issue 99

ShurenQUID: 3492102

Issue Topic: In any realm of life-whether academic, social, business, or political-the only way to succeed is to take a practical, rather than an idealistic, point of view. Pragmatic behavior guarantees survival, whereas idealistic views tend to be superceded by simpler, more immediate options.

12:58PM-2:00 PM   words: 678

The debate between idealism and pragmatism has been lasting for a long time. Some people believe that pragmatism is a more down-to-earth way to deal with current problems in many different fields. However, others hold that idealism is also important because it provides endless motivations to accomplish a job. I think, taking real world problems into consideration, people should keep a balance when dealing with short-term and/or long-term problems.

Pragmatic people always handle a problem always based on the fact of the circumstances. This is a good approach in the realm of business and academic. For business, company owners have to consider the profits. They have to be really pragmatic on analyzing market data and making very practical decisions in order to increase the profits of the company. For example, businessmen do not want to open a Fridays steak house in North Korea because North Korean are too poor to have a steak for dinner and plus the strong anti-America culture there. On the other word, there is no or only a little market in North Korea. So, from the point view of pragmatism, it is highly not recommended to open a steak house in North Korea due to the consideration of profits. But ideally, all men are created equal, North Korean deserve a good steak for dinner. However, based on present data, this is not going to happen in a foreseeable future.

In the field of academic, pragmatism also played a significant role for both students and professors. Students need to learn everything that contributes to their successful and favored career in school. If a student dreamed to be an engineer in the future, he/she must be not willing to choose too many courses on English literature or a course titled Introduction to Chinese. I am not saying that a student will absolutely not take courses outside their field or those courses benefits them nothing. But smart student will be very practical and concentrate on their major. Professors, in order to get research grants, are also pragmatic. Researches conducting by professors are all related to the interests of funding providers. For instance, a professor want to do some research toward how to make different race people cry. This is a very interesting topic thought no company or foundation is willing to fund this project because the project makes no money and is not likely has the potential to make money in the future. There are distance between pragmatism and idealism.

However, in other realms such as political field, idealism contributes more. Every leader wants to make their country better and stronger. Every four years in United States there will be a presidential election. President candidates run campaigns to advocate people vote for him/her. During their campaigns, they will be real idealistic to advertise their political goals such as better the environment and reduce the unemployment rate. The idealistic goals help them earn more votes in order to win the election and later on, those goals became the motivation in his/her working as a president. Without the passion and dreams to build the country better, no one wants to be a president. I can still remember Dr. Martin L. King Jr.’s famous speech “I have a dream.” If doctor had not to be that idealistic, there would be no such touching speech and African-American now are still living a segregated life from mainstream white people culture.

To sum up, to be pragmatic or idealistic is based on a case-to-case basis. In some field, pragmatism helps people having reasonable analysis and making right decisions. Other fields, on the other hand, require the idealism and the passion to be the target and motivation for people to achieve a certain goal. The most important thing is that keep a good balance between pragmatism and idealism.