Beautiful and Broken: A Realistic Idealism

May 19, 2009 | Filed Under Small Talk 

To live in this world it certainly helps to be able to appreciate both its beautiful and broken aspects.   It is difficult sometimes.  The temptation lingers to perceive the world as exclusively grand or exclusively brutal.    Consider:

• Newborn babies are miracles / Some babies die horrible deaths
• Technological progress raises standards of living / Millions of kids die each year from starvation
• Sex is beautiful / Sex devastates relationships
• Human beings are born truthful / Human desire drives us to lie
• Family is the most comforting place / Family can be the most terrorizing place
• Power produces cathedrals and bridges / Power produces bombs and gas chambers

A Realistic Idealist is one who takes the world as it is but believes that things can, are and should be better.  A realistic idealist believes that some possibilities are better than others.    A realistic idealist is a person who confronts the world and avoids the silly temptation to believe that the world is great because it’s the way it should be (i.e. the standard line of Eastern Philosophers).  On the other hand, a realistic idealist avoids the very logical temptation to become jaded and cynical; to lose all hope; to think our ideals are folly.

The realistic idealist believes that the world we inhabit is both broken and beautiful.  But these two states do not stand in equilibrium.  Rather, we believe that our visions of a more perfect world will be actualized.  Beauty will triumph over brokenness.

And we believe this because there is a latent potency behind our ideas.  They are not idle entities sitting passively by as the Universe persists.   Beautiful ideals will shape this universe.  They will become reality.   That’s what we believe and that’s how we face the brokenness of reality without despair.

Comments