“Moral injury?” This is a thing we discuss now?

I’ve felt for a second that we were a little bit too all-in on “trauma” as a concept societally these days, including — and I guffawed at this when I first saw it — some concept in business journalism now called “a trauma-informed management strategy.” Go find me 100 executives in 10 different verticals. Line them up for me. Ask them, “Hey, is this something you would ever remotely care about?” I bet you get 90 “No,” nine hem-haw answers (“I’d need to learn more”), and one guy would just walk off as soon as you said “trauma.” Now there’s some new article about “what to do when a job compromises your morals,” and that’s relatively easy, actually. You basically (a) do nothing or (b) get a new job, because literally the definition of white-collar work is “morals will probably be compromised in the next few days, if not minutes.” White-collar work is not designed to be moral. There is no situation where morality is the centerpiece of it. Even churches run as a business are corrupt as shit (often). Very few companies operate according to moral norms.

This is what I wish people would realize about all these new topics and trains of thought we’ve introduced to business: look, on face ethics and morals are good, yes. But the real point of a job to many — and especially to those who come to run companies — is relevance, control, and status. Those things cannot be…