By Schubert Ogden
The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden
According to Pope's "Essay on Man," "to reason right is to submit," hence his imperative, "Submit–in this, or any other sphere."
I quite agree that we are called to obey–and in this sense to submit to things as they really are. But among the things that really are, are both "the things that cannot be changed" and "the things that should be changed." The only way, then, to obey, and thus to submit to things as they really are, is both to accept the things that cannot be changed and to change the things that should be changed.
Not to do what one can to change the things that should be changed is precisely not to submit, or obey–every bit as much, in fact, as to try to change the things that cannot be changed.
Whence the profundity of the so-called serenity prayer of Reinhold Niebuhr.
30 September 2008
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