Admitting cowardice is a subversive act within cultures that demand lip service
Most of us aren’t brave. We wouldn’t protest in the streets of Kabul as armed and triumphant clerical reactionaries fingered their guns. I am hardly breaking news when I say that fear makes us keep our heads down and conform. But how we conform makes a world of difference. Oppressive regimes, organisations and political cultures insist that we pretend to go along with them willingly. On occasion, the most courageous way to fight them is simply to admit we are afraid.
Outside abusive personal relationships, fear produces sycophantic subservience in two areas that dominate life in otherwise safe and democratic countries. In most workplaces, managers allow little or no free discussion or criticism. The cases of dictatorial power that have become famous are when managerial megalomania has led corporations to disaster – Enron, for instance, or NatWest. But anyone who looks honestly at their working lives will accept that in many hierarchies most of the time men and women in superior positions demand subservience and, like absolute monarchs, are shocked when they do not receive it.