[cjbgkagh]

Accepting the things that you cannot change does not mean assume you cannot change things then accept it. It’s predicated on an accurate assessment of what you can and cannot change. In my view such acceptance is for optimizing application of effort by not wasting effort on things that actually cannot be changed. “Don’t go tilting at windmills”

[scruple]

The Serenity Prayer has been around for about 100 years now. I find myself repeating it fairly often, especially now that I've got young children.

[Spivak]

This prayer bothers me because it punts the "hard part" to the Lord when it doesn't need to. The exact same sentiment which has been rediscovered over and over for at least 2000 years and is far more actionable is, "you can't control others*, you can only control your response to them."

It gives you a blueprint of what kinds of things you can expect to be able to change and the limitations you'll face in the attempt.

* Which more in the context of the 12 step program the other person can be yourself. You will have thoughts, impulses, emotions, urges that you can't control but you can control your reaction to them.

[scruple]

Fair enough, but I've always interpreted it differently. I don't view it as "punting" so much as acknowledging what the hard part is. But I agree that "you can't control others, you can only control your response to them" is certainly the rule.

I use the prayer as a framework when I have to take a mental break and find the discernment between a situation I truly can't change and one I can influence (or, like you pointed out, a response you can control).

[amelius]

> "you can't control others*, you can only control your response to them."

Like it or not, but you __can__ control others. This is what advertising is based on, for example.

[card_zero]

I was thinking about the meaning of "acceptance" recently. It means you feel some injustice or frustration about something. Morally, you think the problem should be fixed, but strategically you think you shouldn't try.

Everything we do has limits and obstacles. If you don't feel frustrated, then that's a completely ordinary situation and there's no point in highlighting your "acceptance", is there?

I suppose in tech terms it could be equivalent to "won't fix", but such matters should be swiftly forgotten. If you're experiencing ongoing acceptance, consciously, that's suboptimal and implies you'd still be right to complain.

Thus recommending acceptance to somebody is recommending defeat. The term acceptance entails bottled-up frustration or injustice. It may still be strategically right, but it's a twisted, contingent choice.

[cjbgkagh]

No moral or injustice component needed.

I have genetic chronic fatigue and I’m limited in what I can do about it, there is a component of making peace with loss, a radical acceptance of one’s own situation. And there is a component of extreme experimentation, I have done just about all that can be done about it. I have to give up on my dreams of athleticism. Life isn’t fair, it’s life, but I wouldn’t call it an injustice. I think the modern conflation is part of making the personal political.

[card_zero]

I put "frustration" in there for a reason. There are situations that are nobody's fault, which we shrug about. Then there are other situations that are nobody's fault, about which we think "something should be done", even though it's nobody's particular duty to fix the problem. That lingering frustration is a moral opinion. It's informed by expectations and realism, which it is often beyond our grasp to even determine accurately.

[digianarchist]

A good point is made at the end of the article:

> But preemptive surrender is no sign of wisdom. Any reality made by human beings can be remade by them. The price of this power is mutual obligation: we can never let ourselves off the hook. The things we can accomplish together are, by definition, within our sphere of control, even if we have to act through structures that are bigger than any of us alone to achieve them.

Stoicism doesn't answer the question "what can and can't we control" and doesn't claim to. I think the modern neostoicism trend is to make the reader believe that they have little control over daily life, encouraging an almost narcissistic-nihilist response to ongoing events.