distinction between ideal and reality

[alter-native]

Anything The Human Mind Can Concieve And Believe, The Human Mind Can Achieve

[Eagleheart]

Anything The Human Mind Can Concieve And Believe, The Human Mind Can Achieve

Solemnity serves as much to the accentuation of truth as to the accentuation of illusions...

[Neo_Sephiroth]

Anything The Human Mind Can Concieve And Believe, The Human Mind Can Achieve

True...Whatever the human mind can concieve...Can be believe...But that which can easily be conceive...Cannot always be achieved...

[ghideon]

I can not imagine anbody past the age of,lets say, 30 who has not had to deal, to varying degrees, with the gap between what they had once dreamed of and their current situation.

There is one aspect of fairy tales, not widely understood, that may also shed some light on our personal struggles concerning hard knock reality. Almost all fairy tales, from Snow White to Hanzel and Gredel involve some pretty nasty characters. Mean step-sisters who make a nice girls life horrible or a crazy old woman who lives in the woods and tries to cook two children.

This evilness seems a bit counter-intuitive. One would probably assume that young people want happy stories so they can read them or hear them read before they go to bed and then fall asleep with warm ideas and feelings.

Yet, it seems there needs to be real dark side goings on to engage a reader, even a small, little, vulnerable reader. I do not know enough of the analysis of fairy tales but I think that there may be something to be learned here about the nature of fantasy and dreams in relation to dangers,troubles and evil. Perhaps we find some comfort in these tales being deeper then stories of light and love. There is certainly a strong pull to want to protect children from just about anything that may conceivably hurt them. These stories may offer a way around that excessive, but understandable, parental impulse. Somewhere we must know that quite often, "reality bites."

I would be fascinated to know if other people have thought about this question and have any thoughts, ideas about it.
Myth,symbols,fairy tales and stories are of enormous importance.

Freud had said that his writings about patients were much more like stories, narratives, then scientific record keeping.

[subterranean]

Reading this thread reminds of a message from someone (whom I don't know) in my friendster's inbox yesterday, asking about idealism and whether I'm an idealist. I personally never considered myself as one, but I believe on some principles that should not be changed/compromized regardless of the situation/condition that I have.

[Redzeppelin]

I don't think we ever reach the ideal. Anybody who has tried some creative activity knows the frustration of the idea you had in your head (be it poem, painting or speech) and its actual execution. I think you shoot for the ideal but accept that reality will generally be less than ideal.

Which poses an interesting question: why does the distinction between ideal and reality exist at all? Why is our execution rarely like our idea?

[Eagleheart]

Which poses an interesting question: why does the distinction between ideal and reality exist at all? Why is our execution rarely like our idea?

The execution is intricately connected with conditions, with a world governed by the will, actions, intentions of other human beings/ and not only/...there can never be a direct relationship in "ideal-reality", because the ideal is not governed by the same laws as reality, it is a creation of the mind, while the reality is a mass administration of multitude of ideals or ideas, where rarely one sees total overlap between different people's projects...Succintly put: the ideal may be a responsibility of a certain individual or groups of individuals, while reality may be a responsibility of the living things...After all no one can create the ideals or ideas of the others, no one can project a world responding to and influencing his/her ideal, so as to execute intentions accordingly, which, by any event, determines the discrepancy between ideal and reality...

[Redzeppelin]

there can never be a direct relationship in "ideal-reality", because the ideal is not governed by the same laws as reality, it is a creation of the mind

So, perhaps the "ideal" is influenced by our imagination's freedom from the constraints of reality?

[Eagleheart]

So, perhaps the "ideal" is influenced by our imagination's freedom from the constraints of reality?

Definitely...What is so captivating in the ideal is its capacity to sustain itself in the defiance of reality's laws...
The phenomenon of infatuation with ideas may be mentioned here as an interesting occurence...One so convinced in the brilliance of his idea/ its merit being that it is his/ that one is readily declaring the following of this idea as the right path for mankind? Could it be the same for the ideals? What is more dangerous in an ideal - that it attemts a project of the world on its own or that it could fall in the domain of anyone...

[summer grace]

I think we all have dreams when we are young. Usually, as we get older, we have to revise those dreams. They usually are more based on what we want as a child, how we want to fulfill ourselves than they are about adult realities. We often want to do something that would be ideal to us in our minds, and would most likely make us happy, but we have to have our basic survival as well. Often, people end up pursuing more practical careers, sometimes because there is no choice, sometimes because it seems more desirable/practical in the long run.

Some ideals never bloom because of circumstances. Many more are over because of money. I think that's unfortunate because childhood dreams are often not wholly unrealistic. It is also true that people do best what they do naturally. But, when you have to make a living, you often get forced to give up your ideals. I think you really grow up the day you realize that the world doesn't care about ideals, it cares about reality. Ideals are what we wish, reality is what is, like it or not. Sometimes, it is hard not to wish the world understood ideals more. I think that way so much, but all there is the cold, hard fact. '' We all have dreams at first light/by night these dreams disapear''- as I once put it in a poem I wrote.

[Chava]

Sometimes reality works out better than the ideal, and that can make me very happy

[Eagleheart]

I believe the majority of ideals are not engendered in deep concern for reality, but are a defiance of reality...They rarely serve the concepts of a better world, only the reclusiveness of intellect; even if we discern an ideal, it carries the selfishness of ideals that are rather more and more avoidance of responsibility for the world we live in, repressing it more and more, without presupposing advancement...These ideals are engendered in faint-heartedness...How modern is this phenomenon I ask myself...

[Bii]

I believe the majority of ideals are not engendered in deep concern for reality, but are a defiance of reality...

I entirely agree, I think ideals exist as concepts of 'perfection' however we conceive them, but in the face of reality they crumble. I'm not overly well versed on philisophical history but am I right in thinking that it was Plato who first voiced the concept of 'forms'? I think that ideals are, in a sense, an embodiment of these 'forms' which Plato judged to be the perfect/original version of something i.e. the mould from which all other less perfect copies are formed. So in existence is a concept of justice, for example, but the justice which is practiced on earth is a less perfect copy of that (sometimes really really less perfect!).

In general I think that the concept of 'ideals' is something which makes humans, human. We have the ability to imagine, to concieve of something bigger/better/more perfect than that which we experience (reality) on a daily basis. That imagination gives us hope and hope keeps us going.

I also agree that expectation is an issue - sometimes we expect too much and because of that we are disappointed. I think this is especially true of the modern age where there is so much information thrust in peoples faces about what is available that people want to have/experience everything. When this isn't a possibility then people become jaded / depressed / disappointed. Sometimes focussing on the simple side of life is a better way to go.

I suppose my question for you apple-jiang is what was the focus of your goal? Did you want to be an actress, or did you want to be rich and famous? Is it possible that your goal of being an actress is still within the realms of possibility - i.e. local theatre, amateur dramatics societies etc; or is it out of reach because what you were looking for was what you perceived to be the lifestyle of famous actors/actresses who get to travel the globe, get paid disturbing amounts of money and seemingly have everything? I wonder if, even had you achieved that goal, would it have measured up to your 'ideal'? Would you have still ended up disappointed? Ideals most often measure up to reality when they're simple. I'm yet to be disappointed by a clear blue sky, or an unexpected act of kindness. In my mind, these things feel the same in reality as they do in my 'idealised' expectation.