What is idealism?

Question:please tell me what it means. nothing too confusing :b
most easy to understand gets best answer!

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: please tell me what it means. nothing too confusing :b
most easy to understand gets best answer!

Ones opinionated analysis of a subject. A thesis!

It can mean either that reality consists fundamentally of thoughts and ideas, or it could mean thinking of things in the ideal form, or as they should be instead of as they are.

Idealism is the:

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Holding on to a set of beliefs which are a rigid system of the way life is "supposed to be" or "should be".
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Philosophical foundation of a lifestyle in which you find yourself always "bucking'' the system at home, school, work, or in the community.
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Belief system you have adopted about how things "should be done'' which often gets challenged by the way things are in reality.
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Fantasy or dream of how your life should be which often interferes with your accepting the "here and now'' realities of life.
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Underlying motive behind your attempt to control people so that they meet your ideal image of the way they should be, act, achieve, react, live, etc.
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Set of goals of how reality should be if it were perfect, a set of goals to shoot for 100% attainment.
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Set of beliefs which if adhered to too rigidly often gets you into trouble with authority figures in your life since you are apt to rebel against such authority if the system is "not right'' and not in accord with your ideals.
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Block which prevents you from playing the political game of going along with the mandates of the authority which temper your beliefs and "should's'' about the ways things should be.
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Set of beliefs which, if held too rigidly, can open you to criticism for being too "pie in the sky,'' non-pragmatic, or out of touch with reality.
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Blind spot that can keep you off focus in your home, school, work, or community life because of your disappointment about others not accepting or living up to your ideals.
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Mask you often hide behind when you are unwilling to admit that you are unmotivated, too lazy, or not interested in doing what is expected of you at school, work, home, or in the community.
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Underlying current which prevents your healthy adjustment to a situation because it is so out of "synch'' with the ideal way you think things should be.
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Set of norms against which you judge others and which gets you into trouble with the others, especially if they are authority figures who don't meet the "norm.''

What are the negative effects of being overly idealistic?

If you continue to be overly idealistic, then you could:

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Experience poor adjustment at school, on the job, or in the community because you could become identified as a "gadfly,'' "rebel,'' or a person with a "chip on your shoulder.''
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Have problems and get in trouble with authority figures who are not functioning in a way you believe correct and you've let them know this.
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Become very depressed, despondent and despair over how imperfect life is at home, school, work, or in the community.
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Find it difficult to fully accept anyone the way they really are and chronically attempt to control them so that they can become the way they "should ideally be.''
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Resent any attempts to help you recognize the rational, pragmatic, and political strategies for coping with a "less than perfect or ideal'' life.
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Find that your tenure is short on any job with a boss and, after a series of job failures, you might need to seek a job where you can be your own boss and not have to deal with less than ideal bosses or employees.
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Become so hypercritical and controlling over all of the people in your life that they shy away and become more distant and cool with you.
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Become the fall guy or scapegoat for any problems or trouble in the system at home, school, work, or in the community as a means to quiet your outspokenness and to lay the blame and responsibility for the problems on you.
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Be misunderstood, ignored, undervalued, rejected, non-approved, unsupported by the people in your home, school, work and community systems.
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Be so frustrated in not being able to control people to meet your ideals that you regularly experience anger, temper, and raging outbursts against these people.
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Turn into a cynic or become fatalistic, hostile, pessimistic, and negativistic.
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Be so blinded by your "shining'' ideals that you forget others are free to have their own opinion and become discouraged when you think no one is listening to you.
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Experience a lowering of your self-esteem because you are not capable of living your ideals in your life spheres.

In ordinary conversation an idealist is someone who is committed to an idea, for example one could say that Margaret Thatcher is committed to the monetarist ideal or that Marx was committed to the utopian ideal. As you’re asking this in the philosophy section I imagine you’re looking for something a little deeper, so let’s have a look in the dictionary:

The Oxford English Dictionary tells me that idealism is ‘[a]ny system of thought or philosophy in which the object of external perception is held to consist, either in itself, or as perceived, of ideas.’

Wikipedia is more easy to understand: ‘Idealism is the doctrine that ideas, or thought, make up either the whole or an indispensable aspect of any full reality, so that a world of material objects containing no thought either could not exist as it is experienced, or would not be fully "real."’

So the upshot is that idealism is the view that ideas or thought are an essential part of reality and experience.

The OED lists the different types of idealism, which I’m not sure whether or not you’re interested in.
# Subjective Idealism is the opinion that the object of external perception consists, whether in itself or as known to us, in ideas of the perceiving mind;
# Critical or Transcendental Idealism, the opinion (of Kant) that it, together with the whole contents of our experience, consists, as known to us, but not necessarily in itself, of such ideas;
# Objective Idealism, the opinion (of Schelling) that while, as known to us, it consists of such ideas, it consists also, as it is in itself, of ideas identical with these;
# Absolute Idealism, (a) the opinion (of Hegel) that it consists, not only as known to us, but in itself, of ideas, not however ours, but those of the universal mind; (b) also applied more generally to other forms of idealism which do not suppose an independent reality underlying our ideas of external objects. The first sentence is helpful anyway.

The wikipedia article on it is well worth a read.

Believing that things should be the way they should be instead of the way they are.