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I think this is a general problem that the Political/Managerial Class wants a set of cog in machine type workers. Meek, follow orders, don't rock the boat, etc. More of the propaganda gets directed against men, simply because they fit worse into that mold by default. But in my experience women that don't fit are just as likely to get ground up and crushed.
One of the great ironies of this all is that institutions can't even be bothered to reward the meek men and women they claim to want. You see, there is a dirty little secret inside every large bureaucratic institution: You can just do things. Yes, you are supposed to get approval from your three managers, and buy in from the various stakeholders in departments A-Z. And if you do the things and they are good things, then you will get rewarded. The reason it works is that the process for stopping and punishing you is often as onerous as the process you were supposed to follow to get the thing done in the first place. So your enemies either won't bother, or they won't do things the official route. Welcome to internal office politics at a large org, you are now a player and not a pawn. Hope you made some allies before you started doing things.
Large institutions always ask for pawns. Because the players figure out the game and don't need to be invited. Its not like any existing players really want to invite more competition. Being a player is how to capture big rewards, but its also big risk. I am intentionally and consciously not a player at my current job. Being a pawn is low risk low reward. But I was a player for a little while in one of my previous jobs until I sorta maxed out my leverage and kept running into past mistakes I'd made. But the player slots are stressful. I'm riding out my past rewards for now while I have other priorities in life.
The appeal of the meek is supposed to be exactly insofar as you don't have to reward them to elicit compliance. At the limit, if you have to reward them like e.g. disagreeable but talented people, then you might as well just hire the latter.
The challenge that I suspect many with power would love to solve is "How do you turn disagreeable/moderate people into meek people?"
2000 years of oppressive modern bureaucracy, which is the solution most Asian cultures settled on long ago. Great workers, can be great engineers as long as the science is solved, but R&D and technological advancement has never really been their strong suit.
Makes sense. I was in a Chinese place during part of covid and their culture + personalities were perfectly calibrated for obeying absurd covid restrictions.
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That's easy, physical torture and brainwashing. The trick is to do it without significantly damaging their usefulness. Once they can do that at scale, we're well on our way to the Domination of the Draka.
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