The Pitters' Place

In my view of politics, I've come to realize a more accurate statement, at least with America & its politicians is

"If you're not an idealistic partisan before age 30, you have no heart. If you're still an idealistic partisan after age 30, you have no brains".

I don't really understand why it's bad to be an idealistic partisan after age 30, though.

You need to make A correction to the thread title.

Also, idealism should last until about 35 then you should face reality and start stockpiling guns and ammo...and lesbians...and weed.

Derived Absurdity wrote:I don't really understand why it's bad to be an idealistic partisan after age 30, though.

It should be by age 30, or a little after when you realize partisanship on either side is all bullshit. At least when it comes to American politics. Coincidentally, age 30 is when I started writing my name in for elections.

CashRules wrote:You need to make A correction to the thread title.

Also, idealism should last until about 35 then you should face reality and start stockpiling guns and ammo...and lesbians...and weed.

I will.

That said, when it comes to American politics, I feel the process is accelerated.

I thought you were using partisan to just mean a devotion to a particular cause. In which case it wouldn't really be bad no matter what age you are.

But if you're using it to mean blind allegiance to a party, why is it good to be a partisan before age 30? I would think it'd be bad at any age.

I think it's good to get people passionate about politics and the earlier the better generally. But should also be taught to question and to think for themselves and I don't necessarily think that goes hand in hand with blind allegiance.

Derived Absurdity wrote:I thought you were using partisan to just mean a devotion to a particular cause. In which case it wouldn't really be bad no matter what age you are.

But if you're using it to mean blind allegiance to a party, why is it good to be a partisan before age 30? I would think it'd be bad at any age.

It's not. But at least we know you care.

Unvoiced_Apollo wrote:In my view of politics, I've come to realize a more accurate statement, at least with America & its politicians is

"If you're not an idealistic partisan before age 30, you have no heart. If you're still an idealistic partisan after age 30, you have no brains".

Personally, when I use that phrase, I only use "idealist" without "partisan", and I mean idealist as opposed to pragmatist.

The difference between idealists and pragmatists is that idealists only look at how things should be, while pragmatists look at how things are. So if pragmatists want change, it's not about revolution, it's about evolution. And therefore, it has a chance to work, while an idealist's air castle will forever be just an air castle.

Don't get me wrong, you are allowed to dream. I love dreaming. But don't mistake your dreams with reality.
Those who don't dream have no heart, and those who mistake dreams for realities have no brains. That's what I mean when I use the above phrase.

If phe de and DA ever get too close to each other the laws of physics will cause them to cancel each other out of existence.

That quote is the definition of false wisdom. It sounds good but it's generally misapplied.

Cassius Clay wrote:That quote is the definition of false wisdom. It sounds good but it's generally misapplied.

Probably.

I also don't understand this sharp dichotomy between "pragmatist" and "idealist" some people have. Seems to me it's very easy to be both. A pragmatist is someone who is grounded and practical, and an idealist is someone who has high-minded visionary goals. Why is it necessarily always one or the other? Seems they're able to go together nicely.

Yeah..the unnecessary dichotomies is part of the reason I find the quote empty.

I also like that the original was between republic vs monarchy, and they've used it to put people down, but.... Where's the monarchy now, bitches?

Cassius Clay wrote:Yeah..the unnecessary dichotomies is part of the reason I find the quote empty.

There is no real dichotomy. Idealists look at how things should be, pragmatists look at how things are. Most people, I believe, do both.
Only when you ignore pragmatism, then your idealism becomes brainless.

The problem comes where the idealist creates a utopian vision but it's based on unrealistic premises, there is no plan on how to get there, the changes to get there would be extremely traumatic and society would not stand it, it requires human nature to spontaneously change en masse or (my personal favourite) they haven't thought through the unintended consequences.

For example, to save the planet (ecologically) we should forgo all petrol/diesel combustion engines immediately. Society could function without them, but it's just not going to happen. It's not enforceable and it would cause far too much hardship in huge parts of the world for a variety of reasons.

Or there's a problem with the over prescription of antibiotics. So we should prescribe less antibiotics - make sure that people really have bacterial infections rather than viral infections before giving them out. But that will lead to more deaths in the short term as people will get sicker before they get any treatment so they may not recover. And how heartless have you got to be to say you're going to refuse to prescribe treatment to a very sick infant that you're fairly certain will be helped (and certainly won't be harmed) until you get a test result? Just so you can probably save millions of faceless people at some point in the future that you'll never meet. Individual people don't think that way, so they give the infant the drugs regardless of the rules.

That sort of thing.

So yes - you can be an idealist and a pragmatist. But I don't think it's that common. I think many "big picture thinkers" don't tend to worry about the details and unfortunately it's at the details where the ideas often fall apart.

