Flexibility is passivity — conciliation, not resilience

Evidence

The two energies ceaselessly collide within a resilient person. If these individuals were simply ”flexible”—that is to say, if the two energies did not collide with one another—they would be not resilient but conciliatory, that is to say, passive. — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 252

Categorization

• DEFINE: The sharpest definitional contrast in the chapter: flexibility = passive conciliation, resilience = active collision of energies.
• XREF: Directly serves reader’s stated purpose: catching ‘flexibility’ substituted for ‘plasticity’ in management memos. This is the load-bearing inversion. — connects to: Resilience means regaining stability after disaster, not mere robustness — Catherine Malabou, The New Wounded: From Neurosis to Brain…, 4592; Abandonment means total responsibility, not helpless passivity — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1292; Worker flexibility often functions as a euphemism for precarity — Brooke Erin Duffy, (Not) Getting Paid to Do What You Love:…, 571 (+1 more)
• SHARE: Send to a colleague who writes about organizational ‘resilience’ culture.