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Politics : For the Sake of Clarity and Meaning -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: one_less who wrote (749)	10/20/2010 6:13:06 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 777

the young are not as likely to see the harm being done beyond the immediate benefits of the actions they are performing as are older more experienced persons True. Also I would suspect that the general trend is for more experienced people to have more self control. So even if someone sees the harm both when they are young and when they are older, they might be able to restrain themselves better after having more experience with life. Countering that would be the type of experience in life that makes you more cynical, with the young idealist controlling himself better than the cynical older person who sees no reason to bother. But increasing cynicism with age is far from universal. Also cynicism doesn't necessarily lead to immoral actions or lack of restraint (although it probably does lead to less effort for positive actions). And in addition to all of that, and getting back to your point,, idealism itself can lead to horrible actions, when the consequences of the idealistic action is poorly understood and/or when the person holding the ideal holds it so strongly as to reject proper balance with other considerations. Generally I'm optimistic enough to assume that many people do improve themselves over their lives. But I'm pessimistic or cynical enough to think some people really do delude themselves in the way the article mentioned.