Have young people always been so damn idealistic?

I guess the title isn't really my question, because I know that there has been a threshold under which idealism has always existed

and I know it has become older and older as society has become gentler and gentler.

(I actually think it snapped back a couple decades after those damn hippies )

do you think the age of continued statistically significant idealism has increased overall?

and, no, I don't mean, during your lifetime, I mean, based on how you understand the way society works, do you think people started getting cynical earlier when they were considered adults at 13 and were expected to do the duties of an adult at that age.

 

that sure is how it seems. just talk to really old people.

 

I do.

some of them are MAD idealistic though. I think it might be a loop instead of a continuum, nostalgia really can become some kinda crazy idealism.

 

I'm not idealistic. Does that solve this?

 

no.

"you" are not statistically significant.

 

Yeah, I think so. As a kid, you see all the faults, the solutions seem so obvious, things are simple. Then people grow and some become disillusioned or jaded, or continue on their idealistic path and join Greenpeace or something

Yes, if I read your question correctly. It seems to me young adults these days are idealists well into adulthood, whereas before people might have discarded idealism in order to join society and raise a family, for example, or they just became jaded sooner.

 

I think they definately have to grow up slightly earlier nowadays vs the last couple hundred years, but then if you go back to jesus's day, of kids in some parts of the world today at 13 they were/are considered adults by everyone else.


As for idealism, I think the current employment situation is going to put a dent in that, they are going to have enough trouble finding a part time job when in high school let alone when they graduate

 

Everyone starts off as an idealist.
It's the product of leaving behind the magical thinkings of childhood....one day you realize that the wind doesn't blow when you kick your shoe off, that you cannot mind control squirrels, and that the universe doesn't revolve around you.
My guess is that idealism is some sort of compensation. I can't quite remember what it was like to grow out of the magical thought age, but I imagine it must be a great disappointment to discover that the world is not completely under control and is actually a huge conglomerate of countless factors that are beyond you. Perhaps idealism is some sort of left over nostalgia of this age, a desire to make the world the way you want it to be in whatever way you can realistically dream up.

 

maybe it's a scaling fault.

 

If i cloned myself a million times and my clones had the same views on life as me, would that make a difference?

 

..can too, does too..:toetap05:

 

Personally, I wouldn't identify idealism as a fault.
What do you mean though, I'm not sure I understand?

 

no.

they would have to be excluded from random samples, except in a proportion equal to their proportion in the population being studied, and being that one million is only 1\~6000 you'd still only make a VERY small dent.

 

not understanding your impact against the larger scale of things.

as a panic attack is a fault in your fight or flight system.

it's not to say it's bad, just to say that it is a function of something not functioning as it should

if I won megabucks (a slot machine jackpot that has in the recent past reached 30 million dollars) because the chip\networked erred it would be a fault.

but it wouldn't be bad.

 

I disagree. I think people are taught to be idealists. Maybe you can cause the wind to blow much in the same way you cause your finger nails to grow and your heart to beat. Just because you're not conscience of it doesn't mean you're not causing it.

 

I don't know. Maybe idealism is in fact a functional quality of humans that helps the species as a whole?
I can't name specifics, but I'm sure idealism is responsible for some great achievements and overall progress in the past.
But I can definitely draw a distinction between the idealist that only sit and dream and think about life all day, and the idealist who actually go out and live it.

 

Well, science says there are other reasons for the wind blowing, and that a singular person sitting around thinking "BLOW WIND NOW!" inside his head isn't the cause of it.

As for what people are taught to be....I think people are almost overwhelmingly taught to be pragmatists or some sort of realist, as a result of being constantly faced with negativity, discouragement, ridicule, and scorn.
Life beats the idealism out of a lot of people, which was the basis for the OP if I'm understanding this correctly.
If people are taught to be idealists, then why older people and the general adult population so cynical and pragmatic?

 

I've fiddled with the idea that it's an evolutionary trait

it's what keeps you going between when you can't be useful because you're a child, and you feel the need to be useful, because you are an adult.

it's part of the theory that is that depression is an evolutionary mechanism to cause people who feel useless prune themselves, trimming down a society with surplus people to a number that is sustainable\useful.

 

Maybe thats because theres no such thing as a singular person and the world outside of your body is just as much part of you as the inside of your body. You cant say "Fingernails stop growing" and have them stop, but to say you aren't growing your finger nails is absurd. Just because you aren't controlling it in your immediate conscienceness doesn't mean you aren't doing it.


True that.

 

That's a novel idea.
One problem I have with it off the bat is that this sort of evolution is entirely society-based, and does nothing for the individual who is in possession of the trait. Kind of a weird, self-sacrificing trait to inherent, how can this trait be good for society when it is ultimately bad for the individual that it is serving?
Besides, I dunno how accurate this trait would be.
Useful people can feel depressed too, and vice verse.
Unless you mean this is a trait that everyone has, and then I'm not sure I'd agree with that either.