If I were a muslim girl getting discriminated against for wearing a hijab, I'd stop wearing the hijab.
So you would, I guess, also suggest that Sikhs should stop wearing turbans, Jews should stop wearing a kippah, nuns should stop wearing habits, pagans should stop wearing pentangles, etc.
Not only is your suggestion frankly both offensive and pretty idiotic, but the world it would lead to would have even more discrimination than now and be a hell of a lot more boring.
Excellent point. But "if the result of happiness_from_identification_with_current_religion + happiness_from_how_people_make_me_feel" is negative, maybe a) you are unhappy, b) it's not an untractable problem because c) there is something you can change in the equation, and there is something you can't change.
You know the saying - you can't change the others, only yourself.
Even if you only consider personal happiness as important, you should reflect on the quote I posted. Some temporary unhappiness and struggle may be preferable in the long run.
Only from a very narrow set of perspectives. There are many perspectives on life and for many of them a 'utility function' would seem nonsensical at best. Economics is not as all-encompassing a discipline as some people would like to make out.
Would you care to come up with such a "perspective on life"? I bet that for any actual, constructed perspective (rather than an a-priori incompatible one like "a perspective on life such that it doesn't admit a utility function") a utility function can be defined.
Just because a utility function can be defined for a given perspective doesn't mean that it automatically makes sense from within that perspective, given that defining a utility function is choosing to view things from an economic perspective and even in economics there is a difference of opinion of what that actually means, with some economists viewing it as something abstract that is only used to discuss more fundamental things and with others saying that utility functions are in themselves fundamental.
Saying that utility functions are the "what there is to life", is a bit like 42 being the answer to life, the universe and everything in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. What meaning you can draw depends totally on what question you are asking, or what perspective you are looking at it from.
For instance, if you are a squirrel, then an economist might be able to calculate a utility function for your behaviour, however the concept of utility functions themselves have no bearing (as far as we know) on "what there is to life" from the squirrel's perspective.
Right, and this is basically saying that we should be aware of how much anti-Muslim prejudice sucks to experience, so that we can start changing ourselves.
> So you would, I guess, also suggest that Sikhs should stop wearing turbans, Jews should stop wearing a kippah, nuns should stop wearing habits, pagans should stop wearing pentangles, etc.
Only if said individuals of the group are uncomfortable with their experience of discrimination. Others have thicker skins and ignore it, and some don't face any discrimination at all. Some want to rebel against society like a teenager and knowingly do stuff that gets them disapproval. My advice is an obvious solution to a specific problem, it does not generalize to "all members of X".
So you are saying that if you are uncomfortable with your experience of discrimination then you should change your appearance to appease your persecutor?
Do you make this crap up yourself, or does it get sent to you through the mail as part of your subscription to Batshit Monthly?
Its a matter of psychological dissonance; when you're under that much pressure, you either change your thought (ignore the haters) or change your actions (stop wearing Hijab), it's a subjective thing, no point on arguing whats right or wrong here.
So you would, I guess, also suggest that Sikhs should stop wearing turbans, Jews should stop wearing a kippah, nuns should stop wearing habits, pagans should stop wearing pentangles, etc.
Not only is your suggestion frankly both offensive and pretty idiotic, but the world it would lead to would have even more discrimination than now and be a hell of a lot more boring.