“Acceptance is the key to peace.” Teach Different with Unknown Author

Transcript

Steve Fouts  (00:10)

Well, welcome everybody to the Teach Different podcast. We have a really cool quote this week from an unknown author. So we’re gonna get a piece of timeless wisdom that no one can even attribute to any one person, which probably means that it’s been adopted and kind of accepted by many, many people. And once you hear it, it’s gonna be a really, really thought-provoking quote. And you know the routine, right? We’re gonna take this quote. We are going to talk about what the quote means. We’re gonna figure out what the claim the quote is making is. And we’re also gonna come up with a counterclaim to the quote. This is how the Teach Different Method works. I’m here with my brother, Dan. We’re gonna also do an essential question: come up with a couple, kind of, inquisitive, curious senses of what this quote really means and how we could actually apply it to our real life. So with that, let’s just launch right in here. We don’t have a bio on the author again because it’s an unknown author, but here’s the quote. Acceptance is the key to peace. Acceptance is the key to peace. Dan, what do you think about this one? 

Dan Fouts (01:37)

I like this. Acceptance is the key to peace. My social science brain goes to a historical event, actually, Neville Chamberlain in World War II, where there was his visit to Munich to meet with Hitler to try to appease Hitler and to convince Hitler to stop aggression in Europe. And the policy became that of appeasement. The idea being that you appease someone by accepting their demands with the hope that they will cease their demands and that will ultimately lead to peace. Now that did not work out very well for England and for Europe. But I just went right to history there. So I guess, you know, with the claim there, it seems like the idea is if you give somebody what they want, if you accept what they’re asking of you, then that is going to lead to a peaceful situation and they won’t ask for more. That would be my claim, playing on that.

Steve Fouts (02:57)

Yes, you took a personal relationship angle on that, how people interact and going with your idea, if you think of bullies and you think of accepting a bully, meaning, you know, you’re acquiescing to their demands or you’re kind of cowering, hoping that it’s going to keep you safe. Unfortunately, like as in the case with your historical example, that doesn’t work out. Always accepting and being kind of meek is not the key to getting rid of conflict. I actually took a different tact on this. When I immediately saw it, I thought of, I wasn’t thinking of people accepting and acquiescing to other people and their demands. I was thinking of things like these events outside of your control, like maybe a death in your family or maybe you ran into some financial hardships and some things happened that really weren’t your fault. And you know how we get with this, we get so frustrated that we want to control everything and it creates this terrible mood and anxiety when things are not happening the way we want them to happen. But the only way to get our peace back and get our mojo back when bad things happen to us, or one of the ways, is to kind of accept it. This is a little stoic. You know you can’t change it. Just accept it, go with it, and concentrate on something else.

Dan Fouts (04:36)

Yeah. So you’re talking about a peace of mind was how you read peace. I read it more as peace in terms of between nations, which, okay, we got to stop here just for a quick pause. And for the audience, therein lies the beauty of this method. This quote is applicable on both an individual level, the way you use it, Steve Fouts, and how you deal with life’s hardships and struggles, and it can also be brought into a historical setting and applied there, which is the beauty of these philosophical quotations. I think both of those reads on the claim make a lot of sense.

Steve Fouts (05:19)

I thought of another one, acceptance of other people, going to the idea of people and the dynamics of human relationships. When you’re around a bunch of people that maybe don’t look like you or are different than you are. There’s a tendency, I think it’s natural, to feel a little threatened by that and a little less comfortable than you would if you were around someone that you were more familiar with. And that can create anxieties and that can create conflict because you might not really want to know where that other person’s coming from. And you might have all these assumptions and stereotypes because you don’t know who they are. But if you take this tact of acceptance and you don’t really judge them, you just look at them and say, hmm, this person’s completely different than I am. And they’re saying things that I would never say. Let me accept them for who they are. Like, don’t judge them too quickly. Just kind of let it play out a little bit. See what their personality is really like. And in more cases than not, I mean, I think you come up with a very good understanding of other people when you can step back and just accept them for who they are and that creates peace is the point.

Dan Fouts (06:36)

Yeah, when you’re not trying to change and control people, generally speaking, you’re gonna live a happier life. Otherwise, you’re gonna stand in disappointment because they’re not gonna ever meet your expectations. And that’s a recipe for discontent and unhappiness in my opinion.

Steve Fouts (06:46)

Yeah, well, do the counterclaim. You kind of flirted with it at the beginning. What’s key to this? Acceptance is the key to peace. What’s the counterclaim?

Dan Fouts (07:03)

Yeah, mean, well, the counterclaim is sometimes fighting is the key to peace. Confronting is the key to peace. Challenging is the key to peace. If you wanna, you gotta get out ahead of problems sometimes so that it does not lead to worse problems. So it might be inconvenient and filled with struggle at the front end when you fight and confront. But ultimately, it’s going to lead to peace because you show your enemy or your nemesis that you’re not going to be pushed around.

Steve Fouts (07:45)

Yeah, that’s back to the bully example. You stand up to a bully. That’s the only way to get him to leave. And and you know, find peace. That’s what some people believe. That’s a pretty good job.

Dan Fouts (07:59)

What about your angle? What about your personal angle on the counterclaim?

