Stop being helpless.

off of her former “when they go low, we go high” stance.
At the DNC, she told us to “do something”.
I think many Democrats are finally tired of being run over by terrible people.

It will destroy us.

The idea being not that some things cannot be changed, but we need to realistically prioritize the changes we want to make if we want to be successful at changing something. Because as human beings, our reach is substantially limited so strategizing is important.

I think AA meetings are an example of how amazing things can be done if people work together to achieve them. Not the other way around.

The belief in God isn’t the only higher power that could exist. The belief that colllective power is a higher power than our individual wills, is also a powerful thing. That certain things simply cannot be done alone.

I argue that all of the Anonymous groups AA, ALANON, NARC, OVEREATERS are all based on religion.
They said it wasn’t. That any “higher power” could be a tree or whatever.
But the Serenity Prayer starts with the word God.
That’s fine that it’s a religious org. But don’t try to claim it’s not.
I tried several different meetings in several states and they all were either overtly religious or pretty close to it.
If you need help with an addiction, get a qualified therapist. Not AA.

Keep them around.

As somebody who hasn’t ever personally dealt with AA, I cannot attest one way or another. All I can attest to is my general belief that more can be done as a team (or as I would call a “higher power”), then by ourselves. We also need to utilize mindfulness and planning to fulfill these goals.

But I totally agree that including God in the serenity prayer -and essentially keeping it a religious affair, does run the risk of alienating too many people.

...which emphasizes the power that humans DO have, but don't use, in order to brush our responsibilities off on to imaginary other powers.

We aren’t actually gods individually. Colllectively? I’m not so sure.

Formerly thought impossible -- if enough people take that step.

Some things should never be acceptable, though the struggle may take generations of dedicated people.

of change. Only difference is that her hair is gray now.

When in rehab, I was the only one to not go to meetings. Only one, to their disbelief, that had no higher power. Also the only one to successfully not relapse. I was also the only person in the group that was there on my own and was not sent to rehab by a judge.

Please google “success rates for 12 Step Programs”.

The 5 - 10 pct comes from a 2009 study. More recent evidence is stronger. This is from Stanford:

https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2020/03/alcoholics-anonymous-most-effective-path-to-alcohol-abstinence.html

Academic paper here:
https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD012880.pub2/full

On a personal level, my son suffers from mental illness and drug addiction. He’s on his meds and clean/sober for a few years now. He would not have made it this far and done so well without NA. Twelve Step programs are not a panacea, but they are invaluable for millions of people around the world.

about what we can and cannot change.

And we choose to believe those lies.

(his real name). It's often misattributed to Davis, just as a quote about "difficult women" is often misattributed to Jane Goodall. Both misattributions have helped circulate countless social media posts and sold tons of merchandise that wouldn't have sold as well if attributed correctly (though those selling the merch might have sincerely believed the quote was from that famous person).

I searched for quite a while for any site or person claiming Angela Davis had said that to provide any details about when and where she said or wrote it, and I couldn't find any.

That's always a huge red flag that a quote is misattributed.

The oldest source of a nearly identical statement was a syndicated cartoon by Ashleigh Brilliant, as I learned on the website of etymologist Barry Popik -see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Popik -

https://barrypopik.com/blog/im_no_longer_accepting

I am not inclined to change the authorship from a well known female
to an unknown male, without sufficient documentation.

Throughout history males take credit for women's genius.

It's a quote from somebody who is accomplished being given to somebody else who's accomplished but is more famous.

Like Abe Lincoln used to say you can't believe everything you read on the internet.

It is not about the author of the quote at all.
Nothing to do with my point.

I don't care if she said those exact words.
She did better than the man.
She lived the quote.
He just ran his mouth.

I'm saying that as a woman who doesn't like men getting credit for women's genius, either.

I found ZERO documentation that would establish Angela Davis having said that, ever. No speech she gave, and nothing she wrote, cited by anyone. I did see it posted with video that didn't include those words. I spent quite a bit of time checking.

