"Accepting the world" doesn't mean you have to give up on effecting meaningful change
This is something I've been thinking on-and-off for years. I'm an ideologically driven person. I want to do good, create a more equal and better world. However, reality -being as is- makes this very hard to accomplish. This sometimes causes much strife and suffering for me, as I am demoralized by lack of, slow pace of, or loss of progress.
Often in times like this, I turn to what other people think. One of the most frequent advices is about "accepting the world". In my experience, this advice almost exclusively came from people who I see as subscribing to conformism. They too are of course people, and they are bothered by things too, but they don't try to effect change.
This is why I've had an incredibly difficult time with this widespread advice. At times I even felt as if I'm pathologically attached to my drive to effect change. Especially at the start of this questioning, I felt like it. I felt as if I was a spiritual masochist. But in time I realized how much meaning and eudaimonic happiness it brings to me. I've also realized how much conformism and "hedonism as the only legitimate way of happiness" diffused into everything. Many people can't seem to fathom struggling for a cause as a fulfilling and happy process, because their interpretation of happiness is based exclusively on a pleasure-principle.
However, I still felt like this advice had some kernel of truth. Today, I realized what I think is a better way of interpreting it: accepting the world doesn't mean giving up on effecting any significant change in wider society or the world, it just means you're better off accepting your feelings.
Put another way, the conditions of the world creates these emotional responses in you. Whether you strike back or not, you should not deny yourself the opportunity to feel these responses. These often include feelings of anxiety, fear, loss, hurt, loneliness, sadness, etc. When handling ideological topics, these can be buried under anger. While anger is not unhealthy or bad, and can be motivating to do good, it can also sometimes deny a person the chance to feel the situation to the fullest. This is what I mean by accepting the world. It means accepting what it evokes in you.
I decided to share this, because I think these topics are mostly handled from a perspective I see as too one-sided and alien (to people like me). They are often filled with advice that tells driven people to stop being driven, telling them to give up what causes them pain and instead to focus on personal things, enjoy a movie, etc. Basically telling them to be someone different. But that's not what makes them happy! They just need to figure out how to healthily engage with what drives them. And I think this is an important part of it.
There is, of course, nothing wrong with taking some time off, or reducing or stopping certain habits, learning to take care of yourself. But every time I read the "acceptance" argument, I was left completely unsatisfied, and even irritated, because I was feeling as if people were telling me to become an orange. Not only was it impossible, they didn't even realize how much these things meant to me. They were basically telling me to give up, and that -for me- was unacceptable at an existential level. More to the point, my ideological drive is a core part of my personality that enables me to cope with living with depression and numerous physical illnesses. It's a key motivator that energizes me to do things, even though I often feel like not doing anything. Without this drive, I'm a much less happy person. So, it was an advice that wasn't even remotely suitable for me, because our personalities and motivations in life were extremely different.
So, if there are others like me here, I thought I should share my two cents on this, and hope that it helps someone see things a bit differently. If you've had experiences with these things too, you're welcome to share them :)
I like to use the word "acknowledge" versus "accept" because the latter feels too much like "endorse" to many people -- so the message gets lost. It is about not torturing yourself with angst while do something about an issue.
Maybe it's partially because, in this context of personal responsibility regarding ideology, we realize that truth often hurts and we should not shy away from what hurts. So we associate pain with responsibility. This then leads to putting the cart before the horse, and we perceive being subjected to any pain as the responsible thing. Combined with the way social media and the news cycles are structured, then we associate getting demoralized by endless deluge of negative news and discussions as paying due diligence.
Further playing into this is the consumerist & conformist habit of passively being objected things being the main way of engagement. So, doomscrolling, a passive habit, replaces active endeavors of ideological practice, which actually feel good and fulfilling.
I think the trick is to not let your happiness be reliant on changing the minds or views of others. You can still find satisfaction in making choices towards things you find positive and living with those new challenges and rewards. Eventually that will make you more likely to find others who share those views and you can keep each other motivated and know even if it's not immediately changing the world it is showing everyone a real way forward.
Should we simply accept such feelings or take steps to try to alleviate them? For example, sometimes it might be a good idea to take a break from social media. That’s largely what connects us to the troubles of the world (the far-away places, anyway) and sometimes it’s better to detach.
