by Daniel Harper

Created on: January 20, 2009

Realism is a term describing the belief that man places interests over ideologies. Idealism is the representation of life in ideal form, or rather, how things ought to be as opposed to how they really are. The will to protect self interest is a process that we, as humans, and furthermore, as one of the many organisms on this earth striving towards the same inherent goal of survival, have abided by for our entire existence. The effort to survive and protect our interests is a standard that will not change as long as our species is inhabiting this planet. Although, one must make an attempt not to speak in such naturalistic and evolutionary terms in order to make this a debate that takes into account more than the simplest of explanations. We have developed a strong ability to reason and consider thoughtfully, the situations that are presented to us. This proclivity to think before acting has given us the rationale necessary to separate what we should and should not do in each respective situation. But the question is, at what point do we draw the line between how we think we should act, with how we truly need to act. This is when the debate between realist and idealist thinking must begin.

When considering the positive and negative aspects to each mode of thought, I remember a quote I happened to come across, which stated, "An idealist is someone whose needs are not at stake, at the moment." This quote, although quite easy to grasp, is a profound statement on the problem with idealist thinking. It is easy for a person to be a champion for those other than themselves, until their interests are, in fact, being compromised by another. When forced to decide between yourself and those with competing interests, whatever they may be, it seems quite certain that the individual will choose self interest above all other.

After quickly reminding ourselves of our innate self interest, which all individuals possess, the next issue is, why can we not live in a society that moves beyond petty individualistic tendencies? The answer is more difficult to ascertain, and needs a great deal of foresight in order to come to a plausible conclusion. In our current state, an idealistic mindset is, indeed, preferable. There is so much that we can improve on that does not need to be thought of from a realist perspective. We could easily get past the unnecessary problems that religion brings to our way of living, which has been the catalyst to many of our current global problems today,

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