cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/38799262
Let me explain what I mean:
radical acceptance: ever think about how your coworkers are morons, your elderly parents have declined beyond recognition and actively work against you and seem to live to ruin every single one of your days, your boss is an insufferable, exploitative ass, your uncle has lung cancer but keeps smoking a pack a day, your teenager daughter is doing drugs because is trendy, just like you did when you were her age? You cannot change how any of those actors in your life behave, people are free to do whatever they want, even to do stupid crap like that. Trying to change any of those actors is futile and guarantees your mental health decreases overtime and they resent you for caring about them. The better but not ideal solution? Radical acceptance. They are what they are, don’t try to change them, accept them how they are. Let them fail.
This was suggested to me while talking about relatives with dementia and other mental illnesses, but I don’t know if I’m stretching the definition too much.
Spineless conformist: if there are things I cannot control nor change, like climate change, lack of a public healthcare system in America, fptp, maga… why even try? I’d be both radical accepting reality while being a spineless conformist.
Where’s do you draw the line?
The basic question is: Where does the motivation of your reaction (or action) come from?
If you have an emotional goal to prevent the thing from having existed, you are doomed from the start.
If you have accepted fully that it is the way it is, and that what you need to do is add a valid response to the situation, rather than preventing the existence of the situation, you’re probably on the right track.
That is, you can’t block a punch, or respond in kind, if you haven’t accepted that you’re in a fight. Instead, you’ll just have your ass handed to you.
When people say “how could this happen?!” they aren’t usually asking questions at all, even if it’s a situation they would benefit well from asking questions in. They usually mean “this shouldn’t have happened.” …and, they are wrong.
It’s not that it should happen, or shouldn’t happen. Those are irrelevant. It’s that it’s happening (or happened), and the probability of naturally generating a valid response increases massively once you accept that.
Once you accept the situation fully, you’ll be able to look at it clearly, and have a greater chance of recognizing it, and recognizing it before others even realize that it’s happening - or, before others realize they are telegraphing their actions before they strike. As such, you have a better capacity to respond appropriately.
The largest problem humans have, in my opinion, is fighting ghosts and impossible battles - which leaves them open to being taken advantage of or repeating painful cycles. Radical acceptance addresses some of that, if treated as a means to think clearly, rather than as a religion to adhere to.