I hate the indifferent. I believe that living means taking sides.

Business, as well as Life, demands participation. Someone may choose to be indifferent, but all that means is that someone else is not only making decisions for you, they are affecting the arc of your life and, consequently, your destiny. To be clear. This is a fact. The affect may not be direct, but the point is that even if you work hard, are persistent, have clear objectives, if you are indifferent all the external factors will increase the gravity of the environment you are doing all of those things within. In other words, unless you are at your best everyday, maybe a little lucky on occasion, the arc of your destiny is going to get dragged down to all the things you were indifferent to. And while all of that matters if your own life and destiny matters to you, if you participate in the deadweight of indifference you may actually be facilitating the twisting of society’s fate. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out, again, this is not just true of Life, but business. And while I do believe this discussion gets warped in some incredibly unhealthy ways, business should not ignore the discussion and being indifferent really isn’t an option.

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“I hate the indifferent. I believe that living means taking sides. Those who really live cannot help being a citizen and a partisan. Indifference and apathy are parasitism, perversion, not life. That is why I hate the indifferent.
The indifference is the deadweight of history. The indifference operates with great power on history. The indifference operates passively, but it operates. It is fate, that which cannot be counted on. It twists programs and ruins the best-conceived plans. It is the raw material that ruins intelligence. That what happens, the evil that weighs upon all, happens because the human mass abdicates to their will; allows laws to be promulgated that only the revolt could nullify, and leaves men that only a mutiny will be able to overthrow to achieve the power. The mass ignores because it is careless and then it seems like it is the product of fate that runs over everything and everyone: the one who consents as well as the one who dissents; the one who knew as well as the one who didn’t know; the active as well as the indifferent. Some whimper piously, others curse obscenely, but nobody, or very few ask themselves: If I had tried to impose my will, would this have happened?
I also hate the indifferent because of that: because their whimpering of eternally innocent ones annoys me. I make each one liable: how they have tackled with the task that life has given and gives them every day, what have they done, and especially, what they have not done. And I feel I have the right to be inexorable and not squander my compassion, of not sharing my tears with them.
I am a partisan, I am alive, I feel the pulse of the activity of the future city that those on my side are building is alive in their conscience. And in it, the social chain does not rest on a few; nothing of what happens in it is a matter of luck, nor the product of fate, but the intelligent work of the citizens. Nobody in it is looking from the window of the sacrifice and the drain of a few. Alive, I am a partisan. That is why I hate the ones that don’t take sides, I hate the indifferent.”
Antonio Gramsci

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In today’s current political environment, which bleeds into society as some fairly absurd niche arguments about what is right or wrong and important or unimportant, the people become more and more distant to traditional parties or traditional ‘community break lines.’ This impacts business whether you like it or not; whether you want it or not. Being indifferent to this, acting like you are detached from this, simply means an already ‘delicate and dangerous’ situation becomes even more fraught with peril – for your business.

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“At a certain point in their historical lives, social classes become detached from their traditional parties. In other words, the traditional parties in that particular organisational form, with the particular men who constitute, represent and lead them, are no longer recognised by their class (or fraction of a class) as its expression. When such crises occur, the immediate situation becomes delicate and dangerous, because the field is open for violent solutions, for the activities of unknown forces, represented by charismatic “men of destiny”.”
Antonio Gramsci

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I have argued for years a business cannot detach itself from society, responsibility to societal issues and much of the larger narratives and discussions taking place. Detaching yourself from it under the guise of “my job is insure my business makes a profit and offers people employment” is not a sustainable stance nor strategy. I hate indifference. Inevitably a business needs to pick a side. To be clear. That sometimes simply means taking a stand on what you are not, not saying what you are. If you don’t believe it is your job to carry the flag ON an issue, that’s okay. But you do have to make it your job to say “but I will not stand by THAT flag.” Ponder.