the reality of ideas
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For a long time, I’ve had an idea. My idea is that the world can be a better place - that peace and happiness in the world are possible.
And people would say to me, “You are too idealistic.” As if being idealistic meant being unrealistic. Dreamy, naïve, and impractical. They thought I was young and innocent – that I was well-intentioned, but basically wrong. To many people, being idealistic is part of the process of growing up – a stage of youth that you pass through on the way to becoming a mature, realistic adult (like themselves) who doesn’t believe the world can be a better place.
I’d always say, somewhat defensively, “Well, that’s the way I am.” Which sounded like I had a personality defect, or that I was suffering from a mild case of mental delusion. I was essentially acknowledging that they were right and I was wrong – that they were standing on more solid ground. But I always believed in my heart that I was more right than wrong – that I was not being unrealistic or impractical at all. That others were being stubbornly unrealistic and impractical.
Eventually, I got tired of not being able to give a better answer, or a logical defense of my idea. But where could I find rational support? I couldn’t ask my friends, because none of them ‘suffered’ from idealism. I never saw any self-help books for idealistic people in the bookstore, either. And I was sure that googling the internet for “What To Say If Someone Calls You Idealistic,” would have gotten no results.
I had to come up with an answer by myself. So I thought about idealism and ideas for a long time. And after awhile, this is what I discovered:
Everything that was created in this world first needed an idea in order to become real. Once, there was no such thing as a TV in the world – until somebody had an idea of it. Once, there were no such things as airplanes in the world – until somebody had an idea about them, too. Once, many people thought these things were impossible – that they were too idealistic.
But everything in this world that was created by the human race, whether it was a building, a car, a computer, a telephone, a chair, a shirt, a cup, or even this piece of paper, first started out as just an idea in somebody’s head. Every book, every poem, every song, every movie, every fashion, every design, every work of art, every technology, every business idea – was once just an idea. Every nation on this earth, was once just an idea. Democracy was once just an idea – and so, too, the Internet, the stock market, and guns. Even ordinary, every day things like medicines, make-up, and shoes were all once ideas. So were hamburgers, pizza, pasta, wine, and ice cream. And before it was invented, even money was once just an idea.
Before all these things became real, they were just possible – just ideas in somebody’s head. When ideas become real, when they “come true,” then they become what we call “reality”. And after they have been reality for a time, people forget that they were once ideas – we forget that at one time, they were not real. That once, nothing we created was real. Our past ideas created the world we presently live in today. Our world is built upon ideas. And that is reality. Life itself is an interaction between reality and our ideas of it.
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When somebody calls me idealistic now, this is what I say. When people first hear this, they’re usually speechless for a moment. I can see their minds churning this new idea over in their heads, digesting it and examining it, looking for holes. And then they say, “That makes sense.” And that’s all they usually say – because that’s all they can say. They say, “I never thought about it that way.” Well, of course you haven’t, because you never needed to defend idealism - you’re a defender of “realism”.
People who call themselves “realists” pride themselves on living in the real world, believing they are more in touch with reality. They possess the idea that the reality of the world is a static “thing” that cannot be changed by human beings. They do not see that much of human reality has been “real-ized,” or literally made real, by other human beings – people like you and me.
“Realists” see the world as it is now – and do not see what it could be. But much of human history is precisely the story of people who changed reality – whether it was Alexander the Great, Columbus, Napolean, Henry Ford, Hitler, Gandhi, Mao Zedong, or Bill Gates. These people were all idealistic at one level; they had an idea about what the world could be (or what they themselves could be), and they set out to real-ize it. They believed in their ideas – and many others came to accept and believe their ideas as well. And eventually, their ideas became reality.
