Author of the material:
Inna Trofimova
writer, psychologist, gestalt therapist
It is ideality that will ensure my happiness, many believe. But research by psychologists from the University of Kansas City has shown that our ideas about the ideal do not remain unchanged even for a few minutes. In addition, beauty ideals are simply implanted into our consciousness without our knowledge. In this article, we will tell you why waiting for an ideal partner leads to loneliness, and we will share techniques that will help you get closer to your ideal self.
Interpretation of the term
After doing a little research, we could not find a consensus on the question “what are ideals?” The definition can be completely different and ambiguous.
The problem is that for each individual who lives in a certain society, the interpretation of the term “ideal” is unique. A person follows his ideas, which are embedded in his subconscious. For some, these are ideals of external beauty, and for others, these are spiritual ideals. But you cannot treat them as a static phenomenon. For example, in childhood there may be ideals of a prince or princess. They will have certain character traits and appearance.
As the child grows older, these ideals begin to change. This needs to be taken quite seriously. Many children take for ideals images that are not ideal at all. The ideals that teenagers set for themselves are especially serious. For example, an action hero who breaks the law. Following one's ideal can lead a child to repeat the fate of his idol.
Sometimes a successful person is chosen as an ideal. By following his advice, you can achieve success in business yourself. The older generation considers veterans, heroes who saved their homeland and thousands of lives, as ideals and role models. But each person perceives ideals in his own way. Because everyone has their own value system.
Perhaps you didn't know:
Antinomy is a term in Kantian philosophy that denotes the state of duality of pure reason, as well as the contradiction of its laws and equally provable provisions.
“The thing-in-itself” is one of the central concepts of epistemology, and then of Kant’s ethics. This concept denotes things as they exist outside of us, by themselves (in themselves), as opposed to how they are “for us.”
The Absolute Spirit is in Hegel’s philosophical system the final link in the development of the spirit, realizing the self-consciousness of the absolute idea. Having passed through the stages of subjective spirit and objective spirit, the spirit ascends to absolute knowledge.
Examples of the ideal
A description of the ideal can be found in fiction, painting, and architecture. But the problem is that in different eras a certain stereotype was taken as the highest point of perfection. The moral ideal can be external or internal. In works of literature, you can find many examples of how a person who has external beauty, for example Helen in War and Peace, may be far from ideal when it comes to his spiritual content. Thus, we are unlikely to find a single point of view on what ideals are.
Ancient Greece
In Greece, there has long been a cult of a trained body, so an athletic and well-developed build was taken as the ideal of beauty. This applied to both men and women.
In addition to physique, a person was judged by the beauty of his face. In order to be considered ideal, it was enough to have symmetrical features, when the face is divided into several equal parts.
Idea of the ideal from a philosophical point of view
The question of what ideals are has interested people since ancient times. Today, the concept of morality and culture is gradually losing its meaning. In the minds of adults, not to mention children, there is a real mixture of very different cultures and values. At the same time, society cannot develop normally if there are no lofty goals and ideals. The concept of a moral ideal is present in the Orthodox religion, on which the culture of Ancient Rus' was built. Children, in those days, were raised in accordance with the idea of the dogmas of the Orthodox Church.
Later, many philosophers, for example Lomonosov, studied ideals from their own points of view. It was their ideas that were incorporated into the system of raising children. The concept of the ideal can be found in the works of Kant, Pestalozza, and Ushinsky. The system of spiritual values is embedded in many works of fiction. But the fact is that at different times people answered the question of what ideals are in different ways. Every culture has its own values.
Basic ideas of idealism
The basis for idealism is the primacy of everything spiritual and immaterial, while everything material is relegated to the background. This feature makes idealism extremely close to religion, which also asserts the finitude of the world in time, as well as its arrangement by God. Idealism uses the teleological point of view as the main counter-argument to materialistic determinism. However, it is worth noting that idealism has a wide number of interpretations, despite the fact that the term is obviously considered to be originally philosophical.
