Ideals, Idealism, and Responsibility
Ideals are completely natural. For example, consider when someone uses a cell phone and then they say something like “Ideally, my cell phone would have excellent reception no matter where I am.” That is stating an ideal.
An ideal is just an idea of a possible attractive outcome or circumstance. “Ideally, I would have fully charged my cell phone’s battery last night, but I did not charge it at all.”
So, ideals are natural and useful. If I conclude that it would be ideal to have a fully charged battery every morning, I can then take actions that corespond to that outcome (that ideal).
That is not idealism. That is just recognizing some ideas and some priorities and some preferences and some ideals.
frustration. (Photo credit: nicole.pierce.photography ♥)
So what is idealism? Idealism is a particular way of relating to ideals.
Imagine that I expect my battery charger for my cell phone to last forever. If it stops working, then what do I do? Do I get embarrassed and then blame someone for causing my embarrassment?
I might say: “Can’t these people just make a cell phone battery that lasts forever? Why do I even need to use a charger? Seriously, why didn’t you pack my other charger? WHY?!”
Closeup of a female speaking outside on a cell phone. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The frightened embarrassment can lead to frustration, which can lead to blaming and that can lead to resentment and contempt. We can blame the scientists for not inventing a battery that never loses it’s charge. We can blame the government or the neighbor or the foreignors or the devil.
If all of them fulfilled my ideals for me, then I would not be responsible for fulfilling them myself, right? I can resent them for blocking me, for failing me, for not doing what they should and for doing what they should not.
That resenting is based on idealism, not on the ideals themselves. Resenting is not responsibility. Resenting is not being responsible for recognizing my ideals (or priorities) and then exploring methods that fulfill the ideals.
We all can understand that it can be frustrating when life does not go how we might think it would be ideal. Some people might respond to that frustration by saying “just think positive and be grateful for what you do have. Maybe it is for the best that you just accept that your ideals do not fit with what has been happening. Just abandon your ideals. Just pretend to be happy while you are resigned and cynical and hopeless.”
Okay, people may not say all of that, but people often say some of those things. All of those things are still idealism. Anything except being responsible for fulfilling ideals is not being responsible for fulfilling on ideals.
There is a special form of idealism that many people experience: the ideal of having no ideals. That is a natural ideal like any other ideal. I may recognize that ideals are somehow connected to frustration and contempt, and then I recognize that, ideally, I would minimize or avoid frustration and contempt, so why not just remove all ideals?
Of course, that form of idealism may be the most frustrating of all. However, the intensity of the frustration can lead to the recognition of the function of ideals. Ideals organize our activity. Ideals organize our activities, which produce our results. So, we could say that ideals inform our results.
Icon and Hope of a new generation (Photo credit: Liamfm . (Stop the Genocide In Syria))
If someone recognizes the ideal of minimizing or avoiding frustration and contempt, one experiment in fulfilling on that ideal is the idea of suppressing or reversing all ideals (or at least all other ideals except for the ideal of having no frustration or contempt). That may not ever work, but people may keep trying it and then keep hoping for it to start working- thinking positively (“malignant optimism”) and so on.
But having ideals is not the source of frustration and resentment and contempt. The source of frustration and resentment and contempt is the activity of relating to ideals as if they should aready be fulfilled- relating to them idealistically rather than realistically.
Some ideals are realized, if only temporarily. Some may never get fulfilled. Some may only get fulfilled through exploration of innovative methods.
Resentment (Photo credit: _Yogu)
“But I should not have to change methods. The methods that are most familiar to me used to work just fine for me. It’s that one political party that is to blame for my old familiar method no longer working for me!”
That is a perfectly natural conclusion to make, right, which may be why it is so popular? However, sometimes it is simply easier to change one’s own methods than to change the activities of hundreds or millions of ther people. Even if one changes the activities of hundreds or millions of other people, it may be best to occasionally change one’s own methods, like getting a new cell phone occasionally, like once every ten years.
