Alice decides Principle X is important enough to make a big deal about.
People don’t seem to understand the issue. Alice explains it more. Some people maybe get it but then next week they seem to have forgotten. Other people still don’t get it.
This reminds me of a line from Shaw: ”The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
I think one way to navigate the challenge this post points at, is to recognize, both privately and publicly, that it’s hard to be perfect all the time, we all falter, and sometimes we must choose our battles.
I think it’s important both to enable the sort of self-forgiveness that’s most needed by those prone to self-flagellation, and also to lower the overall temperature.
So I strive (sometimes even successfully!) to recognize that the things of great import to another person may, in fact, be truly important… while also remembering that the things of great import to me may not, in fact, be truly important.
I think this aligns with your willingness to own “yes, I’m not applying that because it’s too much tradeoff for me”. Because yes, sometimes that person’s unreasonableness is correct… and sometimes I can’t stomach the battle for it, even though I know that. But acknowledging “well, I need a mulligan on this, and I’ll try to give one elsewhere” makes the whole world slightly better off.
This reminds me of a line from Shaw:
”The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
I think one way to navigate the challenge this post points at, is to recognize, both privately and publicly, that it’s hard to be perfect all the time, we all falter, and sometimes we must choose our battles.
I think it’s important both to enable the sort of self-forgiveness that’s most needed by those prone to self-flagellation, and also to lower the overall temperature.
So I strive (sometimes even successfully!) to recognize that the things of great import to another person may, in fact, be truly important… while also remembering that the things of great import to me may not, in fact, be truly important.
I think this aligns with your willingness to own “yes, I’m not applying that because it’s too much tradeoff for me”. Because yes, sometimes that person’s unreasonableness is correct… and sometimes I can’t stomach the battle for it, even though I know that. But acknowledging “well, I need a mulligan on this, and I’ll try to give one elsewhere” makes the whole world slightly better off.