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<\/p>\nThat is a rather narcissistic question to begin with, isn\u2019t it? If we want to be something, then, according to this statement, we can be that, regardless of what it means to anyone else, or what it means to our own obligations to reality.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The woke liberal culture would say yes: we can be anything we want to be<\/em>. Anything? According to those who say we can, not quite. You cannot be a \u201ctoxic\u201d male \u2013 or much of a male at all, especially a white one. You cannot be a racist, by their definition. You cannot think women should play traditional roles. You cannot be a Trump supporter, a conservative, or a Christian. No, no, no. According to the \u201cwoke liberal culture,\u201d you have no right to hold these identities.<\/p>\n They do, however, believe you can rewrite the body (among other elements). You can be a woman even if you have a penis, or a man if you do not. Be a \u201cfurry,\u201d a raccoon, a unicorn. Be anything you want to be. And not only can you \u201cbe\u201d it; everyone around you has to acknowledge and accept what you say you are. And not only do they have to \u201cacknowledge and accept\u201d what you say you are, they too have to believe it.<\/p>\n Take that trans person for example, who believes they are something they are not because they identify with it. They cannot simply take that claim and live by it, they insist that everyone around them live by it as well. They will go so far as to attempt to modify the physical reality that presents them as what they believe to be the wrong gender, by having surgery to remove the obvious culprits. Of course, they cannot modify every cell in their body, which is coded for the sex they were born. And again, all of us out here, including the medical practitioners who perform the physical transition, should believe their psychic and emotional conviction as well.<\/p>\n To reiterate, the liberal trans concept is that a person does not merely want to be a different sex, but is born in the wrong body. Therefore, they need to adjust reality \u2013 the physical sexual biology \u2013 in order to conform with what they claim they need. Which is quite different from claiming they just want it.<\/p>\n So, what do we say, then, about what it is that we want to be, as opposed to what it is that we are, or what it is that we need to be? I am using the transgender situation here as a clear and obvious example, although what I am saying applies to many other situations, including \u201cpresentism,\u201d \u201ccancel culture,\u201d \u201cTrump\u2019s destruction of the world as the most \u2018evil man alive\u2019,\u201d and on and on, to varying degrees, of course.<\/p>\n Most of the people I am talking about believe that how they see the world is not simply a \u201cbelief\u201d but is in fact a \u201cneed.\u201d In order for reality to sit with them in a healthy way, it should first be a certain way. They need it to be that way, or else there is no acceptance of it as reality. If it is not the way they need for it to be, they take one of several options:<\/p>\n What should they do instead? What people have done since the beginning of human history. Believe in the reality presented to them; if they can\u2019t modify it through normal means, then accept it. Ah, wait a minute. Isn\u2019t there a famous prayer about this?<\/p>\n \u201cGod, grant me the serenity to accept what I cannot modify, courage to transform what I can, and wisdom to know the difference<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s the short form everyone knows.<\/p>\n The prayer is generally attributed to the American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. A student of his, Winnifred Wygal, wrote a close version into her diary in October 1932 and credited him: \u201cGod, grant me the serenity to accept what I cannot help, and the courage to transform what needs to be altered<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n She published a fuller wording in 1940, again naming Niebuhr. The prayer then drifted into wider circulation, and Alcoholics Anonymous picked it up in the early 1940s after it turned up in a New York newspaper, which is how it became the household line it is today.<\/p>\n Niebuhr later said he believed he had written it himself. The longer version he is associated with runs a little differently:<\/p>\n \u201cGod, give us grace to accept with serenity what cannot be modified, courage to transform what should be transformed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n Same idea. Accept what will not move. Transform what will. And know which is which.<\/p>\n But then there is another aspect. There is want, there is need, and there is also belief.<\/p>\n If a person believes that he is Napoleon, or that he is Jesus, is he therefore those beings? Does he inhabit that alternate reality simply because he believes he does?<\/p>\n But in reality, he isn\u2019t. He isn\u2019t Napoleon, and he isn\u2019t Jesus. We chalk that up to psychic illness, to psychosis \u2013 a condition in which a person believes something that is not in alignment with reality, whatever reality is.<\/p>\n If he is not Jesus, but believes he is, he is not in alignment with the consensus that Jesus lived two thousand years ago, and that one cannot be something they aren\u2019t.<\/p>\n Modern liberal culture treats identity as a matter of choice or internal feeling. In the case of sex, that becomes the assertion that a person can stake a claim to the other sex despite biological coding in every cell of the body.<\/p>\n Notice the slide. First it is a want: I want<\/em> to be the other sex. Then it is a need: I need<\/em> the body altered so it conforms to that inner claim. Then it is a belief: I am<\/em> the other sex, and the body is what is wrong.<\/p>\n Wanting is a desire. Needing is a demand that the world rearrange itself around the desire. Believing is a claim about what is.<\/p>\n The first two can be argued about. The third is a statement of fact, and a statement of fact is either aligned with reality or it isn\u2019t. Believing one is Napoleon does not make one Napoleon. Believing one is the other sex does not make one the other sex. The body does not negotiate, even when it is mutilated in an effort to conform.<\/p>\n Reality is not a flexible construct dictated by a person. One cannot be something they are not, regardless of the intensity of the belief or the desire to alter physical presentation.<\/p>\n And the world itself, war, politics, history, cannot be something it is not, even if a group of people first want it to be, then need it to be, then believe it is the only way it can be.<\/p>\n Author: Todd Hayen, PhD (registered psychotherapist practicing in Canada)<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n yogaesoteric <\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" That is a rather narcissistic question to begin with, isn\u2019t it? If we want to be something, then, according to this statement, we can be that, regardless of what it means to anyone else, or what it means to our own obligations to reality. The woke liberal culture would say yes: we can be anything […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[382],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-248536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinions-1602-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=248536"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248536\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":248541,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248536\/revisions\/248541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=248536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=248536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
\nOctober 31, 2026<\/p>\n