The Chains We Choose

Why Good People Perpetuate Bad Systems

 

"Citizens consent to bear chains, so they may impose chains on others in turn."
— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The Most Uncomfortable Truth About Organizational Life

This is a story that echoes through the sterile conference rooms of modern corporations and reverberates in the hallowed halls of academia. It whispers through the service corridors of hospitals and hums beneath the surface of mission-driven nonprofits. It is a story that replicates itself with troubling consistency across law firms and government agencies, religious institutions and military organizations, technology startups, century-old foundations and even families.

It is the story of us - you and me and everyone else we know in organizational life. Good people with genuine intentions to contribute positively who find ourselves perpetuating the very dynamics that once wounded us. A pattern that touches each of our professional lives, regardless of where we work or what noble purpose brought us there, regardless of how different we believe our workplace to be.

This isn't the story about obviously toxic leaders or consciously malicious actors. It's a more unsettling story about the rest of us - about how ordinary people with normal human psychology become complicit in systems that harm others, often while sincerely believing we are doing the right thing. We prefer simpler narratives about organizational dysfunction. We point to "those at the top" - the narcissistic executives, the power-hungry managers, the disconnected leadership. We imagine that if only we could replace the villains with heroes, our workplaces would transform into the collaborative, nurturing environments we crave.

But Jean-Jacques Rousseau understood something more uncomfortable about human nature that we desperately need to confront: oppression isn't sustained merely by the greed of a small elite. It endures because of the psychological needs of everyone - especially those who suffer under it most.

The Seductive Promise of Future Relief

When a junior employee endures public humiliation from their manager, they will feel genuine pain and resentment. We know that because we have all experienced that ourselves in professional life. But there's often a flicker of something else too - a recognition, not just of cruelty, but of power and its possibilities. The pain we feel is real, but so is the unconscious calculation: This is terrible, but someday, it might be my turn.

This is the insidious bargain at the heart of most hierarchical dysfunction. We consent to bear chains because we believe - rightly or wrongly - that those chains come with the future privilege of binding others. The interns absorb impossible deadlines and dismissive treatment while unconsciously noting how authority works and fantasizing about the day they'll have their own interns to "toughen up." The junior doctors endure the brutal hours and casual cruelty of medical training while learning not just medicine, but the unspoken lesson that this is simply how knowledge and toughness are transmitted - with concrete idea about how they'll "properly prepare" the next generation.

Each level of the hierarchy becomes complicit, not necessarily through conscious malice and not just in their own oppression, but through the very human tendency to normalize what we experience and to seek relief from powerlessness through the eventual acquisition of power over others and the hope of redemption from pain through the opportunity to inflict similar pain downward.

What Do We Really Celebrate About Being Promoted?

Perhaps the question about what we actually celebrate when we get promoted opens up perhaps the most uncomfortable truths that implicates all of us.

Let's be honest about the psychology at play. When we see that LinkedIn update announcing someone's advancement to Senior Vice President (complete with the obligatory humble-brag about being "honoured to serve in this new capacity"), what are we really witnessing? And more pointedly, what are we really envying?

At its core, a promotion typically grants you authority over more people while reducing the number of people who have authority over you. It's a mathematical shift in what we might call the "vulnerability ratio" - you become less subject to others' arbitrary decisions while gaining the power to make arbitrary decisions about others.

This isn't inherently evil. Hierarchies can serve legitimate purposes: coordinating complex work, providing clear decision-making structures, enabling accountability. The uncomfortable truth, however, is that most of us are drawn to higher positions not primarily for these noble organizational reasons, but for deeply human psychological ones.

We envy the corner office not just for its view, but for its physical elevation above others. We covet the ability to "delegate" partly because it means transferring unwanted work downward. We desire the power to "set strategic direction" partly because it means our preferences become other people's mandates. We're attracted to roles where we can "make tough decisions" partly because it means we can impose costs on others for abstract organizational benefits while remaining insulated from those costs ourselves.

