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You can appreciate the world and still do Hard Work to make it better - definitely not mutually exclusive. Be unreasonable. Be Progressive.

Temper it all with Desiderata[0], since we’re being philosophical.

[0] https://www.desiderata.com/desiderata.html

One can be content or happy without being complacent. Also finding peace with what you have can open motivation to make change. The discontent of one’s current situation can be debilitating and demotivating so removing the mood or feeling can actually enable action.

But then what you put effort in will resonate with you and not be the same as what you would do when trying to chase something to impress someone outside.

There is this strange paradox of accepting a situation enables changing it. I hope others who read this who understand it better will share their more lucid insights.

I mean you have to ask what does unreasonable mean in this context?

Because in a literal meaning, that basically puts both John Carmack and Adolf Hitler in the same "unreasonable men" bucket. Both had ideas for the "world" and adapted it to themselves.

But I don't think we should read it that way. Also you should never take one philosopher's idea and only follow it in isolation. Every great thinker has massive blind spots and it's always better to think for yourself and read opinions that may counter each other.

Also I don't think its as simple as to be happy you must accept the world and be a passive host and make no changes. In fact, many would argue you get real happiness when you pursue something bigger than yourself and in those pursuits, we usually make progress.

More so, do you think Hitler was unhappy? Are you saying every unreasonable person that makes progress is unhappy? That clearly cannot be true.

In fact, your question should be answered by what is happiness rather than how to be happy. And the answer can be complciated. No 10 list guide can truly help you unravel the actual human pysche and what makes you you but it can act as markers and make you think if done properly.

That quote is from a play, and was written by a character who is a revolutionary and an anarchist.

In a meta-sense, I don't think G.B. Shaw intended this quote to be taken as an absolute truth by the audience.

And, even taking the quote itself at face value (pretending the fictional character who wrote it was a real person), I think it's referring mostly to political progress. Indeed, most times that political institutions have been upended, it was by people who were not happy with the status quo. But I think that's a different sort of unhappiness from the unhappiness of not being satisfied with your life.

I'm not religious nor a recovering alcoholic, but I've always liked the serenity prayer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serenity_Prayer.

Obviously it is unreasonable to continue walking with a stone in your boot because you want to adapt to it; equally obviously it is unreasonable to expect your boots to last forever without repair.

Yes, yes, and no.

Try circles instead of a square.

Not 1 and 0, but infinity.

You matter more than you think.

Very good book:

https://www.youmattermorethanyouthink.com/

In the Paris area, if you commute during rush hour, you'll probably been stuck between 100 people per square meter. At best, you can listen to some podcasts or audiobooks.

When I still had to work from the office, I was fortunate enough to be able to move my hours earlier so I could avoid morning rush hour and could, indeed, read in the morning. Afternoons I couldn't, more often than not.

It was just wasted time. I can also read on my couch before I start working from home. I've read many more books since I was able to WFH on most days.

Or listen to podcasts/audio books. Helps when the commute involves traveling in crowded trains/busses during peak times.

You can cover a lot of ground while listening to podcasts. And diversity in podcasts is huge.

Can confirm .. I grew up in a country (Australia) which is practically impossible to live in, without a car .. then I moved to California and did everything I could to avoid the commutes (really a very difficult task), lived there for 15 years and only managed to optimize my life to be able to walk around LA/my neighborhood in the last few years of it .. then moved to Japan for a year, where everything I needed to survive was within a 10 minute walk of my apartment - and then to Austria, in a city that was laid out a thousand years ago to be navigable by foot, and still is.

Commuting is one of the worst aspects of the Western world. The fact that hundreds of millions of people have to sit in their cars, for hours every day, to get to work/play/live, is just a tragedy. I truly hope the next hundred years proves much, much more fruitful for those of us who are willing to change lifestyles to avoid the commute. Its a huge drag.

this is a good reminder for me. I just switched from a 5 minute cycle commute to a 20 minute cycle commute. Time to break out some audio books.

You are on a sphere with linear sun input, energy is limited, life is not limuited, the exponential hockeystick eats the sun, missery is unavoidable and built into all things.

We're closed loop systems, and happiness (momentary, long-term, + variants) are guidance signals from evolution. You don't have to optimize for it, but it's worth understanding the dozen or so real signals that "happiness" as a concept masks.

Discussion did take place. There is only so much you can do though.

I’m glad it worked for you but in my case it didn’t.

Ultimately people who continually drag the conversation around to politics just aren’t very nice to be around.

This works with some people and not with others. I’ve found once you have no epistemological common ground or rigor it becomes pointless and not worth having.

Like what do you do if every source that contradicts them about any aspect of the world is considered a lie controlled by <insert boogeyman> (billionaires, liberals, the Jews, whatever)?

I’ve found the majority of people who are really in to regurgitating politics have no interest in actually understanding reality or making political decisions or even political arguments. They are playing a tribal sport and showing the allegiance and righteousness with words. It’s closer to “my sports team is better than your sports team”. In this situation, there is no string of conversation that can convince them otherwise or land real information. The best thing to do is maintain the relationship, let them know your basic positions, and model “people who disagree with you are very normal and won’t mock you if you change your mind.”

That's great that this works for your family, but you should be careful not to project your personal experience onto others.

An actual productive political discussion where someone changes their mind afterwards is very rare.

It requires a bilateral respect for difference of opinion, a willingness to introspect and challenge one's own positions, and the emotional maturity not to take disagreement personally.

There are some people with whom you'll just never get this. If those people are your family or close friends, a mutual understanding of "we both know we disagree on this topic, so let's avoid it" can be the best you will get.

Sounds like you could use some time in a group that bans discussion of politics.

The way to cause effective local change among people you know is to build meaningful relationships with psychological safety. They will figure out your political opinions with time, and they will be more subtly but durably influenced.

Jamming it into conversations with strong moral judgement attached to the opinion will make people dislike you, and it will not influence people who disagree with you. It will make them harden in their existing views because the emotional awfulness of what you are saying (implicitly accusing them of being bad people, or making them feel under threat) reinforces how correct they have been to have held those views.

Inquiry: what do you define as politics?

Example: is a trans person in your community political for using their preferred pronouns? Going to their preferred bathroom? Is a gay person political for mentioning their same sex spouse? Is an immigrant political for discussing their immigration process (“sorry can’t make it I have an apt with the embassy”)? Is tits or gtfo political?

I’m not trying to be contrarian this is simply my experiences running like a board game group or something. It’s easy to say no politics but then someone’s normal (eg. My name is Helen, where’s the woman’s restroom?) can cause someone to refuse (“that is clearly a man”!) and now you have a mess on your hands as an organizer.

All groups have internal politics, which is worse.

It would be more useful to say that communities should be organised around a set of principles and be ruthless about sticking to them.

The issue isn't so much that groups become "political" (which is a hard standard to define) as much as they lost focus on a goal (like being a book club) and morph into an in-group, an out-group and a set of memes used to identify the in-groupers and ostracise the out-groupers.

The point of most political memes is to identify a small group who are coordinating to try and control a larger mass of people. When the local book club becomes a conduit for them that is obviously toxic for a general member joining because of the joy of reading. A book club community should prioritise books and including people if and when they enjoy books.

Or don't join groups where you disagree on politics. There's no excuse, really. My own family is enough already

That actually sounds like a relatively simple one to resolve although the practicality might be a bit poor. The nonpolitical resolution is to use a space with 1 small unisex bathroom and insist that everyone keep it clean. If there isn't a consensus on who gets a special bathroom then there shouldn't be one.