Idealism

[Kustom]

I thought I'd like to ask you all a question that will most likely bug me til I die:
why do people who have ideals give them away?

We all had ideals when we were kids or teenagers that we felt were just right. I mean ideal in a very broad sense; some people were die-hard leftists, revolutionaries, turn-the-other-cheek hippies, others had dreams to become musicians, write a book or save the world...And yet, if you take a good look around, how many people ditch their dreams and step on their principles as they grow up and forget about them??? Some people even do a U-turn and completely change their ideals to take the opposite stance, like Pierrot's journey from hardcore socialism to libertarian capitalism... Nice guys become jerks, dope fiends from the 60s turn into born again Christians, ganguro into housewives, etc. The list is endless

So why do you think people do that? Is it because reality checks, and what they thought was possible turns out to be out of reach, so they give up? Or is it because they realise they were wrong all along, and that all the assumptions they had made were false? Is it a process, or can a single event change your views forever?

Do you, personally, have/had any ideals and principles, and if so, do you think you will keep them til death do you part or are/were you tempted to give them up?

[MeneerDijk]

Ideals... i still have ideals...but i guess i mellowed out since i was a kid... Grade-school turned me into a militant anti-smoker, but as soon as a nice girl offered me a cigarette my ideals on that went overboard. I guess when we're younger we accept ideals from our peers and parents, but when we learn to think for ourselves we adjust our opninions according to the life we want to lead. Or some people still don't think for themselves and acquire the ideals from their social group.

[Pierrot le Fou]

Ideals are the greatness and the giant failing of youth. When we're young, we have so little experience with the trials and tribulations of real life, that we absorb all these ideals (world peace, feeding the world, a democratic president and congress), and fight for them tooth and nail as if they can be achieved without sacrifice or compromise.

The belief that fighting harder than the other guy will guarantee your vision of the world is naive. Very naive. It's as if we believe that this is a race, and the fastest guy wins it all, and the second guy is the first loser.

In short, we're simplistic.

As we grow older, we start to see the picture in broader strokes, and then broader again, and we realize how difficult it is to effect a change at ALL, let alone to effect a change exactly as we'd like it. So we compromise -- those who don't give up pondering greater issues that is -- and try to get some change that in some way suits us, if not perfectly, because it's SOMETHING.

I gave up my ideals because they were unattainable. I believe in what I believe, but I will take a compromise far quicker than I would even 2 years ago, because SOME progress is better than none. And maybe that's me being an old fart in a young body, but I've seen so many failures that could have been mild successes.

The world will never be perfect by anyone's standards. Compromise is necessary. So I do that, and I don't regret it, and that's my life.

[Kash]

Ask yourself what those ideals are based on. If someone just picks up a notion and commits to it because it seemed fashonable, or someone on TV touted it, it's probably lacking in the logic department. Sooner or later someone will come along and refute the principles or underpinning of this idea and *poof* it dissapears.

On the other hand, ideals that we've come to know based on actual experiance are more ingrained in us. They're tougher to change. Anyway, to change one's mind is a sign of intellegence. Keeping the same opinion when faced with overwhelming evidence is foolishness. Opinions should change.

[ruaidhri]

Great comments from all.

When we are young we see the bright light of truth at the end of the tunnel. Everything is black and white, good or bad. Compromise is evil and only serves to perpetuate injustice.

As we get older, and hopefully wiser, we realize every action causes multiple reactions. We learn that there is no light at the end of the tunnel. We learn that not everyone is of the same mind and that good people do disagree with us. And, sometimes, we learn that we’re wrong. It’s what we do with that knowledge of fallibility that’s important.

So, what do we do. We learn. We learn that society is built on common ground. As pierrot wrote “The world will never be perfect by anyone's standards. Compromise is necessary.” We change, we grow and we find solutions. In the process we often change our minds. We learn as Kash wrote, “… to change one's mind is a sign of intelligence. Keeping the same opinion when faced with overwhelming evidence is foolishness. Opinions should change.”

[Kass]

Reality. Ideals are great and I still think it would be nice if everyone did x, but the reality is that not everyone can or will do x. X also isn't the right solution for everyone, even though it is right for me. Nobody and no situation is cut from the same cookie cutter and no pat answer is workable across the board.

[Kustom]

Well then, why do people sometimes end up becoming like the people they hated before? Why do they sometimes turn against what they stood for? And what do you think about people who keep their ideals to the very end no matter what? Do you admire them, respect them, or just think they're being stubborn?

In short, is giving up on your dreams and ideals the smart thing to do, or just the easy way out?

[Pierrot le Fou]

People who keep their ideals to the very end only kept them because they refused to listen. Nobody has fully formed opinions of the world when sprung from the womb, so the concept that someone who never change their opinions over a lifetime is conceited, and I for one don't respect it.

[RDClip]

Ideals and dreams are all fine and good for children, but for real life? Not so much. I agree with an above post in saying that people grow up and realize what the world is really about. They realize that it isn't all black and white or you really can't change the world. That's why entertainers are the ones with all those crazy ideas; because they don't live in the world of the average person.

Me? I'm prepared to drop any idea of belief on the drop of a hat if it doesn't benefit me.

[Anderson Council]

As much as we would like to believe otherwise, ideals are not confined solely to children; they are rather as intregal to humanity as food. So long as you have some semblance of identity, as one would be more or less insane without, you have ideals. If you see yourself as an artist, for example, you have some image in your mind of what the perfect artist is, and thus attempt to make yourself as such. Furthermore Nihilism, which few would doubt is the most unidealistic philosophy created, even has the ideal of Nietzsche's Superman within it's tenets. Whether we realize it or not, our lives are conducted according to our ideals.

[Marblehead]

For a good ten years now I've seen the world as a thousand shades of grey. I had a hard time coming to terms with an opinion because I could see the rational of all sides. It wasn't really until after my time in Afghanistan did I realize the need for taking a stand and having a set ridged opinions. If I don't shout out my anger, scream in rage, and bite like a pitbull someone will take it as an oppourtunity to use and abuse me for their own ends.
I think that if Americans have one problem it's that we are way to complacent. Instead of having to foresight to see what route our leaders are taking us down, we blindly let them decide what's best for us. So long as it doesn't affect us directly, no one cares. No one cares when the neighbors house is burning. It might be a shame, or sad but it really isn't going to put a kink in your day.

I look back at my time in Afghanistan and all I see are a bunch of guys being used as tools.

Congrats mother, your son is worth $500,000 and a flag.

[Kustom]

Yeah, I personally don't think it's that simple. I had a lot of ideals in my youth, and to be sure, my days of demonstrating and bouncing to the sound of Rage against the machine are long gone, but I didn't loose all of them after I grew up and I indeed picked up new ones. Ideals that are based on you having no experience from the real world are probably worthless and even misleading. But ideals that you build up from your experiences are a different story altogether, and sometimes, I believe you do have to take a stand. All those people who grow up to become exactly like their parents while they longed for something else, is it really because there is no other way, or are they letting the forces of habit and social pressure push them into the mold? And are they really happy about it?

[Anderson Council]

Well, our perception of ourselves and the outside world can be created by nothing other than what we know, so I imagine it would be quite rare if not nonexistant to find one
whose surroundings have not influenced their ideals. While I do not believe that all are doomed to be just like their parents, we are forced to some extent to conform to pre-existing ideologies.