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I always heard it as
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things that I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I cannot accept,
and the wisdom to know the difference.
I always liked the mirroring of change/accept in the first two lines.
Regardless, I too, hate the other version, and was always confused that it was the “standard” one. As you say, you don’t just change the things you can, you change the things you cannot accept (if you can change them).
It also forces you to think harder about whether you can change them — with an emphasis on trying to change them if they are unacceptible. With the first, it’s too easy to say “I can’t change this.” With the latter, you say “I cannot accept… [e.g. the assault on freedoms caused by the Trump administration]. So what could I actually do to work on this issue?”
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God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know that Firefly’s cancellation is in the former category.
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During undergrad I used to be the “child of five” editor for a buddy in the Philosophy department. The amount of good you get out of a well-mannered and curious dolt reading your work before publication is amazing. I’m pretty sure some of my bad joke footnotes are still in his work.
(To say that Protagoras sucks, you must also say that Protagoras blows.)
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Someone, I forget who, posited the ‘Grover Test’ for things (specifically, IIRC, politics). If, when ruthlessly interrogated by said puppet, it still seemed like a good idea, then ok, we’'l go for it. Otherwise, no. As a concept, it has its charms.
(however, I am now staring at the drinks cabinet imagining an animatronic Grover popping out of it saying, ‘do you really think that’s a good idea?’ I suppose such a thing would easily exceed its kickstarter goals, were it not for IP lawyers. Hey ho. Another sherry chaps?)
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Let us looks at this idea up close!
step step step step step step step step step step
NEAR!
And let’s get a look at the wider implications!
step step step step step step step step step step
FAR!
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I always thought he was a little wooden.
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Uh, no. Definitely not. Three errors in that sentence.
However, it’s a totally reasonable thing to say to a five-year-old, in the context of explaining Stoicism. I only pointed it out because some adult might be reading here who is unfamiliar with Roman history.
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Sure, but you’re dealing with a demographic for whom “I know you are but what am I” is the philosophical quandary they grapple with before being able to grok “Cogito ergo sum”.
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I have no problem with Reader’s Digest versions of philosophy for the masses*, but these two statements are just facepalmingly wow.
Yeah, but piling on feels good, and it’s rare to have such an obvious and uncontroversial target 
Agreed, but my (admittedly shallow) experience with philosophy is less of “way-people-are” and more “way-people-know”?*** -* I mean, any discussion of any body of knowledge is going to eventually come down to “well, how do we know this? How do you know?” Which means that it’s more about how we can find some broadly common framework to express what we think. That people who’s minds are quite different can convince each other of their validity despite not being able to be inside each others’ possibly wildly different heads. I don’t think it’s an accident that logic and philosophy are bound together.
**And in the front cover of the complete series of Action Philosophers is an apt quote: “Philosophy is not a theory but an activity”- Wittgenstein
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Cause and effect are fanciful; our linear, moment-by-moment subjective experience of the temporal dimension of the wholly existent, catholic and unitary reality prevents us from directly perceiving convergences that exist at least partially “before” or “after” our single, moving point of knowledge, so we theorize their existence, almost certainly with severely limited success. Similarly, will is a whimsical symbolic construct intended to represent the portion of volition that any one of us experiences at any specifically examined moment of effort; we aren’t capable of perceiving the totality of which individual will is a portion, unless through divers meditations and asceticisms of which I am skeptical.
Our minds and perceptions are emergent properties of the meat engines we inhabit, and there is no reason to believe objective reality is so limited. Bishop Berkeley had it all inside out!
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Well, epistemology is not the only branch of philosophy, but if you want to waste an afternoon discussing nothing, it might be the best one!
I think that coming up with common systems that let us sort out valid statements from invalid ones is super important because it lets us actually put our minds to work collectively. But looking back on those classes I took that discussed epistemology, all I can think is, “Hey guys, did you notice that science has an epistemology that actually works?”
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So I’m asking God for the ability to accept things that cannot be changed, but God can change anything, and he listens to people asking to change things. Thus finding the self-contradiction in the Serenity Prayer, I declare it null and void.
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“My philosophy is that worrying means you suffer twice.” – Newt Scamander
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In the previous post I started to write out a claim that all philosophy boils down to epistemology, but thought better of it for brevity. I believe so because whether the philosophical topic is ethics or social relations or politics or whatnot it seems to me most disagreements boil down to starting out from a different bedrock of assumptions, and from there it’s turtles all the way down.
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Well, I don’t think that philosophy boils down to epistemology. Rather, I think that philosophers (myself included) boil everything down to epistemology.
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God grant me the wisdom to accept the injustices I cannot change,
the courage and strength to change those that I can,
and the ability to successfully hide the bodies of anyone who tries to stop me.
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