Steve Fouts (08:04)

Sometimes when you accept reality and all these terrible things that are happening or these things that are not happening the way you want to, you end up becoming resigned. Like you’re so accepting of everything, you give up on your own goals. You stop trying for things because you’re happy go lucky. Now you’re just letting everything happen. You know, same thing with kind of accepting other people and people who are different than you are, that may do things that you disagree with, that maybe their morals are different than yours. That takes a lot of energy to keep doing that. And sometimes it waters down in a way who you are and some of your convictions. So there’s my counterclaim to my own belief.

Dan Fouts (08:59)

Yeah, if you’re hanging out with friends that are doing bad things and you just roll over and say, well, I accept everything you’re doing. I’m not gonna suggest that what you’re doing should be changed. I’m just gonna go along with it. Well, you’re gonna be brought down into their immoral behavior as well.

Steve Fouts (09:17)

You might think it’s peace because you’re not going against peer pressure, you know, but.

Dan Fouts (09:23)

You’re compromising your own beliefs. You’re getting a lot of peace, but you’re also losing your moral sense of self-worth in the process.

Steve Fouts (09:32)

Yeah, there you go. There you go. Think of Audrey Lorde, one of our favorite quotes, your silence will not protect you. That’s really a counterclaim to this.

Dan Fouts (09:34)

And that’s negative.

Steve Fouts (09:46)

Right? It’s basically saying if you are meek and you don’t stand up, it’s gonna you’re gonna get in trouble You’re not going to get out of trouble. I should say you’re not going to get peace. It’s gonna come back to you

Dan Fouts (10:03)

Yeah, the quote, acceptance is the key to peace really plays on this idea that we do gravitate towards peace and lack of conflict. And I would say that even about my personality sometimes, I will avoid conflict a lot of times at work because I just don’t want the battle. I don’t want the energy drain. I just let it go. make a conscious decision.

Steve Fouts (10:03)

Those are valid.

Dan Fouts (10:31)

And sometimes that’s good, but other times I think I could benefit more from confronting things. There’s some lessons here. Yeah.

Steve Fouts (10:37)

This is wisdom. Yeah, there’s some wisdom here because you kind of came back to the claim. If you’re not picking your battles and you’re trying to like fight everything thinking that you’re going to get to some type of peace, that’s misguided. You’ve got to accept some of this stuff. But go with that because you were starting in on an essential question. Really? ⁓ How do you know what battles to fight?

Dan Fouts (11:05)

How do you know when to accept and when to fight? How do you know when to confront and when to yield in situations with people? How does a country, again, you can extrapolate this higher, when does a country benefit most from acceptance versus confrontation?

Steve Fouts (11:11)

Yes. Yeah, that’s a really good one actually, like the foreign policy of a country. So this would be a good quote maybe to use if you’re trying to teach things like foreign policy and decisions that our government has made, maybe wars that we’ve gotten into, throw this quote up and just get everybody thinking about was it worth it? Was the battle worth it? Are we better off because we didn’t just accept things the way we were, we were proactive and we changed things.

Dan Fouts (12:07)

I can also see this being linked to civil rights figures, women’s rights, anyone who’s stood up and said, I’m not going to accept because I’m interested in just peace and contentment. I’m going to fight and I’m gonna inconvenience myself for a greater goal in the future. This could start so many interesting, a novel, in English, a historical event.

Steve Fouts (12:37)

Yeah. Even like Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, the different ways they looked at fighting against injustice. It’s not an easy one. It’s not an easy notion to know exactly what to do in every single case. But I think that asking that question, which battles are worth fighting, that’s the key, the essential question to me. Because the minute you know that, then you’re gonna have a lot of energy for the battles you choose. And you’re not going to be all frayed out because you’re always trying to fight all these battles. Because I don’t think that’s a recipe for success.

Dan Fouts (13:21)

Yeah. And we’ve used a lot of examples in the classroom setting on this little episode here, but I’m thinking Steve Fouts of the community conversations that we’re starting to have where we have people in an intergenerational setting considering these quotes. Wouldn’t it be interesting to hear older people and younger people both answer that essential question in a setting? What battles are worth fighting? I’d love to hear what an 80 year old would say with that, the wisdom that would come from something like that, as opposed to when you’re young, you have a different sense of what’s important in prioritizing it.

Steve Fouts (14:01)

Yeah. You know, just thinking about it from the youth’s perspective, though, a quote like, acceptance is the key to peace. I can definitely see some youth saying, I know what that one means. You do what your parents are asking you to do, because if you don’t, you’re not going to get peace. You’re going to have an issue. So you have to accept, you know, whatever, curfews, rules. I’m just throwing out the kinds of things they might think about. Because there’s definitely wisdom in both, right? Fighting against it and accepting it.

Dan Fouts (14:42)

Definitely. Age-dependent.

Steve Fouts (14:44)

Very good one. Very good one. Again, we don’t know who said it, but it was thought provoking and hope you enjoyed it. And that’s going to be us for this week. Thanks so much for coming to the Teach Different Podcasts and listening in. 

Dan Fouts (15:02)

Yeah, we hope you can use this one, definitely. Okay, take care everybody.

Steve Fouts (15:08)

Bye bye.