Up@dawn 2.0 (blogger)

Delight Springs

Tuesday, January 31, 2023

Acceptance

Traditional Stoics accept what they cannot change, that is, they don't try to change it. They may be too quick to conclude that the universe as a whole and in parts is wholly and particularly beyond reach.

Traditional religionists and some philosophers accept what they consider divine will, though it transcend human understanding. They concede, on faith or first principles, that all must be for the best in the end. Case in point: Voltaire's Pangloss, a transparent gloss on Leibniz, accepting the devastation of mayhem, torture, the Lisbon earthquake…

Stoic pragmatists, though, are meliorists. They heartily accept the challenge of changing what they can for the better, accepting what they must in the end, but never in the long interim of human history presuming that suffering and injustice must subserve the best of possible worlds.

I'd like to think Margaret Fuller was that kind of philosopher, enthusiastically assenting to life as that kind of challenge.

""I accept the universe" is reported to have been a favorite utterance of our New England transcendentalist, Margaret Fuller; and when some one repeated this phrase to Thomas Carlyle, his sardonic comment is said to have been: "Gad! she'd better!" At bottom the whole concern of both morality and religion is with the manner of our acceptance of the universe. Do we accept it only in part and grudgingly, or heartily and altogether? Shall our protests against certain things in it be radical and unforgiving, or shall we think that, even with evil, there are ways of living that must lead to good? If we accept the whole, shall we do so as if stunned into submission—as Carlyle would have us—" Gad! we'd better!"—or shall we do so with enthusiastic assent?"

— The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James(Annotated) by william james
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4 comments:

  1. I am no philosopher but I disagree with Thomas Carlyle. I believe that the universe and religion are separate. One person can believe in a religion and accept that religion heartily but not accept the universe and vice versa. I accept the universe and the strange things that have no explanation. I do not go looking for an explanation in religion. Likewise some people who believe in god do not go looking for their answers in the universe. I do think it's possible to believe in both at the same time. Some people look for the answers to life in both the universe and religion.

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  2. I believe religion is a form of release for most people. A release from the pressure the unchanging, harsh principles set by the universe. A more casual saying akin to the one's provided may be "It is what it is". Although existence can seem constantly evil, the vice versa can be observed as well. There are many instances in which love and kindness preserves, such is also an unending factor of life.

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  3. I believe that religion is used mostly through out history to explain what we as a species didn’t know at the time or as parables for the young. Like lightning and storms for the Greeks at the time they had no way to predict the weather it made sense to them that they angered Zeus in some way. Religion is used for a way to calm down a persons mind and help them accept the things they don’t have the power to change.

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  4. I personally do not think that the universe and religion are the same thing. I definitely believe that the universe as a whole, and our perception of it, leads to it having an impact on the way a lot of religions are formed. If God created the world, then he also created the universe. So, in theory, us, the world, and the universe would all be his creations; meaning we could take inspiration from all of the creations to form our view of God. I think accepting God is accepting 'him' along with all of his creations, not just the universe. I also think that just accepting the universe would not be equivalent to accepting God, as he created it. So, in a religious sense, I do not think that God and the universe are the same. That all changes though if you don't believe in God, and rather believe that the universe simply is.

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