What Is and What Should Be

What is. The state of things. Reality. Now.

What should be. Our moral goal. The ideal state of things. Our hopeful future.

Knowing what is can be quite handy. Its what makes us realistic. Its what allows us to effectively respond to the world. We should all try to know what is. Exhaustive research, thorough investigation, and devoted inquiry all help transform our minds in a way that brings us more inline with the world as it is.

But in our pursuit of knowing what is, we must not loose sight of what should be.

Knowing what should be involves aligning ourselves to a different kind of reality. The world as it should be may not exist in the now, and it may have never existed, but is an expression of values that are eternally true. Trying to discover the world as it should be involves earnest discernment, hopeful imaginings, and far-reaching empathy. We seek to transform our desires to be inline with the world as it should be.

Some people think that realism and idealism (meant here in the common sense context, not the philosophical context) are at odds.

Those who favor the world as it is claim that the idealists are foolish. "Why pine about what isn't true?" they ask. The realists believe we should learn to deal with the harsh realities and learn to enjoy the sweet realities of our world.

Idealists are quite the opposite. They favor living in a world that reflects their ideals, rejecting that which does not fit into their mindset. Lovers of the world as it should be filter their actions through the ideals they profess.

Both of these mindsets are wrong. He who only sees what is has been bullied by the reality of now, and looses his ability to imagine that which could be. But woe to she who only sees the world as it should be. Her denial of what is dooms her actions to ineffectiveness.

Striving to do the greatest good involves loving both what is and what should be. We must see the world as it is if we wish to transform it into what should be, that way we know what we are working with (and how it works). Likewise, we must see the world as it should be, that way our actions have a tranformative end.

Take a medical example. Without an understanding of what is, the most compassionate person in the world is powerless to intervene. Similarly, without understanding what should be the most well studied person in the world will fail to act. Medicine is the synthesis of biological science and healing. That which is and what should be.

What about teaching. Without seeing who the students are, the teacher fails to address them effectively. But without understanding who the students should be, the teacher fails to develop any standards. Teaching is the synthesis of understanding students and challenging them. That which is and what should be.

The examples go on.

What does this mean to us? If we find ourselves only seeing the world as it is, we must shake off the persuasiveness of the now. Not let reality statically dictate its importance. Strive to open ourselves to things that are not yet real. And if we find ourselves only seeing the world as it should be, we must shatter our little world. Not let our yearnings blind us to what is, which would only doom us to impotently and clumsily flail about in our pursuit of good.