Why is being idealistic often called naive?

Answer 1

Because many idealists are naive, and because those who lack ideals feel uncomfortable in the company of those who have them.

Both of those reasons.

Answer 2

I've wondered this for a long time...
It is always so funny to me that those who are truly ignorant of the world, and see only a small narrow minded view of it would assume that those who see what COULD be are in some way stupid??
It is not naivety that brings about idealistic thoughts...In fact, most idealists I know are quite the opposite. They have seen SO much of life and the world, but rather than become depressed, uncaring, or pessimistic, they have made a conscious choice to believe there is always hope for things to be better.
There will always be people who will look at idealism as a form of stupidity, or ignorance of "the way things really are". No amount of arguing on my part or any one else's is going to change that fact, so I'm just going to say this:
I've buried the majority of my family. I've given birth to and am raising a child alone because her father was an abusive husband who didn't want a baby. I've raised and been responsible for a teenager when I was still a teenager myself. I've done some of the worst forms of work for 16 hours a day just so my family could eat, no matter if I was sick, exhausted, or anything else. I've encountered some of the worst people in the world, watched helplessly too many horrible situations I couldn't change, and been in the emergency room with too many loved ones too many times for any and every reason you can think of, from accidents, attempted murder, rape, death, and then some. I'm 29 years old and I've seen and felt more than anyone my age should have.
I can survive anything. I know that beyond a shadow of a doubt. The first person who wants to dare suggest I am naive can go right ahead and say it, it's pretty laughable in the face of everything I know about the horrors and sorrows of this world. But say it anyway, if it makes you feel better.
At least I don't bury my head in the sand and say "I can't do anything about it", or ascribe to the notions so many negative people would have us believe about how things can't really be changed.
For those of you who say idealism is naive, you just remember that when you see every modern advancement, everything that amazes you, every beautiful work of art, every child who grew up with nothing and turned out to be a genius, the list goes on and on...every time you see these things, you can remember that you are only seeing it because someone looked at the world and said "I can make this a better place".

Answer 3

Perspective. One can also be experienced and idealistic. Naive idealists get hurt. Hanging onto idealism is the hard part.

Answer 4

The label of naive is often attributed to those who are idealistic as a result of collective insularity. The one thing true of all idealism, is the requirement to exist and behave without compromise. It is the insistence on not compromising the principles asserted by the ideal which is seen as naive. Idealism is most often a challenge to the status quo. And that challenge often requires a departure from accepted norms and practices, and the admonition to adhere to principles which are seen by many as too costly to adopt and maintain. Idealism requires an often costly departure from standardized attitudes and practices, forsaking elements with which the majority have grown accustomed to for a perceived personal security. So the challenge to and rebuttal of that perceived security is most always seen as naive. And yet, it is the idealism which most often provides the greatest security, by correcting inefficiencies irregularities and injustices in the status quo.

Personally, I am committed to being an idealist. Because by nature ideals are formed upon a recognition of principles governed by reality itself. Any attempt to deny those principles would result in a denial of reality. And by that alone, idealists are the most realistic of all, and in no way naive.

Shingoshi Dao
2007.Nov.18 Sun, 04:00 --800 (PST)

Answer 5

I am idealist., and have been for most of my 70 years, I have taken many stands alone that people said it can not be done,in this country it says that every man is created equal, I am going to hold them to that ideal. I am a fighter, and have been told by people, Pick your hills to die on, you die on every hill.
I have gotten this far in my life by not prostituting my principals.
I can assure you that Idealist are not, in any way naive.

Answer 6

Those who call idealistic thinking "naive" are being condescending- they are assuming that the ideals one believes in are 1) unattainable, and 2) only fools would believe that they could ever be attained, and 3) that they know better than to think that way.

It's patronizing.

Answer 7

Because the one tossing 'naive' about so casually is an idiot.

Look, some ideals are horribly unsophisticated things, made of pixie dust and hope--and these ideals have their adherents, who are inexperienced, credulous, etc. You COULD call them 'naive,' but that'll just make 'em defensive. They'll cling to it all the tighter if you attack a bad ideal the wrong way.

Better tactics is to 'accidentally' drop something known to be true that their ideal is inadequate to handle, as you cordially leave, the discussion 'tabled for now.' That kid who holds a too-frothy ideal should be allowed to let it go as his own positive act, NOT as an act of submission to your only-slightly-less-frothy ideal.

Answer 8

May be because people who call them like that:

- Are convinced the naive ideals are just unrealizable
- Tried to do similarly, failed miserably and think nobody else can do it.
- Tried to do similarly, succeeded and want to give advice about what a more realistic attitude should be.
- Don't even know what the "naive" people's ideals mean, and call them that out of ignorance.

Answer 9

Two main reasons. The first is pragmatism (in the popular rather than philosophical sense of that word), according to which concern with ideas, theories, or principles, is deemed to go hand in hand with a lack of practicality. And in the sphere of ethics, concern with principles over ends-means reasoning is deemed to be dogmatic and demonstrating an insensitivity to the complexity of the real world. Pragmatism is the mood (I wouldn't call it a philosophy) of Capitalism, of technology (but not of science proper), and of coalition/consensus-based liberalism and technocratic policy-making. And it has its strengths and even its virtues, but it can be taken to extremes.

The second reason is Scientism, the view that all that can be known, all that could ever deserve to be called "knowledge", must be scientific knowledge. I could go on at some length concerning this, but I'll instead suggest you Google some words and phrases (in addition to "Scientism"): reductionism, "disenchantment of the world", Lebenswelt, and Counter-Enlightenment.

Part of the source is good old-fashioned reverence for "common sense" (and anti-intellectualism), but part is tied to intellectual trends dating to the dawn of Modernism, with people like Bacon and Descartes, and developing from there, in a way that is anything but "anti-intellectual", but which is decidedly anti-Humanistic.

Answer 10

unsure who might have started that, yet we do understand that evolution and the enormous Bang are not fairy memories, considering they are in keeping with solid info and function been carefully examined. we will not say for specific the two way with regard to the Bible. it ought to or won't be a fairy tale--the info does not say one way or the different. there are particular bits of the Bible that all of us understand from the info are incorrect, which contain that bugs have 4 legs, that rabbits chunk the cud, or working example the literal memories of Genesis (it tells 2 different memories). yet that doesn't advise the completed ingredient is a fairy tale, merely that a minimum of areas of it can't be taken as an precise description of the organic international.