issue99

jhr_hitUID: 2540810

TOPIC: ISSUE99 - "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 Pragmatic behavior guarantees survival, whereas idealistic views tend to be superseded by simpler, more immediate options."
WORDS: 676
TIME: 00:45:00
DATE: 2009-2-12 21:03:34

The speaker asserts that the only way to succeed is to take a practical, rather than an idealistic, point of view in any realm of life-whether academic, social, business, for the reason that pragmatic behavior guarantees survival, whereas idealistic views tend to be superseded by simpler, more immediate options. At the first glance, I tend to agree with the speaker's claim, however, the speaker's assertion flies in face of the nature of human beings. In my observation, proper ideal is the original impetus for the development and advancement of human beings and the whole society.

To begin with, our society is suffering from a dramatically changing, involving the science and technology, the conception of mankind, the environment around us, the business world and the field of politics. Admittedly, nowadays, people in academic, social, business, or political are tend to take a practical, rather than an idealistic, point of view.
For example, in the academic field, students are educated to be more pragmatic, from their kindergarten, to the elementary school,
then to the middle school and ultimately to the colleges or the universities, they learn more pragmatic courses such as mathematics, physics, chemistry or computer science, but less ideal ones such as painting, music or other forms of arts, just because the society needs them to be useful people who can contribute to the development of the society. In the realm of business, the executive, on behalf of the interests of the company, taking every effort to seek the profitability for the company, tends to prefer pragmatic products which can make profits rather than the idealism. While, as to the field of politics, politicians are interests in pursuing the interests of their own. To satisfy their desire to be success in the election, they raise more and more pragmatic ideals to make the public believe that they will seek the welfare for all the people, however, when they are elected, they may just pursue interest for their parties or their own.

However, is it real that the prosperity of our modern society derives from these pragmatists but not some idealists? Looking backing to the recent history of China, when people did not have enough food to eat, warm clothes to wear, the whole nation are involving in the war, Chairman Mao, the greatest idealist in China had an idea to establish a new country with witch everyone will have a happy life. Yes, he did. Without ideal, he will not devote all his life to struggling for the welfare of the whole nation, without ideal, he may become a common people and there is no People's Republic of China. We can not even enumerate all the paradigms in politics-Indian's Mahatma Gandhi, American's Martin Luther King and so forth. In the academic fields, it is also the one full of ideal brings the boom of today's science and technology. Copernicus' heliocentric theory, Newton's theory of mechanics or Albert Einstein's theory of relativity, none of them are for the pragmatic use. As for, a successor of Copernicus persisting in his belief through the whole life, were even burned to dead. If not for the ideal, they may not incite to devote all their lives to pursuing for the truth in scientific field. Ideal also plays a vital role in the development of each individual, people with an accurate ideal will be will to devote him or herself pursuing the thing he or she loves. A famous writer has ever said that people living without an aim is like boat sailing without a compass. If we have no ideal, we may be immersed in the material world and lost the real meaning to be a human being, since we are not an animal, we are not live just for food, and we can have a highly pursuit.


In sum, with proper ideal, people can live a much life since they can enjoy the happiness of pursuing the things they cherished, which is also the meaning of life. If only believing pragmatic behaviors, one may loss himself in the material world.