Did you read what I wrote there about the information being from Barry Popik? He's an etymologist. Tracking down this sort of thing is his specialty. And he found nothing to connect that quote to Davis until someone posted on Reddit nearly 35 years after Ashleigh Brilliant's cartoon with it.

I hope you'll at least add a note to the OP directing people to my reply 17...and if you aren't willing to take the word of a professional etymologist, then please find something with more credility than what he wrote.

That alleged Jane Goodall quote posted here the other day was also splashed all over the internet as something she said, when she didn't say it.

There are a lot of misattributed quotes online.

And they should be corrected where possible, and the gender of the person who actually said or wrote those words should NOT be a factor in making a correction.

The issue is authorship.

EDITING to add that the Wikipedia article on Popik that I linked to in reply 17 has as its first reference a 2001 WSJ article that said this:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB97838868937716381

is why they're all over the internet, and why you want to associate them with Davis.

In effect, you're saying you don't care if something is a lie if you think it makes someone you admire look better.

You're saying you're fine with a post-truth world. Which is also a world where Trump can lie as much as he wants, be credited incorrectly with anything his followers want to claim he said or did, and no one cares about the lies.

Generative AI is already making that sort of thing more likely. ChatGPT and similar bots will invent things people said and did, and those lies/hallucinations will get spread all over the internet.

That's why ChatGPT and similar bots are often described as bullshit machines.

It's important that people try not to spread bullshit.

OR try to profit from it. It's likely that most of the people out there peddling merchandise with the fake Jane Goodall quote or this fake Angela Davis quote believed those women said those things, but it's likely some of them didn't - or most likely didn't care whether it was a true quote if they could make some money off that merch.

And although I'm a feminist, it offends me that you don't want credit for something said to go to a male because he's male.

And saying that Ashleigh Brilliant "just ran his mouth" is incredibly contemptuous of everyone whose words ever inspired anyone.

Misapplied and fabricated quotes are ubiquitous on the web, especially on Facebook. This one is inocuous. Last year, I notified Facebook administrators about a false quote propagated by right-wingers. Thank you for shining a light on this.

As an aside, I usually not place importance on short quotes. It is the longer, detailed quotes for which I have more respect. Two of such quotes are from President Eisenhower ( "Every gun that is made . . ." ) and from Professor Barbara Fields ("Who won the Civil War? . . ." ).

misattribution here started with Twitter and Reddit - which is why it's important to correct them where possible.

And while something like this might seem innocuous, if the words are quotable, crediting them to the wrong person is depriving the person who did say or write those words of credit and attention.

That wrongly-attributed "Jane Goodall quote" for instance

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100219409589#post8

when spread all over the internet stole deserved attention from Karen Karbo, the author of a book on difficult women, giving it instead to Goodall because she was more famous. So people who loved the quote didn't find out about Karbo, her book, or the National Geographic article/interview with more of Karbo's thoughts.

Crediting Angela Davis with words that came from Ashleigh Brilliant deprived him of credit and attention.

When people make their living from words, that sort of credit is especially important.

for change. She might have repeated it from someone else. It's still good.

Just use the words. Don't attribute them to Angela Davis without some evidence she said them.

Otherwise, you're essentially suggesting that it's fine to credit anyone with any statement if it doesn't seem impossible that they might have said it sometime, somewhere, even if you have no idea where or when.

She was never ‘accepting the things she cannot change’, as that is contrary to a philosophical viewpoint that considers everything to be part of a process of continuous change. Nor would she be likely to reference a religious organization, implying she once adhered to its teachings.

As a person who has let worry become an unhealthy thing sometimes, I have found it to be very helpful quote for me. Leaving the god part out of it as I am not a very religious person it does not tell you to blindly accept everything just to concentrate on those things you can most make an impact on, imo vs worrying about changing those things out of your control. I had read it in the book how to stop worrying and start living, a bit dated but still very helpful for me.

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 the difference.

The daughter of a minister quoting the Bible should shock no one.

from the Bible.