But, you may say, you are neither as smart, talented, gifted, or as lucky as these giants of history, so your ideas cannot be real-ized. But I say, even your own individual life is built upon ideas. If your idea is that you need to work at your job so that you can retire and do whatever you want later when you’re old, that is your idea – your vision. If your idea is that life is about excitement, adventure, and fun, and that you should enjoy it while you’re young – that, too, is an idea about the meaning of life. If your idea is that you need the love of a certain person in order to be happy, that is also an idea. If you want to start a business, you’ll need an idea – or you’ll have to copy someone else’s. When you choose your career and say, I want to be a “doctor,” a “teacher,” a “businessman,” or a “housewife,” that is an idea about what you want to do or be. If you look closely at your own life, you will see that the guiding force of your life – is an idea or sets of ideas.
Whether or not these ideas are true or false, and whether they work or not, is another matter. This is why we throw away and change many of our ideas over time – we feel they don’t work anymore. So I believe much of your success and happiness in life depends on discovering, assessing, and possessing the right ideas. All of us, quite literally, are living by ideas. Some of them work - and some don’t. This is why if you want to change your life, you may first want to consider examining and changing your ideas about it.
Under this light, there are no realists. You and me, we are all, in reality, idealists. Human beings are very much idealistic – we are creatures that come up with and live by ideas. And those ideas directly influence our lives and even our world. Because of our ideas, human beings have the capacity to manipulate and change their environment in a way that animals cannot. Human beings can even consciously change themselves – change what we call “human nature.”
Think you that you are but an animal, driven by biological instincts? That your only purpose on this earth and in this life is the same as those of animals - to eat, survive, and reproduce? Although we do share some instincts in common with animals, human beings are not necessarily governed by those instincts. For if our primary goal is survival, then why do people commit suicide? If eating is so important, as it is in the animal kingdom, then why do human beings fast, diet, or go on hunger strikes? And if our biological imperative is to reproduce and perpetuate our own genes, then why do so many people today choose not to have children, and why would anybody ever choose to adopt? Human beings often act against what is considered animal nature. And this is because we have the power to override our own instincts – and we have this power because our ideas can be stronger than our instincts. I say “can”, because sometimes we choose for our instincts to be stronger than our ideas. Sometimes we act like animals – and sometimes we act worse than animals.
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You may ask, if people are so idealistic, then why are they not more idealistic about the world? Perhaps this is because people are too busy striving for the ideals of themselves. Many people do not have the time in their lives and the space in their hearts to care about the happiness of the world – because they are unhappy themselves. They are too busy trying to save themselves from their own unhappiness, so they have no time to care about the happiness of the world. It is not that people are heartless – for most people do have a heart. People do care about the happiness of others – you can see and feel that caring by observing a person’s reactions after they’ve watched some bad news on TV. But often, they will not care enough to do anything about it until they have happiness themselves. They think, “First, I must be happy. Then I can help make others happy.” That is their idea.
They see their own personal happiness and the happiness of the world as two separate things. But my idea is that the happiness of your self and the happiness of the world are not two separate things. Just as the world cannot be truly happy unless you are happy, you also cannot be happy if the world is unhappy. Crime, war, terrorism, political corruption, global warming - all the problems of the world affect our own lives as well. For you are a part of the world, and the world is also a part of you. Those who sacrifice the world’s happiness and think only of their own happiness, will hurt the world – and ultimately, themselves. Most of us seek only the happiness of ourselves and our family and friends, and leave the job of saving the world up to other people. We think of it as someone else’s job, and not our own responsibility. But this is what almost everyone else in the world does – which is precisely why the world is filled with so many unresolved problems. The world is “going to hell” because we only think about how to achieve “heaven” for ourselves. But it is because so much of the world is in hell, that we never manage to feel as if we’re in heaven.
It is not about changing the world first. It has been changed many times before, and yet we still seem to have the same problems – if not more. It is about first changing our ideas – which will lead to a change in the world. And if our own life does not match our idea-l of it, then perhaps we must first change our idea-l of it. The world can change just because of one idea - because every new thing in this world, first began with a new idea.
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