From the point of view of the theory of class society, idealism is a certain scientific continuation of various mythical, religious and fantastic ideas. Idealism and its various philosophical issues and features greatly impede scientific progress. Nevertheless, the questions raised by the followers of idealism contributed to the rapid pace of development of philosophy, since they made it possible to explore various forms of knowledge.
In any case, idealism is extremely closely related to religion, since it is inherently a certain conceptual and conceptual expression of a religious point of view. In almost all centuries, idealism has been a certain philosophical approach to the justification of faith.
About moral ideals
If we analyze the concept from a philosophical point of view, we can find a division. There is an ideal, which is defined as the highest point, value, a certain system of moral concepts. In which the moral ideal is a system based on moral requirements. Their combination forms a certain image of a person’s personality. There are certain characteristics.
- From the point of view of the spiritual and moral system of values, ideals are models that are worthy of imitation. In this regard, examples can be given from fiction and spiritual literature. Many heroes have a number of characteristics that allow us to draw conclusions about their moral qualities.
- Throughout human evolution, the concept of “moral ideal” has constantly changed. Thus, in Ancient Greece, according to Aristotle, the ideal from a moral point of view was the ability of self-contemplation. A person had to renounce ordinary worldly life in order to achieve the highest point of perfection. Kant believed that the moral ideal is determined by the inner world of a person.
In order to perform actions that are worthy of an ideal personality, you need to be guided by certain rules. One way or another, every philosopher and psychologist has his own concept of what ideals are.
Afterword
A healthy self-concept is important for the harmonious and normal development of the individual. And this is true for everything that surrounds us. We must imagine an ideal life, an ideal self. We must dream about it and strive for it. But you cannot put forward inflated expectations and demands. We need to remember about the individual psychological characteristics that affect the capabilities and abilities of people.
As long as man has existed, debates have continued about what human life is and what it should be. According to philosophers, psychologists, cultural experts, and simply caring people, life is more than just eating food, going to bed on time, washing Marya Ivanovna’s bones from the accounting department, or moving to a new level even in the most exciting computer game.
You can rise above everyday life, make your life active, bright, full of interesting events, if you understand and imagine why you live, and adhere to certain values. What exactly to focus on in life, everyone decides for themselves. Life ideals may differ from person to person. At the same time, there are universal human values (truth, goodness, beauty, love for one’s neighbor), to which everyone should be involved.
Throughout history, people have developed different ideas about what ideals are and what an ideal person should be like.
Human cultural values
A person lives in society. This or that society, if we consider it as a society, lives in accordance with its own rules and traditions, which are also called culture. A person cannot exist without a specific goal. It is culture that puts forward certain goals for the individual. This is not a scientific definition. Science identifies causes that exist in certain time periods. The goals that a person sets for himself allow him to predict the future. It is determined by the actions of the individual.
In the animal world there is no system of values from which the definition of what the ideals of culture is formed. But it exists in human society. Moreover, the goals that an individual sets for himself are largely determined by culture. The culture of a particular society is based on traditions. It develops at the genetic level. That is, it is passed on from generation to generation. Society sets a difficult task for a person - to preserve culture. Throughout the evolution of mankind, there have been a large number of different cultures. There was Chinese, Egyptian, Old Russian. Each of them cared about passing on its value system to the next generation.
Modern times
Subsequently, ideals continued to change. Both blondes and brunettes were in fashion. Hair had to be either long or cut short, breasts - sometimes small, sometimes lush.
Recently, quite thin girls with long legs, a flat stomach and a thin waist are considered beautiful. Large eyes are valued, and a miniature nose.
The most interesting thing is that the fashion for a slim physique has developed due to ordinary mannequins in stores. Sellers skimped on material, creating thin dolls, but the things sat on them so beautifully that women wanted to have a similar figure.
Ideal human life
From all of the above, we can say that each person has his own value system. Each person sets certain goals for himself. By achieving them, a person realizes his ideal of life.
