ISSUE 99, PLZ lambaste it !

[Billbryson]

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 Pragmatic behavior guarantees survival, whereas idealistic views tend to be superceded by simpler, more immediate options."
WORDS: 424 TIME: 00:45:00 DATE: 2008-05-28 19:41:04

The speaker asserts that in any realm of life, taking a practical, rather than an idealistic point of view is the only way to succeed. Because, as stated, pragmatic behavior guarantees survival, whereas idealistic views tend to be superceded by simpler, more immediate options, which I concede in most of cases related to individual choice. However, beyond that concession, I insist that pragmatic and idealistic points of view complement and supplement each other.

For some, the choice in life is nothing but an illusion. They believe, only pragmatic behavior guarantees survival. They tend to choose the most promising majors in colleges, then the most profitable job as career.Life is not dreaming, but every minute endorsed to earn one's own bread. Yet, for others, the true values of life are every conquest guided by ideal.They glory every dream that will come true as they believe, and spend most of their lives pursuing some ideals. Contradictory, as these two opposing points of view may seem to be, they are consisting in the point that every individual needs to establish his or her own value system to sustain daily life psychologically, socially and economically, if not the pragmatic one, then the idealistic one or even the mixed, or sometimes practical, sometimes idealistic. Every one is an odd combination of conflicts and contradictions, so is the case of pragmatism and idealism.

Besides the indispensible merits of practical and idealistic value systems to individuals, they are also counterparts that entangled and raveled in human race as a whole throughout history. Let us take the invention of aircraft as an example. Say, on one hand, human race was idealistic by imaging flying in the sky, if not just like birds fluttering two fake wings. On the other hand, we were pragmatic enough to use it as conveyance not until it was ensured as safe as a common motor car, if not the one with the highest safe rate at that time. We were dreamers to land on the moon, while we were pragmatic enough to not just jacket a live person towards the moon. More remote in pristine time, we were dreamers to have meat every day, and pragmatic enough to domesticate animals rather than consuming the already needed body energy to hunt day by day.

In sum, for a moment, putting our own value system aside, we will find that neither of pragmatic and idealistic points of view can be depreciated. Both assume a correspondent role in daily life of individuals and the human race as a whole.