This attraction is profoundly human. Even our language reveals it: we speak of "climbing the ladder," "moving up," and "advancing" - vertical metaphors that explicitly acknowledge hierarchy as a system of elevation above other human beings. The higher you climb, the more people are beneath you. The more you advance, the more people you leave behind.

The Choreography of Corporate Status Displays

If you've ever watched a nature documentary about mountain gorillas, you'll recognize a fascinating ritual: after a dramatic chest-thumping display establishes a new alpha male, the rest of the troop engages in elaborate grooming behaviours that reinforce the new hierarchy. Everyone knows their place, everyone participates in the social confirmation of the new order, and life settles into temporary stability until the next challenger emerges.

Our corporate promotion announcements aren't so different, though we've certainly evolved more sophisticated plumage.

"I'm humbled and excited to announce my new role as Senior Vice President of Strategic Digital Transformation Initiatives. I'm grateful to everyone who made this possible and look forward to serving our team in new ways. #grateful #leadership #nextchapter"

And then we all know what comes next: the ritualistic responses with dozens of "Congratulations!" comments, the fire and clapping-hands emojis, the carefully crafted responses from colleagues who understand that visible enthusiasm for others' advancement is how you signal your own worthiness for future consideration.

There's something both beautiful and absurd about these performances, isn't there? The newly promoted person must display ritual humility ("I'm honoured...") precisely at the moment they've gained more power. They must emphasize service ("look forward to serving...") just as they've reduced their obligation to serve and increase their deservedness to be served by others. It's rather like watching a peacock, having successfully displayed its magnificent tail feathers, immediately declare its commitment to helping other birds find worms.

These aren't malicious rituals - they serve important social functions, just like their animal kingdom counterparts. They establish clear hierarchies, reduce conflict through acknowledged status, and create predictable social structures. The gentle absurdity lies in our elaborate pretence that something entirely different is happening.

What we're really witnessing - and participating in - is the establishment of a new position in the pecking order. Someone has successfully navigated to a tier where they can peck downward more than they get pecked from above. The promotion party becomes our version of the gorilla's chest-thumping: a community acknowledgment that the social hierarchy has shifted, and we all need to recalibrate our behaviours accordingly.

How Pain Travels Through Organizations

There's something tragically predictable about how we humans process workplace trauma - and I suspect you've seen this pattern yourself. It reveals itself not through conscious malice, but through unconscious repetition. The manager who was once micromanaged often becomes a micromanager, not out of deliberate cruelty, but because micromanagement represents their internalized model of "how management works." The executive who was once excluded from important decisions may create cultures of information hoarding, unconsciously replicating the very dynamics that once frustrated them.

This isn't conscious malice - it's what I think of as psychological archaeology. We excavate our own difficult experiences and, lacking better models to metabolise them, reconstruct them as "normal" professional practice. The behaviours that once made us feel powerless become the tools we unconsciously reach for when we gain authority.

What makes this pattern particularly insidious is how it disguises itself as wisdom. "I'm preparing them for the real world," we tell ourselves. "They need to learn to handle pressure." "This builds character." These rationalizations aren't entirely false - organizations can be challenging places, and some resilience is valuable. But our justifications often mask the reality that we're simply passing on pain because we haven't learned how to transform it into something healthier.

The difference between heroes and villains in organizational life often comes down to this crucial juncture: when we gain power, do we use it to replicate the conditions that shaped us, or do we take responsibility for creating better conditions for others? It's a choice we all face, whether we realize it or not.

Heroes, Villains, and the Defining Choice

Here's something I've noticed about the stories we tell ourselves: in mythology and literature, heroes and villains are distinguished not by their origins, but by their response to suffering. The villain's origin story is almost always one of trauma, injustice, or pain - but their defining characteristic is their decision to perpetuate that pain, often rationalizing it as justice or necessity. The hero, by contrast, is equally likely to have suffered, but is defined by their determination that others should not endure what they endured.

