All Posts Tagged With: "idealism"
The first 30
Our on-the-ground undergrad reports on his debut month
I consider myself something of an idealist. I’m reasonably conscious of the many problems in the world and of the effects my actions have on the planet and its inhabitants, and I try to act accordingly. Of course, I hope others will do the same, and perhaps I too easily apply my values when judging the actions and beliefs of other people, governments, corporations, etc. My idealism has also earned me regular reminders from friends and family to “take yourself less seriously.”
I’ve just begun my first year at the University of Toronto, and I’m aware that this is a time when values and personalities can be challenged, shifted and eventually—potentially—solidified. People tend to progress, maybe unconsciously, from idealism to pragmatism as they mature. Idealism becomes a sort of nostalgia: you remember “the good old days,” but are resigned to the fact that those days are decidedly in the past.
Even at the tender age of 18, I have noticed this shift in myself. The more I learn, the more complex things become. The more I realize the barriers that lie in the way of the more equitable, sustainable, logical world I idealize, the less likely it seems that my idealism stands a chance.
Most universities in Canada have become veritable degree-churning machines. A bachelor’s degree today is yesterday’s high school diploma. Six million Chinese graduate each year into an already saturated global job market. A desire to do good is often dismissed as naive or met with suspicion. All in all, there doesn’t seem to be much room left for idealism.
We’ll see what kind of shape mine is in after a month of university.
Touchdown
Aug. 30: If you’re moving to a new city for university, it’s a good idea to arrive a few days before school starts so you can have a chance to explore the area around your new home. Once the craziness of Frosh Week begins, followed immediately by your first classes, you’re not likely to venture far off campus, so familiarizing yourself with the neighbourhood can give you a head start on breaking the bubble that often develops in first year.
For me, coming from Vancouver, it gave me a chance to spend time with friends and family who already lived in Toronto and knew the city well. One of them took me to a drum circle, the likes of which I had never seen: hundreds of people gathered in a park in the middle of downtown Toronto, dancing to a beat you could hear from blocks away. It gave me an idea of the immense variety of things to do and see in this city, and I wouldn’t have had the chance to do such things had I come straight to school.
Through the rabbit hole
Sept. 3: Today was move-in day. After the initial “awkward lunch”—standing around for two hours meeting your fellow first-years and hearing the same questions over and over (“What’s your major? Where are you from?”), it was time to learn the requisite school cheers, glorifying ourselves and putting down everyone else. It’s curious how people always feel this need to distinguish themselves within a group, even as they dismiss it as just a fun tradition.
A knife all blade
How do you remain an idealist in the hard, logical world of academia?
I’ve been thinking a lot about idealism lately. I entered university an idealist, believing a more sustainable and equitable world than the one we currently inhabit is achievable. Over the course my my first three weeks here, my idealism has been consistently challenged by my peers, my professors, even my textbooks, and I find myself scrambling to reconcile what I’m learning with my beliefs and goals.
The challenges have arrived mostly in the form of logical arguments regarding why my idealism is unrealistic, so my attempts at reconciliation have been similarly rooted in logic, which is proving to be very difficult. For example, in discussing whether altruism exists or not, it’s very hard to come up with examples of pure altruism to prove that it does exist, since any seemingly altruistic act ultimately makes you feel good about yourself and is therefore in your self-interest. Logic, it seems, is inadequate to prove that altruism exists.
Similarly, in my Global Governance class, we’ve been discussing the idea of a world government which would legislate and enforce laws for the entire world and would therefore be much better than we are now at dealing with global problems like climate change or terrorism. But, for many practical reasons, the idea is considered overly idealistic and unrealistic: another instance of idealism getting bogged down in logic.
Even despite the seemingly overwhelming logic confronting much of my idealism, when I read great thinkers like Oscar Wilde saying that “a map of the world without Utopia is not worth looking at,” I think it might be worth clinging to.
There’s another quote I like that goes: “a mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It cuts the hand that uses it.” I recalled this bit of wisdom from the Indian polymath Rabindranath Tagore yesterday as I was listening to a monk at a Buddhist temple I was visiting out of interest, and it struck me that perhaps I’ve been overly focused on logic while neglecting intuition. Of course, universities are institutions of logic and reasoning, so my recent trend of over-intellectualizing things is perhaps understandable. At the temple, however, there was much talk of how to live a happy and yes, idealistic life, without logic ever being inferred.
Of course, religions rarely feel impelled to justify their teachings with logic, and yet the teachings certainly manage to resonate with many millions of people. After all, extolling virtues of generosity, peace and love, wisdom, and connectedness to others should hardly need justification, and these are essentially the virtues on which most idealism (most of mine, anyway) is based.
So for now, I think I’ll ignore the dissenting voices of logical pessimism and keep my eyes focused on Wilde’s Utopia, justified (I’m still not totally off logic) with one last quote popularized by the ever-wise Kanye West : “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.”
