The Idealist’s Dilemma
by Edwin L. Young, PhD
August 31, 2007

The Perfect, or Ideal, is the Enemy of the Good? To hold unwavering to the ideal means the practical is not achieved. To hold unwavering to the practical may mean facilitating the expedient and opportunistic. Perhaps the resolution of the dilemma is to keep alive the vision of the ideal while tweaking the practical so that it increasingly approximates the ideal. To surrender to pragmatism that is devoid of a vision of the ideal is the road to creeping, corrupt compromises and unscrupulous opportunism. To surrender to inflexible idealism is to remain an ineffectual voice in the wilderness. The pragmatic idealist, or idealistic pragmatist, must endure a never-ending agony as the imperfect ever so gradually and slowly approximates the ideal. Pragmatic idealists become realists with knots in their stomach knowing that they will never feel the satisfaction of closure or see their ‘promised land’. Nevertheless, in the end, they can take comfort in that they have ‘been to the mountain’ and on their way have helped others to climb the mountain of hope and work toward the ideal.