No peace in intended Virakti

I spoke of Virakti yesterday, https://logicallekh.blogspot.com/2026/01/virakti-in-professional-life.html 

but today reminded me how much practice still lies ahead. 

In a toxic work culture, detachment itself becomes tiring.

“Toxic work culture” is one of the key themes I have been writing about lately.

And every other day, my toxic colleagues give me enough masala to write more on this.

What I often wonder is — how do people end up placing personal goals above organisational goals, all while appearing to work for the organisation?

Some cases are explicit integrity issues. But many toxic people are subtler. They are more like an operational human error risk — a risk that probably doesn’t feature in any theory book yet.

Such people weaken organisations quietly. They erode ethics and hollow systems from within, not in one dramatic act, but through daily behaviour.

This happens in many ways:

1. New joinees get moulded under their guidance, and their early career years are shaped — often ruined — without them even realising it.
2. People who are not ethically strong get influenced and pulled into the same patterns.
3. Relevant points raised by team members are ignored if they do not fit into the “close circle”.
4. Work lingers endlessly — repeated iterations, loss of productivity, and growing frustration.

Toxic people are largely insecure by nature. And when such individuals are combined with insecure supervisors, the result is a lethal combination.

I often wonder if such people can ever be identified early. Can there be a grading mechanism? At the very least, can the bottom percentile be weeded out?

Wishes, of course, could be horses.

Perhaps someday, someone working on agentic AI will figure this out.

Until then, awareness may be the only defence.