(I mean, in theory. It takes a lot to get me to detach. I don’t think reading the news does me much good, though.)
Yeah, I definitely agree that some feelings require action. I stopped following social media politics other than here years ago, including reddit. I found that it was extremely unproductive and not at all good for my mental health. I made the mistake of undoing this a bit some time ago, for a short while, and it again resulted in useless mental stress.
I also stopped personally checking daily news in my country. The news cycle does quite a bit damage to me mentally, and I already know enough about the country to know the actors, ideologies, etc.
I try to separate between useful and useless pain/suffering/stress when dealing with these things. Some things I'm willing to accept due to seeing them as leading to productive things. For example, right now I'm reading a critical article about a social topic. It's a bit heavy because of its implications, but it increased my understanding of the world, and I might utilize this knowledge. But stuff like doomscrolling, getting into fights on social media, "meme-ideology" wars? I don't see them as productive. In no way am I claiming I figured this out, but it's progress.
I'm actually thinking of creating another topic for that some time, because lately I feel like we are focusing so much on the spectacle of what matters rather than what actually matters, and I wonder how others decide on their priorities.
That's a valuable perspective, accepting your response to the world, rather than fighting or ignoring it. Or that's how I read it anyway.
I can't speak for conformists, rather I have an alternative version of what "accept the world" means... Accept that people are people. Accept that change is usually slow. Accept that most of us won't live to see the sort of world we think should exist. Accept that one person can't always make a noticeable impact on the biggest problems.
That doesn't mean don't work to make things better, it just means have reasonable expectations. We're more effective when we aren't frustrated and demoralized.
I think that's somewhat true, and tempering expectations is a good idea to an extent, but I don't think it's entirely true. I think dreaming big and trying to make that dream into reality is a good idea too. Things often seem extremely rigid and unchanging until they fall apart. Change can happen very fast. It's not always incrementalist. Sometimes it reaches a tipping point and then happens all at once.
I think we're often told this isn't possible and that we should give up on big changes, and we should accept our lot of incrementalism. I'm definitely not saying you're doing this, but this often comes from people trying to dictate the timeline of another person's fight. I'm not comfortable with that. I think it's a counterproductive mindset for a struggler to have, as it limits what is accepted as possible, therefore affecting reality. This is especially true in the context of climate crisis, a cause I care a great deal about. We need everything and fast.
However, I want to stress that I really do think you have a point. I'm just trying to say to keep an open mind about what is possible, because what we think about reality affects our reality.
Climate change is a good example. None of us will be able to see the results of our personal efforts on global CO2 levels. And change is happening slowly, relative to how fast it should be happening. Which is mostly because people are people (sometimes shortsighted, greedy and selfish).
That doesn't mean we shouldn't do what we can, it's vital that we do.
That's a very hard earned perspective, I think. Thank you for sharing that.
I think that giving grace to others, and to the world, while being similar to giving them a pass, can be a different thing by shades and degrees, even if not clearly delineated. And that giving grace, that acknowledgment and acceptance without endorsement, is what allows oneself to give oneself that same grace and space to feel all those complex emotions.
When we love something, the flaws in the thing we don't love don't just disappear or get rationalised into a good. We just fully accept the thing as a whole, with some good and some less good, but all of it loved, the whole of it being more importantly loved than the sum (all the plus and minuses) of the parts. We sometimes dont give up on improving it either.
It helps me sometimes to pretend I'm a time traveller: I love this person, or this thing, at its usual or final and perfected stage, free of all the blemishes I can see clear as day in the present hour. My love for the perfected subject seems perfectly rational eventually, and perhaps that love can extend a little bit back in time. (Or for broken things, my love for when it was whole extends further into time to continue loving it even when broken and even with me wishing it not broken.) For example, if my child fell into a mud puddle and is bleeding and dirty, my love for the child doesn't endorse the dirt and the hurt, but the love accepts the dirt and blood as momentary, a passing phase of a child who is otherwise free of those things. And so my acceptance of the child is what drives me to give hug, bring home, wash and bandage the child: the acceptance drives me to do something. It would be much different for me to demand that the child hug herself and wash and clean herself before I find her acceptable and suitable for love again.
Thank you for sharing again, and may you find some peace during your day :)
Thank you for the kind response :) Eloquently put.