From another place where I blog:
If you find what you don’t like in the world, you are only halfway to knowing what you like. When you know what you like, you must reach past what you don’t like to pull what you do like into reality, and in the process, your elbows will knock aside what you dislike. Without a goal of creation and acquisition we lapse into negativity, excessive literalism, bitterness, impotence — and most importantly: we do not accomplish our goals.
Reach toward what is desired; open the mind; never forget what you do desire because everything that is not-that is what you dislike, and if you try to focus on what you dislike, you will be cutting hydra heads and never reach victory.
Writers — the real kind, which I’d like to be someday — walk a hard path because they must find the eternal in the mundane, and bring it back to you so you can desire to find the eternal in yourself. They do that because only then will you understand the moral vigilance which life requires if you don’t want your species to fall back down the evolutionary staircase. Writers, or at least the ones I’ve known, recognize more than anyone else that every significant experience is a hard-fought victory that left scars, and if we read them, we have knowledge.
There really is nothing more to type here. Have a good night.
NO. This is something that I am violently against. A huge, huge number of problems in the world have been caused by people trying to reach ideals, people forming in their heads some bright shiny star of perfection and then deciding to push towards it no matter what.
You probably will call me out on this, but lets take a really contentious example :) Abortion. Now everyone; pro-life, pro-whatever, agrees that in a perfect world there would be No Abortion. Obviously, noone is argueing with that. But the pro-life people take the idealist stance. In a perfect world no abortion? Then Let Us Have No Abortion! Let’s cast it out, stop it happening, strive towards this ideal, etc.
But life isn’t perfect and people are not ideal, and there will be no reaching of ideals. Rather than reaching for what we desire and ignoring everything else surely it’s better to look and see what else there is and try to work within it. And the truth is that no matter what happens, no matter how society changes there will be people in unfortunate circumstances who have unborn children that, for a variety of reasons, they want to get rid of.
You cannot strive for ideals; all you can do is accept that things are not ideal and try to cope with that to make as few people suffer as possible. In the example used here, to see that there are places which provide safe and hygenic care, rather than forcing vulnerable people to take drastic and painful measures on their own.
Also, this contradicts what you said about people working within society. Read your first quote again, in the mind of a sadistic psychopath whose one aim is to kill all blonds (or something), or from the point of view of a suicide bomber about to join the wires. Living within a society is all *about* accepting what you don’t likem, and facing things you dislike. So is life.
Sorry to piss on your bonfire there, I’ve just been having a bit of an issue lately with people trying to promote glory-dreams that don’t work in the real world.
“if you don’t want your species to fall back down the evolutionary staircase.”
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what on earth does that mean? Is it even possible! Nice image though :)