The Digital Past

Yet again, we have an ongoing argument between two things in class. This period, we talked about idealism vs realism. An idealist believes that somewhere there is an ideal for everything, a perfect world. A realist on the other hand does not believe that there is an ideal somewhere, that the world we see is all there is. Professor O’Malley made the claim that you can’t be a mixture of both, in which I completely disagree. I feel as though I am a mixture of both, but lean more towards idealism. He believes that most idealists are religious, and God is their ideal, which I understand and can agree with. Personally, I’m not extremely religious but I am a bit, and I’m always looking for the ideal. Always envisioning the perfect situation, even though it doesn’t have to do with my religion. In that sense, I feel as I am an idealist because I’m always searching for those beautiful things and perfect moments, wanting everything I envision. Although, I also feel like I’m a realist because I am always comparing things, which links to the word mimesis, where everything is similar yet different. Take it to the example of the sunset and why we like to look at them. For an idealist, it’s a glimpse of the ideal, perhaps because many believe that God made it. For a realist, they believe that the sunset is beautiful in the context of comparing it to other sunsets. Here, I feel as if I can be both because sunsets are beautiful, but after seeing them so many times, I think they are like any other sunset. I think you can be a mixture of both, despite his arguments, because nowadays everything is more unified and mixed together, especially when it comes to religion. My generation doesn’t view religion as other generations did, like we break rules from the Bible all the time, such as the premarital sex. Weird example, but it’s true with this generation. So I feel now we can be a mixture of both, as we want that ideal in our way but we also know the world how it is. This is a hard argument and I feel like it has to do a lot with opinion.