I was meandering around in my brain and that thought came
up. And I thought that already has to be a book. I internet searched the phrase
on three different search engines and nothing that matched it exactly appeared
or found.
There are quite a few references discussing the failure of
idealism yet not the exact phrase. Here are some interesting references I
found:
The
phrase “your idealism is a epic failure” (which appeared in the text box as I typed
idealism is a failure.) coughed up this:
How
does your idealism make you suffer? : r/infj
I am the opposite. For many many years now, I've
practiced the "Fail Fast. Fast Forward" approach; which
means I learn quickly from my mistakes ...
Idealism is
Just Sophistry: The Fatal Flaw of External Reality ...
Jan 14, 2024
What
does Nietzsche mean by "All idealism is falseness in the
...
Mar 6, 2023
Clarification
for idealism : r/askphilosophy - Reddit
Sep 14, 2024
Why
reject idealism? : r/askphilosophy - Reddit
May 11, 2014
More
results from www.reddit.com
(“a epic” is what the phrase contained, not an epic. Don’t
know why)
https://howtosavetheworld.ca ›
2009/05/06 › the-curse-...
May 6, 2009 — I have always been an idealist.
Even as a young child I imagined worlds that were, in every way, perfect and
simple.
What's Wrong With Idealism? - Newsweek
Published: Jan 15, 1995
Estimated Reading Time: 6 mins
What remains is idealism without ideas. It offers no
guide to political action and creates the illusion that important decisions can
be taken without conflict. The result is a failure of...
https://www.essentiafoundation.org › idealism-may-not...
Idealism may not be what you think | Essentia Foundation
https://www.fau.edu › spa › pdf
[PDF]
The Failure of Idealism: Mental Models and the Inability to …
The Failure of Idealism: Mental Models and the
Inability to Change Public administrators are attracted to ideals. American
public administration has been intimately involved with the …
So you can go down many rabbit holes with this one
phrase, yet as I was thinking I could not see how any idealism worked. And I
think many of you with just a quick thought may come to the same conclusion. We
have many “ism”s yet we do not have many utopian societies. Yet the phrase that
caught my attention the most is driving me mad because as I contemplated about
the failure of idealism I realized idealism fails because it has no path of
action. The phrase I found that came closest to my internalized meanderings is:
What remains is idealism
without ideas. It offers no guide to political action and creates the illusion
that important decisions can be taken without conflict. The result is a failure
of leadership. In the Clinton administration, principles enshrined in high
rhetoric, such as America's commitment to Bosnia's national survival, are
frequently abandoned when their cost becomes apparent.
This is from the Newsweek article” What’s wrong with
idealism” listed above.
The article pretty much describes where my thoughts
devolved into to a point yet I also think that it is much more. I guess you
have to look at how broad of a definition of idealism you want to use. Are we
talking large scale idealism such as communism or democracy? Are we going to
say the ideal has to be all encompassing for mankind? And is that where the failure
lies? Or can you as the Newsweek article discusses relate it to a specific
idealism that tries to solve one problem in society?
The article also discusses the people behind idealism or
people trying to create an ideal solution to a problem. They have specific groups
in mind and there is also much more, yet their example does highlight problems
with trying to come up with an ideal for any situation.
Idealism in any shape form or fashion according to my
brain offers no guide to political action. The authors of any ideal have to
back out of the ideal and create a path to achieve the goal. In it’s most
generic sense communism needed socialism to arrive at communism. Somewhere
someone had to centralize all planning so all wealth could be distributed equally.
Could it still be achieved? I doubt it since there are too many humans
involved. And is it because of humanity or human nature that idealism will
always fail? Probably, yet we still create ideals all the time. There is
something ingrained in the human spirit that wants a perfect world, some kind
of equality amongst men.
Philosophers spent millennia developing idea after idea
to no avail. No one has turned the table on the foibles of mankind and figured
out what we need to do to all be equal.
And this is not my original point, yet it must be said at
this moment. This is why I believe our Constitutional Republic is the best idea
so far. The key behind it is the concept of equal opportunity with protections
stated for those not in power or not as “equal” as others. The failure of course
is humans still want to control other humans and in our case is it the economic
hierarchy that so many of us foolishly
believe will support the masses also. No wonder socialism looks so good to so
many. Socialism will fail, yet capitalism only succeeds for the one percent,
the rest of us are serfs. We did come close by the 1950’s. Yet it is not this
time that Trump refers to when he says make America great again. No he has a
different America he wants to make great. Unfortunately too many of his supporters
think it is the 1950’s and (white) American workers are going to be treated
well. At one point our parents and grandparents worked hard and started
creating equal opportunity in practice, yet the one percent said “holy shit,
this doesn’t work for us” and began the process of buying off our government
for their benefit. No revolution, no
bodies lying in the street, just plain old economic power plays because they
could. So most Americans do not realize how bad they were screwed. You look at
the wealth gap from the 70’s to now and it is obvious, but no one wants to do that because then you have to
admit how much of a patsy you became.
Anyway the above paragraph was not my original intent in
thinking about why idealism is a failure. Or
maybe I was thinking the above because that leaves us
with one successful idealism and that is the idealism that since I am richer
than you I am better than you and you must follow me or you are a bad person.
It seems like that is where our society is headed unless some philosopher can create
a new idealism that replaces all the failed ones that we can rally behind and
watch fizzle out once we try to put it in practice without a true path for
implementing it.
Idealisms are failures for many reasons yet I will cling
to our idea of a constitutional republic until someone comes up with something
better. I just hope others realize it is up to us to fight for it before it is
too late.
Or maybe just maybe the ideal world is not of this world
and we need to focus not on things on this earth. It seems when we lose our
moral compass and our faith is when our societies decline. To what truth do we
follow? Ours? Or? Right now it seems our society has no moral compass and more
and more the lack of morals much less the casting aside of our Republic’s
ideals show we are in a great heap of fecal matter.
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