Good morning,

Are you worried about the direction the world is taking—polarisation, hatred, violence—and wonder what you can do about it? In his book What's Our Problem? Tim Urban talks about three levels of courage that offer some guidance. He writes:

Courage level 1: Stop saying stuff you don’t believe

Marcus Aurelius once wrote, “If it is not right, do not do it. If it is not true, do not say it.” Refraining from participation in something you don’t believe in is just a small step in the right direction—but if everyone did it, the world would be a whole lot better.

If everyone is expressing a certain political sentiment you don’t agree with or dehumanising an out-group in a way you find distasteful, try to stay quiet and not participate. This can be easier said than done, because low-rung social environments put a lot of pressure on everyone to pledge outward allegiance to the tribe’s sacred beliefs or express hatred of the tribe’s enemies. Try it anyway. Think of it like this: saying things you don’t believe because others want you to is disrespecting your Inner Self. And your Inner Self deserves better…

Courage level 2: Start saying what you really think, in private, with people you know well

This is when you begin letting your Inner Self show itself in public. Start with the people you’re closest with. Are there political or social topics you have to be in the closet about with them? If so, consider whether your relationship might become better and more interesting if you stopped self-censoring. Becoming more authentic usually seems scarier than it proves to be. And it might make the relationship closer, more fun, and less stressful…

Courage level 3: Go public

Class. Work. Church. Book clubs. Dinner parties. This isn’t an encouragement to become the insufferable person who always brings up politics. But if you’re in a setting where a conversation is happening and your Inner Self is screaming “I disagree!”—start saying, “I disagree.” I can almost guarantee that at least some other people in the room will secretly be harbouring the same thoughts, and they’ll respect the shit out of you for saying it out loud.

You could go even bigger. Start a blog. Start a podcast. Write a book. Tweet a tweet. Spend six years writing a 120,000-word ebook/audiobook. If you already have a platform, start laying your Inner Self on it…

The most recent issue of The Economist has some interesting findings. Employers and employees are at loggerheads over work from home (WFH) policies. “Across the world, plans for remote working by employers fall short of what workers want, according to wfh Research, a group that includes Stanford University and the Ifo Institute, a German think-tank, which has tracked the sentiment of full-time workers with at least a secondary education in 34 countries. Corporate bosses fear that fully remote work dents productivity, a worry reinforced by a slew of recent research. One study of data-entry workers in India found those toiling from home to be 18% less productive than their office-frequenting peers; another found that employees at a big Asian IT firm were 19% less productive at home than they had been in the office.”