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Comment by Dr_tldr | Hacker News Reader

Saying your company is at fault for how you feel is the exact same reasoning as "You made me do it", ie, not assuming any agency at all. Same thing with "toxic culture of abuse."

People who are being sexually trafficked and child soldiers are in a toxic culture of abuse that they can't escape from. We're talking about an adult with a lower management job at a tech company, not the wretched of the earth.

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I'm not sure I understand your reasoning here. If a child is bullied by her classmates, your reasoning would suggest that her negative feelings are her fault and not her tormentors? Sure, she might not be locked up in a medieval dungeon (a literal place she can't escape from), in fact, I suppose she can switch schools... Are you saying the student should be tougher or not provoke her classmates or...

You're comparing a child to an adult as if they're the same. That's a pretty leaky abstraction and somewhat disturbing if you can't see the critical distinction.

This is the kind of self-indulgent thinking that tries certain (usually poor or minority) 12 year olds as adults, while treating certain (usually wealthy and white) adults as children who should be forgiven for "youthful indiscretions." Similarly, it focuses on the comparatively well-off but unhappy while completely effacing the experiences of the genuinely exploited.

It isn't "no agency at all" or "full agency", that is a misleading false dichotomy.

The truth is somewhere between those two extremes. Everyone is HEAVILY influenced by the environment immediately around them.

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