Think about Darth Vader's journey from victim to perpetrator, or how Magneto's experience in concentration camps becomes his justification for persecuting others. Their villainy lies not in their initial suffering, but in their choice to make that suffering someone else's problem.

Heroes make the opposite choice. They absorb pain rather than pass it on. They use their strength to protect rather than to dominate. They break cycles rather than perpetuate them.

In our organizational lives, we face this same choice daily, regardless of our level in the hierarchy. The manager who was once micromanaged can choose to break that pattern or reproduce it. The executive who was once excluded from important decisions can choose to increase transparency or to hoard information as others once did to them. The senior leader who was once humiliated in meetings can choose to create psychological safety or to continue the cycle of fear-based management.

The heroic choice is almost always harder. It requires us to absorb the pain that was inflicted on us rather than passing it downward. It demands that we use whatever power we've gained to create better conditions for others rather than simply to improve our own circumstances.

The Universal Temptation: None of Us Are Immune

Here's what makes this conversation so necessary and so uncomfortable: we're all susceptible to these patterns. I know I am, and I suspect you are too. The drive to escape powerlessness by gaining power over others isn't the province of obviously toxic people - it's a deeply human response to hierarchical environments.

Most of us have felt that quiet satisfaction of finally being senior enough to delegate work we don't want to do. Most of us have experienced the relief of reaching a level where we're consulted rather than commanded. Most of us have enjoyed the moment when we could make decisions that others had to implement rather than being the ones implementing others' decisions.

These feelings aren't inherently evil. I've felt them myself, and I imagine you have too. The problem arises when we mistake the relief of not being at the bottom for the justification to push others down. When we confuse our own advancement with the necessity of others' subordination. When we forget that our relief from powerlessness doesn't require us to make others feel powerless.

The invitation here isn't to feel ashamed of these very human responses, but to recognize them consciously so we can choose more deliberately how to act on them. Awareness creates choice. Acknowledgment creates the possibility of transformation. And let's be honest - we all need this kind of awareness, because none of us are immune to these patterns.

The Radical Courage of Turning the Other Cheek

Perhaps no teaching has been more misunderstood than Jesus's instruction to "turn the other cheek." This isn't passive submission to abuse - it's one of the most radical acts of defiance imaginable, one that can only be truly comprehended through the crucible of personal experience.

It is only when we've felt the sting of humiliation that comes with a sharp slap on the face, that we can begin to understand viscerally what Jesus was talking about. Anyone who has faced aggression - whether physical, emotional, or professional - knows the immediate impulse: strike back, run away, or submit to domination. These are the responses our attackers expect and count on. But turning the other cheek shatters this predictable cycle entirely.

To turn the other cheek requires a strength that surpasses both fight and flight. It demands we look our aggressor in the eye and demonstrate that we are neither intimidated nor willing to perpetuate their pattern of harm. This act immediately wrests control from the attacker and establishes who truly possesses courage in the moment.

Consider what happens organizationally when someone breaks this expected cycle. The manager who responds to harsh criticism with genuine curiosity rather than defensiveness. The employee who meets workplace bullying not with retaliation or resignation, but with steady professionalism. The leader who absorbs organizational stress rather than passing it downward to more vulnerable team members.

These responses shock and disorient those accustomed to predictable power dynamics. They interrupt the machine of harm that organizational hierarchies often become.

The deepest aspect of this teaching lies in its requirement for love—even love for our enemies. This isn't sentimental feeling but a radical choice to see the humanity in those who hurt us, recognizing that their aggression likely stems from pain passed down to them. Through this love and forgiveness, we don't just protect ourselves from becoming like our attackers; we create the possibility of transforming them.

The Choice We Have

Every day in organizational life, we face a fundamental choice: will we use whatever authority we have - however modest - to elevate those with less power, or will we consolidate our own position? When we have information, do we share it or hoard it? When we face aggression, do we absorb it or pass it downward to someone more vulnerable? When we see someone being treated unfairly, do we befriend them and offer them encouragement, or walk away in fear that we might be suspected of conspiracy.

