Compromise or Conscience? The High Cost of Adjusting to Injustice

The Cult of Adjustment: How Silence Is Sold as Intelligence

Adjustment or Justice?

When Survival Is Mistaken for Wisdom

In our everyday conversations, one word has quietly acquired the status of a virtue — “adjust.”Adjust with injustice.Adjust with exploitation.Adjust with silence.Adjust, because questioning is inconvenient.

We are repeatedly told that adjustment is maturity, that compromise is intelligence, and that resistance is foolish idealism. The message is clear: those who protest are troublemakers; those who adjust are smart survivors.

But here lies a dangerous intellectual fraud.

Adjustment may help an individual survive temporarily, but it slowly suffocates society. History has never been shaped by people who adjusted to wrongs — it has been shaped by those who refused to.

Let us be clear:There is a fundamental difference between patience and surrender, between flexibility and submission, between wisdom and fear disguised as practicality.

The Education We Never Received

Our education system rarely teaches us how injustice normalizes itself. It does not arrive with drums and declarations. It enters silently — through “practical advice,” “career concerns,” and “family responsibilities.”

We are told:

• “This is how the system works.”

• “Nothing will change.”

• “Why take unnecessary risks?”

Slowly, adjustment becomes a habit. A comfortable one. A socially rewarded one.

And those who refuse to adjust?They are labelled stubborn, emotional, impractical.

A Gentle Satire on ‘Smart People’

Interestingly, the smartest people in the room are often those who advise adjustment — but never for themselves.They celebrate courage in history books, admire revolutionaries in speeches, and share motivational quotes online — while quietly recommending silence in real life.

Their philosophy is simple:

“Let someone else fight. We are intelligent enough to adjust.”

This intelligence has never built a just society. It has only perfected the art of looking away.

Adjustment vs. Dignity

Adjustment is useful when circumstances are neutral. It becomes immoral when circumstances are unjust. When adjustment demands the loss of dignity, it stops being wisdom and becomes complicity.

Every right we enjoy today — from labour rights to civil liberties — exists because someone, somewhere, refused to adjust.

A Message for the Young Mind

• Questioning authority is not rebellion.Demanding fairness is not arrogance.

• Refusing exploitation is not foolishness.

• True intelligence is not the ability to survive quietly, but the courage to live with self-respect.

Societies progress not when everyone adjusts, but when a few refuse to.

About the Author

Pankaj Soni is an active Trade Unionist who represents workers before administrative and statutory authorities. His work focuses on labour rights, dignity of workers, and challenging the normalization of injustice through legal awareness and grassroots advocacy.