Idealism is basically the ideal that “I should not have to be responsible for producing the results that I value.” It is a perfectly natural ideal, right? What could be more convenient than if your parents did everything for you for your whole life, or if your government did everything for you, or if your employer did everything for you, or if your customers did not pay so much attention to your competitors? What if your life was already exactly a perfect fit for your ideals? What if your ideals were already a perfect fit for your life? Wouldn’t that be ideal?
Maybe…. Maybe it is natural to have the ideal that someone else (a group or an individual) should be solely responsible for producing the results you value. Maybe it is natural to expect other people to already know exactly what you value most and also to know when your values change. It may be natural, but is it ideal?
Karl Heinrich Marx (5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883). Osho on Karl Marx and Communism. (Photo credit: artist in doing nothing)
What if the person or people who have been resposible for your life are eventually no longer available? What if they die? What if their cell phone battery dies? What if their cell phone reception suddenly falters?
Consider a new ideal. Consider that idealism is required to produce the recogniton of the ideal of responsiblity. The ideal of responsibility does not exclude other people’s responsibility, but it includes me as the primary author of responsibility for the results produced by the methods active in my life (as my life). If I am responsible for my life, then perhaps I can contribute to the lives of others responsibly as well.
Idealism mght include an idea like “I should contribute to others.” That is not required. Ideally, my life already is contributing to the lives of other people.
My influence on other people may include perpetuating experiences of frustration and resentment and contempt. Or, I may inspire them. Or, I may challenge them. Or, I may inspire them and then challenge them.
Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869-1948), political and spiritual leader of India. Location unknown. Français : Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948), Guide politique et spirituel de l’Inde. Lieu inconnu. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Mahatma Gandhi is reported to have said “Be the change that you want to see in the world.” I do not know whether he also said “You and the world are overlapping, not two isolated objects. When you change, the whole world is changing too because you are part of the whole world. When you notice a change in any part of the world, that is already you changing within it. It is impossible for you not to change the world. You are already changing the world. Also, you are the world changing. When you change, that is the world changing through you. When you perceive an ideal, that is the world perceiving an ideal through you. When you experience frustration, that is the world experiencing frustration through you. When you resent anything, that is the world resenting through you. When you have contempt for anything, that is the world having contempt through you. When you are responsible, that is the world being responsible through you.”
Related articles
- A Simple Strategy for Neutralizing Stress [Stress] (lifehacker.com)
- Cures for Charge Anxiety (fox4kc.com)
- NEW Urgent Warning to All Cell Phone Users (articles.mercola.com)
- Warning: Cell Phones May Trigger ADHD and Other Behavior Problems (articles.mercola.com)
- 83. Finishing what I Started (marlenvargasdelrazo.wordpress.com)
- you have an idealism about love and it is too much … (fearthelioninme.com)
- Silence is golden – and unacceptable (o.canada.com)
- Unfixable Computers Are Leading Humanity Down a Perilous Path (ifixit.org)
- Unfixable Computers Are Leading Humanity Down a Perilous Path (wired.com)
- The ideal of God is a bridge (teachingsofmasters.wordpress.com)
- “Yes” Doesn’t Count if you can’t say “No” – Why Clear Boundaries are Important in Intimate Relationships (psychologytoday.com)
- The Best Strategy for Reducing Stress (psychologytoday.com)
- The Sad State of Socialization Today (smart phones and tablets to blame) (guangyic.wordpress.com)
- The Best Strategy for Reducing Stress (joyante.wordpress.com)
- The Best Strategy for Reducing Stress (blogs.hbr.org)
- Distracted driving still a problem, despite attempts to curtail cell phone use behind the wheel (nj.com)
- Misunderstood Anger (emotionaldetective.typepad.com)
- Insanity – Chapter 27 (spreadinformation.wordpress.com)
