| Didn't say the story was meant to be taken at face value, only that the idea that you have some degree of control over your life is empowering and I think leads to more happiness. It's useful to look into research into optimism and pessimism: especially Learned Helplessness, which is what happens if (as I had in the past) one slips into thinking that they have zero power over their lives, and that your social factors determine everything. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness I recall that a study found that pessimists were actually more accurate in that their perception of reality was closer to what actually happens. But optimists were happier. I don't know the specifics of your situation, but if prosody can be at all learned or improved, then that's something that can be changed, which is a lot more than some of the other stuff out there like skin color or height. Anyways, I appreciate your thoughts on the matter. I don't want to dissuade anyone from standing up/fighting the good fight for social causes. But as someone who naturally skews pessimistic and struggled with depression, maintaining the semblance of control over my life, even if it's not real, has helped tremendously. And I hope it helps others too. ---- > Tell the story again and say that one of the travelers is black and the other white or one is male and the other female or one is rich and the other poor and see how you feel then about acting like your attitude alone determines your social outcomes. I'm not sure that's the way I'd think of it. More like: imagine two travelers, both are black, or both are gay, and they're exactly the same in all regards (thought experiment!), and one person believes that them being in group X means people treat them unfairly, while the other doesn't. They will have different interpretations of events, leading to different responses, leading to different lives. As I said above, taking the stance that we can control our lives leads to improving our lives, taking the stance that social factors are the biggest leads to us I think improving society in the best case, or learned helplessness in the worst case. The former is easier to do than the latter. And that's a practical thought experiment, because you can change your outlook over time, it's the whole point of therapy. Those two travelers are the same person at different points in their lives. |
So, basically, many optimists know how to hack the system instead of literally doing what they were told. This is part of what I am talking about. I am an optimist, but it isn't merely "think shiny thoughts." It is "I think I have the skillz to handle this and get a better outcome than what most people would expect or are predicting." And it is really problematic when the message is "you just need a better attitude." In my experience, a better attitude grows out of having the skills you need to tackle the problem. Many people don't have that. If you give them that, changes in attitude follow.
I don't really disagree with anything you have said here, except for the detail that this question was posted by a woman in tech on an overwhelmingly male forum. So, this parable tends to come across as suggesting that women merely have an attitude problem. I am the highest ranked woman here. Trying to establish the ability to open my mouth and get real engagement without it being a shit show has been a long, hard slog. Having done that, I am noticing more women able to open their mouths.
So, if the parable is helpful to you, awesome! But I didn't want to just stand by and say nothing knowing how such subtext can have a chill effect that is enormously harmful to already silenced minorities.