For one, the ideal in life is family, for another, material values. Each of us has our own ideal of life. Everyone makes efforts to achieve it. To do this, he sets goals for himself. This is very important, it is the goal that motivates a person to develop in the direction he needs.
Ancient Rome
In contrast to the beauty ideals of Greece, a Roman woman was supposed to have delicate, soft, rounded shapes. But the face was still valued the same - with delicate features, as if carved by a sculptor. In addition, a local beauty was supposed to have pale skin and blond hair, so many girls tried to bleach their bodies and bleach their hair. For this, butter and soot whipped from milk were used, and the hair was burned out in the sun.
But not everything in the Roman sense of beauty is clear to the world now. So, girls of that time found eyebrows fused together on the bridge of their nose beautiful. And women were not afraid to drink turpentine so that their urine would smell like roses.
Is it possible to achieve the ideal?
If we consider the ideal as a goal to which we should strive, then we can turn to psychology. Much here depends on the answer to the question of what a person’s ideals are, as well as on his person. If there is a desire, then the goal you set for yourself can be achieved. What is needed for this? First of all, you need to determine for yourself what exactly you need to achieve. It could be an ideal family, or an ideal job. After this, on a piece of paper, you should make a plan for yourself.
Secondly, it is important to determine for yourself the time frame within which to achieve the goal. You should not immediately plan your actions for several years in advance. This may be a short period of time during which certain results can be achieved that will bring the goal closer to realization.
It is very important to find the right motivation, or reason, for yourself. You need to support yourself with positive thoughts. Very often, obstacles arise on the way to achieving your ideal. Do not forget that without them it is impossible to achieve the goal. You need to treat them correctly. It is very important to get out of your usual comfort zone.
Semantics of the word
Before talking about ideal standards, it is worth understanding what is generally meant by this word. It came into general use at the end of the 16th century thanks to the German poet, philosopher and historian Friedrich Schiller, who strove for a perfect world.
Nowadays people give the word “ideal” the meaning of the perfect embodiment and the best form of something. For example, the ideal of kindness or beauty. Thus, a sentence with the word “ideal” usually carries information about the embodiment of beauty, sometimes even unattainable. The desire for this ennobles and makes a person better.
New time
The new time that followed the Middle Ages brought with it new ideals. States became more secular, and girls again began to emphasize their appearance. Red hair styled in complex hairstyles, a thin waist, blue eyes and bright lips came into fashion. All the charms were carefully emphasized by skillfully selected clothes.
This was followed by the Renaissance period, during which artists and poets began to glorify a completely different figure. It has become necessary for a real woman to have curvaceous hips to the point of obvious cellulite, large breasts on which bones do not stand out, a rounded tummy and full shoulders and neck.
During the Rococo era, excess weight was no longer in fashion. It was enough for the girl to be slightly plump, but to still have a visible waist. The beautiful face invariably had a snub nose, full lips, and often a double chin. The hair was styled in the most unimaginable hairstyles, which could only be preserved if one did not take a bath for a long time. They used wigs and accompanied all this by wearing huge headdresses up to a meter long.
All these excesses were gone by the time of classicism, when ideals became similar to ancient times.
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages saw the peak of religious fanaticism. Female beauty was declared sinful, people were not supposed to think about earthly things. As a result, the medieval ideal was a girl with a pale oval face, large eyes and miniature lips. Also in fashion was a high forehead, symbolizing spirituality, and a thin, long neck. Women sought to visually conform to these ideals by shaving the hair at their temples and the back of their heads.
Large breasts were considered a sign of rudeness, so girls from an early age were forced to wear metal plates that prevented the development of curves. But being too slim was dangerous, because all women lighter than 49.5 kg were suspected of witchcraft and could easily be handed over to the Inquisition. Therefore, gaining extra pounds was not forbidden; in any case, all the curves of the body had to be securely hidden under spacious dark-colored robes.