- It’s 2012: 11 Ways to Emotionally Thrive. (elephantjournal.com)
- What’s your fuel? (hope4theheart.wordpress.com)
- In Nigeria Everyone Has 2+ Cell Phones (business-opportunities.biz)
- “Can you hear me now…” AT&T (smearedtype.com)
- 10 topics to discuss with your teen this summer (kevinmd.com)
- Cell Phone Coverage Still Lacking in Some Areas and I’m Glad (staygolinks.com)
- Technology Apology (grownandflown.com)
- Grandparenting in the Digital Age (education.com)
- This Child’s View Of Single-Motherhood (theamericanconservative.com)
- Letting go of your loved ones when they hurt you with their negative attitudes (karenhigginsbrown.wordpress.com)
- Misplaced Loyalty Towards Hurtful Parents (thesugarbabiesonline.com)
- Making Peace with The Resentment (thatgirlmo3.wordpress.com)
- Resentment (jenowenby.wordpress.com)
- Don’t Hate Me Because I’m Beautiful (blueheronwisdom.wordpress.com)
- A Meditation on the Virtue of Acceptance (adw.org)
- Send love in some form to those you feel have wronged you and notice how much better you feel. (positive-thoughts.typepad.com)
- How To Make Life’s Biggest Decisions (or Any Decision for that Matter) (personalexcellence.co)
- Why Do I Get Angry? (sensiblemolecules.wordpress.com)
- A Question about Forgiveness (acrosstraditions.wordpress.com)
- Anger, Rage, And Resentment: What’s the “Cure”? (johnib.wordpress.com)
- What I Believe , ” The Thoughts we think and the words we speak create our experiences.” (nackynice.wordpress.com)
- John Stossel Admits His Fox Poverty Investigation Video “Just a TV Stunt” (crooksandliars.com)
- Issa on ABC “This Week” on Fast and Furious, Holder Contempt Charges & Obama Executive Privilege (yourdaddy.net)
- Into the Seventh Circle of Hell with the Other Lemmings (forwardfromfifty.wordpress.com)
- The Direct Path to Self-Awareness (my.psychologytoday.com)
- I Am Not Lazy (glamsticks.wordpress.com)
- Romney Vaults into Lead — and That’s Before the Real Obama Emerged in Roanoke (rushlimbaugh.com)
- The Occupy Movement and the Communism of Everyday Life (american.com)
- Propinquity and Social Distance (maverickphilosopher.typepad.com)
- Luther: Don’t Look For God Except in Contempt (deprofundisclamaviadtedomine.wordpress.com)
- Difficult People 101, Part 3: 21 Practical Tips for the DP Challenge (psychologytoday.com)
guaranteed results? ;)
July 21, 2009Have you heard that annuity companies promise- even guarantee- that they will give you reliable, solid returns no matter what happens to the value of your investment? Say you invest $100,000 with an annuity company, and then the underlying investment value soon doubles. The annuity company may guarantee that your returns will remain at that doubled level for the rest of your life- even if the value of the underlying investment collapses!
How can they make such a promise? That part is very easy! The more interesting question is how can they keep such a promise….
Madoff’s office (Photo credit: eflon)
In the last few years, more people (and annuity companies) are questioning whether or not they can keep more of those promises at all. Some annuity companies have significantly scaled back the promises they offer in new annuity contracts- after witnessing the challenges posed by their existing contracts during the investment market developments of 2007 and 2008.
See http://www.kiplinger.com/features/archives/2009/04/krr_annuities_with_guaranteed_benefits.html.
More companies like AIG may eventually collapse under the weight of any promises that prove implausible- breaking not only those promises, but breaking every other promise the company has made. By making speculative promises (annuity guarantees) that they may have little capacity to fulfill, some insurance companies may be making a desperate “all or nothing” gamble to attract new investors to finance their previously overly-optimistic promises. Does that sound familiar?
So, would you lend a lot of money (say, $100,000) to someone without asking them a few questions about their finances? When someone purchases an annuity contract, that is basically like any other loan except that the promise to re-pay is far more complicated than in most loans. How much do annuity investors know about the companies to whom they are lending? How well do they understand the contracts they are purchasing? How well do the commission-hungry insurance salespeople even understand those contracts? (I presume that most insurance salespeople have not read the details of the contracts they sell and would not comprehend the complexity of the contracts anyway even if they did read them.)