The heroic choice is almost always harder because it requires genuine sacrifice. But when we choose to turn the other cheek rather than perpetuate cycles of harm, when we absorb pain rather than pass it on, when we serve rather than demand service, we don't just break destructive patterns - we get to create something that can be unexpectedly beautiful.

This isn't naive idealism. It's strategic strength that recognizes a fundamental truth: true authority flows upward, not downward. The leader serves the team, the team serves the mission, and the mission serves the world. When we invert this flow - making everything serve the leader - we corrupt the entire system.

The depth of Christ's message can only be understood through its practice. And perhaps that's precisely the point - that transformation happens not through intellectual understanding alone, but through the courage to embody love in the face of harm, strength in the face of aggression, and service in the face of the opportunity to dominate.

Breaking the Chain, Choosing Heroism

The profound insight of Rousseau's observation is that most chains are not imposed from above - they are chosen from below by individuals who believe that accepting temporary suffering is the price of eventual power. But what if we chose differently? What if we refused this bargain entirely?

What if we understood that the privilege of any leadership position - whether managing one person or one thousand - is not the right to inflict the pain we once endured, but the responsibility to ensure others don't have to endure it?

This doesn't mean creating environments without challenge, accountability, or high standards. Heroes aren't permissive or weak - they're strategic about how they channel pressure and challenge in ways that build people up rather than tear them down. They understand the difference between tough love and casual cruelty, between high expectations and impossible demands, between building resilience and inflicting trauma.

We can try to be mindful about this every time we are in positions of influence over someone else's experience. Are we using this moment to pass on something that was passed to us, or are we consciously choosing to create something better? It's a daily choice, really, and some days I'm more heroic than others. But that's the point - it is a choice.

The Sacred Privilege Reframed

Clayton Christensen wrote beautifully about the sacred privilege of being a manager - the extraordinary opportunity to shape lives, nurture growth, and create conditions where human potential can flourish. Every person in a position of authority, no matter how modest, holds this sacred trust.

Yet how often do we witness this privilege being squandered or, worse, perverted into its opposite? Instead of using our positions to heal the wounds that hierarchies can create, we use them to perpetuate toxic behaviours. Instead of modelling the leadership we wished we had received, we reproduce the leadership that damaged us, convinced that "this is just how things work."

The children watching our choices - our own children, the junior employees starting their careers, the next generation of professionals - will inherit the organizational cultures we create through our daily decisions. Will they inherit workplaces where power is used to heal and build, or where each generation must survive the wounds inflicted by the last?

This isn't abstract philosophy - it's as practical as it gets. My children will enter the workforce someday. Your children will too. The environments we're creating today, the patterns we're perpetuating or breaking, the cycles we're feeding or starving - these will be the workplaces they inherit. That makes this deeply personal for all of us.

The Legacy We Leave

At the end of our careers, we will be measured not by how well we survived the dysfunction we encountered, but by how courageously we chose not to perpetuate it. Not by how effectively we climbed hierarchies that harmed others, but by how thoughtfully we used whatever position we achieved to make those hierarchies more humane.

The chains Rousseau wrote about are real, and the temptation to wear them in hopes of someday wielding them over others is profoundly human. I feel it, you probably feel it too, and there's no shame in acknowledging that. But in every moment when we possess even modest authority over another person's experience, we can choose to be the leader we needed when we were powerless.

The question is not whether we will influence others - we all do, in ways large and small. The question is whether we will choose to be heroes or villains in the organizational stories we're helping to write. Will we use our influence to interrupt cycles of harm, or will we allow those cycles to continue through us?

I don't know about you, but I want to be able to look back and know that I broke more chains than I forged. I want the workplaces I helped shape to be places where my children could thrive, not just survive. I want to leave something better behind me than what I found.

The chains we choose to break today become the freedom we create for tomorrow. The heroism we practice in small moments becomes the culture we leave as our legacy. Choose consciously, choose courageously, choose heroically - because the world our children will inherit depends on it.