How do we balance idealism with realism?

You can't achieve "balance" between the two if you are not willing to let them modify each other--to look at each with respect to the other, as in the yin and yang model--which is the case when you want one to be ALWAYS (which I take to be "unqualifiably") feasible.

You can't achieve "balance" between the two if you are not willing to let them modify each other--to look at each with respect to the other, as in the yin and yang model--which is the case when you want one to be ALWAYS feasible.

I guess your response is exactly my question. An ideal is either feasible or not, right?

Example: Current approaches to human rights place their stress on relational principles and the need for changes in social structures that create or sustain inequality. However, previous approaches were based on ideas of individual self-interest and earned-freedom with less thought of how actions might have an impact on others in society. So we see that the ideals of “equality” are being yin-and-yanged with those of “self-rights.”

But at some point there needs to be a realistic goal set, right? Otherwise the balance, the yin and yang as you put it, is always in the failing and disappointing present. Or, maybe I am incorrect in my thinking. Maybe it is actually true that "getting past the rhetoric" is just being too idealistic.

Why not look at Scotland? The SNP (Scottish Nationalist Party) wants full independence from the UK. Realistically the Scots don't seem to want that, what they do seem to want is more powers for the Scottish parliament (devo max). There is a referendum coming up, lots of wrangling between Holyrood and Westminster. Westminster wants just one question In or Out. Holyrood wants two, in, out, or (shake it all about) in but with more powers for the Scottish parliament.

Westminster wants to give more powers on its terms, not have its hand forced by a devo max vote. So ideally the SNP want independence so they should be happy with a yes no vote, but realistically they know they're more likely to get devo max, which is why they want that option on the ballot paper.

The benefit of standards, concepts, models, and plans derived from experience -- if they still blatantly retain features or affiliations with that origin and accordingly rest in the shadow of its vulnerability-- should actually be more readily obvious than those that have been "abstract-ified" to universal applicability.

To resist the mutability and perspective dependence of being an empirical-derived scheme, a rigorous work-related system can at least prescribe nominal absolutes within itself to protect its functionality, identity, utility, and purpose/goals from irresponsible changes and variations. And the rules of a "how to live life" formulation can more rightly be construed as a "shoreline" that should remain in sight as an indicator of when one has swam too far away, rather than misjudged as an utterly fixed and immutable path for transforming a human into a robot.

"For whence could experience derive its certainty, if all the rules, according to which it proceeds, were always themselves empirical, and therefore contingent? Such rules could hardly be regarded as first principles." --Immanuel Kant