Many insurance companies have been shrinking in the last few years. Like any real estate investor who “maxes out” their credit cards after over-extending themselves by buying an overpriced home that they could not really even afford if it was not overpriced, some struggling insurance companies may have been more aggressive than ever in finding clever ways to attract new business (access new loans from investors). Companies offered historic commissions to their salespeople for the products that were most favorable to the company. Naturally, when a company realizes that they may go out of business without some aggressive innovations, they may be suddenly motivated to offer more complex and more optimistic promises- just like a politician who is losing support fast as election day approaches.
However, when a distressed borrower maxes out their credit cards to avoid defaulting on a mortgage, that actually does not make them a better risk for any new debt- but worse. Similarly, as annuity companies made more and more extreme offers to attract new business, then the more debt the companies compound with new extreme promises, the less valuable is any individual promise of that company. Distressed companies tend to attempt the same things that many distressed borrowers attempt- close the eyes tightly and speed up… or, in other words, borrow more aggressively and hope that external circumstances miraculously rescue investors from the recent natural results of their prior investments.
But can an insurance company really fail- like seriously? Well, how about the recent failure of giant US insurance company AIG, a global leader in the insurance industry?
Seat of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, the Grand Kremlin Palace in the Moscow Kremlin, February 1982 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Note that when financial contracts are guaranteed by a government program- such as during the US savings and loan crisis in the 1980s- even the government guarantee program can also fail, as it did in the 1980s. Governments who over-extend promises not only cannot keep them, but may even collapse under the weight of unfulfilled hopes. Consider how quickly the public credibility of U.S. President George W. Bush went from a widespread sense of confidence and even heroism… to such historic humiliation that Bush was nearly invisible during the 2008 Presidential campaign.
When I first recognized in 2002 the probable future of the US and global economy, I specifically predicted that President Bush would be made a “scapegoat” for the sudden appearance of issues that were decades (or more) in the making. We might as well allege that he is to blame even for the S&L Crisis of the 1980s or the Great Depressions of the 1930s or 1720s. Such castings of blame would be no more useful than blaming an isolated real estate speculator, or an isolated realtor, or an isolated financial business.
People who invested in ways that got them the exact results they got can toss around blame for all the reasons they can invent that their own investment choices are not the singular issue of relevance. People who invest total faith in the words of desperate politicians get the exact results of that choice of investment. Similarly, people who lend money to unfit borrowers get different results than people who invest in certain other methods.
Specifically, people who lend money to annuity companies based on ridiculous promises of solid returns “no matter what happens to the value of your investment” may wish to review the meaning of the words “the value of your investment.” Maybe the insurance companies should not have done what they may have done… and this or that investor should not have done whatever she may have done… and this or that politician should not have done whatever he may have claimed to have done. So what?
If you or people you care about have invested in over-extended promises of annuity contracts or any other feature of the great Ponzi economy of speculative financial bubbles, will blame alter your future or your past? However we learn is however we learn. If you are committed to being confident in the future results of the investments you make, you may engage in a conversation that fulfills that commitment with whomever you deem fit to participate with you in that conversation.
Everyone else may argue over who is most to blame for the next sudden disappearing of real estate equity, disappearing job markets, disappearing insurance companies, and disappearing government budgets and programs. How ironic is it that those who actively participated in those developments may be the most motivated to name scapegoats, to dodge responsibility for the exact results produced by their own participation?
I have entered contractual promises that I kept. I have entered contractual promises that I broke. I have entered contracts that other people did not keep, but I chose to enter them, didn’t I? Live and learn!
–
JR
************
We do not have to sail in the direction of the wind, but if we ever sail off course, is it easier to change the direction of the wind or the direction of the sail?
Related articles
Share this:
Like this:
Tags:aig, annuities, annuity, collapse, confidence, credit, crisis, deflation, defualt, economics, forecasting, gambling, gmble, guarantee, guaranteed, insurance, investment, investments, mortgage, mortgage defaults, neoclassical economics, ponzi, profit, profits, responsibility, results, risk, sheeple, valuable
Posted in financial commentaries | Leave a Comment »