The Art of Human Sacrifice
Sublimating death
I recently had this experience at my job where I suggested an idea that my immediate higher-ups expressed skepticism about. I interpreted their blunt hesitation as a personal challenge and violated an organizational taboo by immediately documenting support for the idea and sending the proposal to people in another department. That didn’t go well. When my decision was highlighted and contested, I invoked the “flat” values of the work culture as justification for my actions. I was right in a local sense to share my idea because idea sharing is an important part of every organization’s improvement. However, I was wrong in a more important global sense because the way I went about it was petty and short-sighted. In fact, my idea would have been seen as more credible by those capable of helping me implement it if I had been more diplomatic and inclusive in my approach. A better method would have been to share the idea in a way that increased the chances they would have been more personally open to it. If I had been more patient, I would likely have gotten my way more effectively.
However, I would have never learned this lesson if I hadn’t spoken up for myself and confronted the higher-ups with my confusion. At the time, I seriously did not understand that I was violating an organizational taboo, in part because I have never worked for a corporation in a professional capacity before. I saw it as me standing up to the power-drunk. To be fair to my previous self, the utopian statements about the work culture do not actually map onto the practical realities of life within the organization. But I could’ve figured that out myself if I spent a few hours reflecting before acting. My risking my relationship with my higher-ups to confront them about the disjunction between the expressed and the actual was a form of human sacrifice. I was anxious, I did not know how the confrontation would turn out. I killed a bit of the security I had in my work relationships by addressing the problem interpersonally. If I had not sacrificed that, I wouldn’t have once again learned a valuable lesson that I keep forgetting: Sometimes it’s better to cooperate than compete.
I am not afraid of social death, I am not afraid to be disliked or rejected by people I disagree with. This trait can be courage in the face of a local battle or hubris in the face of a global war. My apathy about social death can get me killed — ostracized, demoted, imprisoned, depressed — or it can help me learn (become better). It is never going to be crystal clear when short-term courage will turn out better than long-term patience — there is no certainty in life — but the distinction will hopefully become progressively clearer to me as I learn throughout my life/time.
In this situation at work, I had to die a good way to learn a valuable lesson about a bad way to die.
Just like how the worst way to lose a game is to lose to cheaters, the worst way to die is to die unjustifiably. And just like how the best way to win a game is to win through skill fair and square, the best way to live is to live justifiably. Combined, the best way to be is the way that symbolizes a justified way of living and dying, for the justified way of dying and the justified way of living are one and the same. The way we move through existence (be) is motivated by our thoughts and, one way or another, we meet death while inhabiting thought in the world (being).
The art of human sacrifice is developing the wisdom of knowing when to sacrifice yourself — your pride, your attention, your energy, your physicality — now as opposed to later. Such knowing is not true wisdom if it is prideful and certain, it only fulfills its name when it has enough humility to learn.
The sublimation of death is not literal suicide, but literal human sacrifice.