I have some colleagues who exhibit a strong people-pleasing tendency. Their professional skills are mediocre at best, yet they devote themselves entirely to catering to their superiors' preferences. Some take it even further—emboldened by their ability to curry favor with the higher-ups, they carry themselves with an air of superiority. To their bosses, they are ever-obsequious; to their fellow coworkers, with whom they spend their days, they are cold and indifferent, as if they were strangers.

I find such colleagues utterly detestable. At times, I even pity them. To me, this is nothing but servility. Why can't they find a way to stand tall while doing their jobs? Why must they resort to groveling just to survive? Is bowing and scraping really more comfortable? Or is there some deep-seated, inherent desire for submission in their very bones?

In my workplace—or rather, in the entire organization—this is the prevailing culture. Sucking up to superiors is always the fastest route to career advancement. They speak grandly of "serving the people" and "putting people first," yet in reality, they uphold the same old feudal tradition of clinging to power: bootlicking those above while looking down on those below. But they fail to see that no matter how skilled they are at flattering and ingratiating themselves, in today's society, unless your name is Xi Jinping, you are still nothing but a servant—forever at the mercy of those in power, forever subject to punishment at their whim.

What angers me most is that it is precisely because of people like them—so many people like them—that those who refuse to be subservient are pushed to the margins, forced to live as outcasts. It is because of them that people who don't want to be servants are made to suffer, that those who resist servitude are ultimately turned into servants themselves.

To these people, showing empathy for the weak is nothing but a foolish act. According to their logic, why bother standing up for a newcomer? Why waste time chatting with someone who has no power, no connections, and nothing to offer in return? In my mind, I reply to them: "That person is just like you. When they are wronged, and you refuse to lend a hand, you are not only devoid of empathy—that alone is bad enough—but you have also lost the very trait that makes us human. And when you lose that, you are the one who is truly useless.