The thrill of honesty

My email provoked a certain amount of interesting reactions. Those that were made visible and openly directed at me were in nearly every case positive, sometimes even thankful or slightly amazed. One paragraph particularly interested the people who will continue to work at the institute:

I've spent four years here, during which a lot changed in my life (as well as here). During those years, it became ever clearer to me that my conception of life was not compatible with a job such as at XXXX. I find environmental resources, social justice and an open, honest way of dealing with other people important, so I decided to be consequent and (radically) change my life, step by step. The production of reports at XXX or in similar institutions - continually locked up in an office, with a hectic work rhythm, with a constant paper and energy consumption, with conferences in the protected social sphere of the educated elite, separated from the empirical matter on which the reports are written, and with regular flights (!) - is incompatible with my views, because, I find, it has a rather negative impact on people and environment - whether it says "environment" on it or not.
Don't get me wrong: I don't mean to judge you as people working here. I rather want to make my decision transparent and perhaps also initiate a few thoughts on life, work and personal priorities.

In a way, a relatively harsh paragraph, and I feared that some people would take this pretty badly, as it attacks the basic justification of our work - "we're doing something for the environment". And probably some people did feel attacked by it, but I haven't heard back from those. Instead, I had reactions like "I was sooo pleased to read your mail! At last someone who really says what we're doing here!". Another person also thought that most people worked there without real convictions, and that most would be happy doing something else other than sitting in an office. A few other people expressed their envy at my having "found my path" - as they are obviously unhappy with theirs so far. I wish them all luck and a bit more guts perhaps...
The personnel manager did not react to my mail. She acknowledge that it'd been sent, but did not comment in any way its content. I realised though that my boss had put her in blind carbon copy in the (positive) email he sent me - she would otherwise probably have been very unsure how to act with me at all.