Of masochism and learning to walk away (or not even go there).

The Wife has told me a million times. The Wife is – as so frustratingly-often is the case – absolutely right.

But still I attended a webinar of a group that claims it is doing things differently (I won’t go further than that). And the webinar was about a very very important question, around the toxic culture in ostensibly progressive organisations.

And it was soul-sappingly bad and unimaginative in both format and delivery. Some of the right questions, sure, but the typical format of One Person speaking for a bit, then “questions” that turn out to be people talking about themselves, followed by the OP responding at length, then another person talking about themselves, then the OP responding, followed by…

No effort to use break-out rooms, no effort to use other collaborative opportunities (a shared document).

At last, feeling this to be in some way a substitute for the words she was unable to find, she began to sing Beasts of England. The other animals sitting round her took it up, and they sang it three times over–very tunefully, but slowly and mournfully, in a way they had never sung it before.

They had just finished singing it for the third time when Squealer, attended by two dogs, approached them with the air of having something important to say. He announced that, by a special decree of Comrade Napoleon, Beasts of England had been abolished. From now onwards it was forbidden to sing it.

https://www.marxists.org/subject/art/literature/children/texts/orwell/animal-farm/ch07.htm

And the level of “analysis” as to the root causes? Not even sub-Michels, sub-Freeman, sub-Orwell. Even Talcott Parsons would have been embarrassed, I think.

Old Marc might have said something. Old Marc might have tried to suggest some tweaks, or written to the OP afterwards with suggestions. Old Marc was an idiot, wasting his time.

New Marc knows not to waste his breath, not to have any hopes that anything can change. New Marc just hit the “leave” button after 15 terrible minutes. This is the best we’ve got? I would say “Gaia help us all”, but Gaia is going to have Her work cut out helping us not go full-Venus.

And who knows, with both luck and strategic re-readings of this blog post and this one, New New Marc may know enough to never bother in future.