Pragmatic acceptance gives way to active engagement when danger touches one’s own life.

Evidence

Pragmatic acceptance can be sustained towards most of the abstract systems that impinge on individuals’ lives, but by its very nature such an attitude cannot be carried on all the while and in respect of all areas of activity. For incoming expert information is often fragmentary or inconsistent,* as is the recycled knowledge which colleagues, friends, and intimates pass on to one another. On a personal level, decisions must be taken and policies forged. Privatism, the avoidance of contestatory engagement—which can be supported by attitudes of basic optimism, pessimism, or pragmatic acceptance—can serve the purposes of day-to-day “survival” in many respects. But it is likely to be interspersed with phases of active engagement, even on the part of those most prone to attitudes of indifference or cynicism. For, to repeat, in respect of the balance of security and danger which modernity introduces into our lives, there are no longer “others”—no one can be completely outside. Conditions of modernity, in many circumstances, provoke activism rather than privatism, because of modernity’s inherent reflexivity and because there are many opportunities for collective organisation within the polyarchic systems of modern nation-states. — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 355

Categorization

• XREF: This shows the mechanism by which Stevens stays privatised: the ‘others’ who cannot be completely outside are exactly the servants and Jews with whom Stevens refuses engaged contestation — ‘no one can be completely outside’ is the moral claim the novel dramatises. — connects to: Even pragmatic acceptance conceals unconscious existential dread about global catastrophe. — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 351; Trust requires controlling one’s own readiness to accept risk — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 161; The redefinition of bravery as psychic risk is an invented military virtue — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 366 (+3 more)

Related

• Even pragmatic acceptance conceals unconscious existential dread about global catastrophe. (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Change comes only through action, not passive acceptance or endurance #expands (0.60) — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 557
• The redefinition of bravery as psychic risk is an invented military virtue #complicates (0.45) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 366
• Trust requires controlling one’s own readiness to accept risk #qualifies (0.40) — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 161