Ideals are built on intangible concepts and made concrete. Idealism has a few meanings. What’s relevant here is the original one: The practice of forming or pursuing ideals, especially unrealistically.

And they have been unrealistically pursued. Although some may argue that their pursuit was very realistic, that is not what the consequences show. They have created wars, strife, and separatism that has diminished and/or demolished many. The consequences are very real, but the idea behind them was not. Why is that?

It is because ideals are man-made. And man is very fallible. There are concepts that our minds develop that can benefit everyone, and there are concepts that develop that are selfish, in the guise of mutual benefit. Patriotism, for example, is a wonderful ideal to keep nations strong and caring about the structure and maintenance of their homeland. But it becomes very destructive when coupled with the invasive concept of imperialism (which all isms tend to do), and decides that it is so right and perfect that it must share itself with the rest of the world. Of course it’s not really patriotism that is sought, but some economic resource.

Human nature requires that the greenest grass be sought for the survival of its species. But ideals help to justify the actions that result. To “discover” places or find “uncivilized” communities that you can salvage with religion, for instance, is an example of the basis of imperialism. Of course, you are not going to try to “civilize” a nation that can survive in the desert, for example, because there are no resources to pull from a desert and no viable places to build cities and enterprises (except Vegas). It was better to “civilize” those in South Africa because they had no concept of what to do with all those diamonds (65% of the world’s production).

But what about the fact that those ideals also include the degrading of half its population – women? Sexism has been the oldest ism because someone somewhere decided that women were incompetent and only good for breeding and serving. And what about classism, that does the same with people not in the realm of power or position?

We as humans are fallible. Our ideal concepts are also fallible. It’s time to follow those abstract nouns that the ideals are based on – like love and kindness – and make them concrete.