotion drain from her husband’s face. He hardened, finally shrugging and said “fine”. She explained her shock as he completely withdrew, got an apartment, and removed her from his life like she stopped existing. In other words, his light switch went off.
Every man has a threshold when he realizes that discussion is pointless, he is surrounded by bad actors who demand everything while giving nothing in return, and he realizes no one is going to save him. Often, no matter how bad things get, he will hold on to his tenuous grasp of reality because the alternative is too terrifying. Others will live in quiet desperation as the alternative is considered worse. Sometimes this morphs into meaningful action that go outside the bounds of public morality.
Then there are the ones who withdraw, maybe going through the motions but with no emotional connection, enmeshed in total apathy in their work or domestic life. They may still be around, but the passion is gone. If you want to see the precursor at the light switch going off, last week has gave two prime examples. A murder trial and the cancellation of a prominent online academic.