Idealism is Realism

How often have you heard this expression…

“I’m not pessimistic…I’m just realistic”…?

I came across this old and grainy video in a Brain Pickings post of Victor Frankl. He appears to be giving a lecture to college students .

What he says in it is quite illuminating to me.

He says, basically, that idealism is realism.

Conversely, when we’re pessimistic, and expect the negative in the name of being “realistic”, we get a lower version of the true capability of human expression.

Therefore, according to Dr. Frankl, one is being realistic, by being idealistic.

I’d never heard such a thing before, but it makes sense.

And he should know, having survived a Nazi concentration camp in which he made the observation that the ones who had the best chance of survival were, indeed, the optimistic and idealistic ones.

He went on to write a rather famous book about entitled, Man’s Search for Meaning.

The problem is that we don’t edify one another in this idealistic manner, generally. We don’t support one another’s dreams. We don’t give credence to one’s search for meaning.

We instead tend to poopoo on such pursuits as a waste of time in this dog eat dog world.

Why do we do that?

One of my earliest childhood memories is hearing my father screaming at my mother telling her how much of a piece of crap I was. I’d done something bad…not so terribly bad. I’d accidentally knocked out a tooth of a girl during a round of put put. And for that, I’ve carried a memory my entire life of being, well, worthless.

Now, I’m not going to blame that event for all the woes of my life. But it does sort of support the idea Frankl espouses.

That is, if we express a negative view of others with our words and actions, more than likely we’ll get an even more negative outcome.

This idea could be brought to bear in many areas of society…from parenting to prisons.

I recently spent 3 weeks in LA County Jail. I can tell you there ain’t a whole lot of edification going on inside that place. Inmates are made to feel like pieces of human refuse. In fact, the guards seem to take sadistic pleasure in doing that.

And when they’re finally released, they often find themselves making a rapid return to that same treatment.

Makes no sense, until you consider carefully Frankl’s idea that we get less than we expect from humans.

What if instead, we expected more from inmates? What if we supported their finding some meaning in their lives? What if we helped them do that?

What if we did that in our public schools?

What if the most important subject in school was finding meaning in life?

We don’t do that because we take the pessimistic view that life really doesn’t have any inherent meaning. It’s just life. It’s just survival.

So we try to equip students with survival skills, but no real meaning finding skills.

And we often get far less than they’re truly capable of.

That’s not real.

What’s realistic (and idealistic at the same time) is for humankind to reach it’s REAL potential.

And we have a better chance of realizing that with more idealistic expectations.

So, the next time you hear some bloke expressing pessimistic sentiments in the name of realism…

Tell that person to shut up and get ideal!

image credit: Lee O’Carroll via Compfight cc