“Warning”

I was reading the chapter “on being stop” when I came across this story: A junior female scholar of color was warned by a senior professor: “You are a young scholar, and if you do this now, you will be known as a complainer, so let it go.” She was advised to “let go” so as not to be known as a “grouchy person” or “someone with a grievance”. This is because people in academia believe that not complaining is a virtue, and that those who offend this virtue will be forever ostracized from the circle.

This kind of thing is very common in Chinese society, and even has been deeply rooted, my friend has also been in such a situation, She is an aspiring art teacher who has done a lot for her students, But when the students achieve something, there is often the so-called more senior people than her to take it all away. She chose to be silent because it was traditional education and she could only be endured in silence, alone. I once urged her to be brave and speak her mind, but she just chose to stay away from trouble, to do things alone in the future, to bear the burden alone. She asked me if she would become a misfit in the future, I couldn’t answer, I knew she wasn’t originally like this, it was society that turned her into this.

Institutional fatalism tends to be mentioned when things happen, and I couldn’t agree more with the author on this point. By system fatalism, I mean that the system refers to the environment in which people live, and it will always have some problems, and you shouldn’t try to change them, or you will have a miserable ending. Many people emphasize fatalism, which is very malicious. They want to use this theory to make the complainants feel afraid, because if the complainants feel afraid, then they are likely to stop complaining and end up with nothing.