That's not to say the ideas of the idealists are always bad ideas. But they sometimes need someone a bid more grounded in reality to help them round them off to something that will actually work. And that will generally require a modicum of comprimise which they may or may not be willing to accomodate.

OpiateOfTheMasses wrote:The problem comes where the idealist creates a utopian vision but it's based on unrealistic premises, there is no plan on how to get there, the changes to get there would be extremely traumatic and society would not stand it, it requires human nature to spontaneously change en masse or (my personal favourite) they haven't thought through the unintended consequences.

For example, to save the planet (ecologically) we should forgo all petrol/diesel combustion engines immediately. Society could function without them, but it's just not going to happen. It's not enforceable and it would cause far too much hardship in huge parts of the world for a variety of reasons.

Or there's a problem with the over prescription of antibiotics. So we should prescribe less antibiotics - make sure that people really have bacterial infections rather than viral infections before giving them out. But that will lead to more deaths in the short term as people will get sicker before they get any treatment so they may not recover. And how heartless have you got to be to say you're going to refuse to prescribe treatment to a very sick infant that you're fairly certain will be helped (and certainly won't be harmed) until you get a test result? Just so you can probably save millions of faceless people at some point in the future that you'll never meet. Individual people don't think that way, so they give the infant the drugs regardless of the rules.

That sort of thing.

So yes - you can be an idealist and a pragmatist. But I don't think it's that common. I think many "big picture thinkers" don't tend to worry about the details and unfortunately it's at the details where the ideas often fall apart.

That's not to say the ideas of the idealists are always bad ideas. But they sometimes need someone a bid more grounded in reality to help them round them off to something that will actually work. And that will generally require a modicum of comprimise which they may or may not be willing to accomodate.

In other words: compromise, the foundation of any stable society; rather than some dream world where everything changes to meet the goals of the idealist and reality be damned.

CashRules wrote:

OpiateOfTheMasses wrote:The problem comes where the idealist creates a utopian vision but it's based on unrealistic premises, there is no plan on how to get there, the changes to get there would be extremely traumatic and society would not stand it, it requires human nature to spontaneously change en masse or (my personal favourite) they haven't thought through the unintended consequences.

For example, to save the planet (ecologically) we should forgo all petrol/diesel combustion engines immediately. Society could function without them, but it's just not going to happen. It's not enforceable and it would cause far too much hardship in huge parts of the world for a variety of reasons.

Or there's a problem with the over prescription of antibiotics. So we should prescribe less antibiotics - make sure that people really have bacterial infections rather than viral infections before giving them out. But that will lead to more deaths in the short term as people will get sicker before they get any treatment so they may not recover. And how heartless have you got to be to say you're going to refuse to prescribe treatment to a very sick infant that you're fairly certain will be helped (and certainly won't be harmed) until you get a test result? Just so you can probably save millions of faceless people at some point in the future that you'll never meet. Individual people don't think that way, so they give the infant the drugs regardless of the rules.

That sort of thing.

So yes - you can be an idealist and a pragmatist. But I don't think it's that common. I think many "big picture thinkers" don't tend to worry about the details and unfortunately it's at the details where the ideas often fall apart.

That's not to say the ideas of the idealists are always bad ideas. But they sometimes need someone a bid more grounded in reality to help them round them off to something that will actually work. And that will generally require a modicum of comprimise which they may or may not be willing to accomodate.

In other words: compromise, the foundation of any stable society; rather than some dream world where everything changes to meet the goals of the idealist and reality be damned.

To a large degree. But also thinking "is this actually going to work for everybody on a day-to-day basis going forward or do I just have an axe to grind about some issue and this addresses that - sod the consequences elsewhere and I don't care if it falls apart a few years later."

Cash and opiate just hate progress and are comfortable with the status quo.

I should mention to feel free to make corrections to my correction. I'm sure it's not well thought out, but I think it's a startiing point to get a more accurate phrasing.

Boomer wrote:Cash and opiate just hate progress and are comfortable with the status quo.

To be fair, we've spent a lot of time and effort crawling over the crushed hopes and dreams of the innocent and the defenceless to get to where we are now. So why would we want change?

Dr_Liszt wrote:I also like that the original was between republic vs monarchy, and they've used it to put people down, but.... Where's the monarchy now, bitches?

Britain still has a Monarchy

Yes, but they are irrelevant parasites of the world.

Dr_Liszt wrote:Yes, but they are irrelevant parasites of the world.

Describes most politicians tbh.

Dr_Liszt wrote:Yes, but they are irrelevant parasites of the world.

Britain or the British Monarchy?