People Tell Me That I’m Not Pragmatic.

I have a tendency to be a bit stubborn sometimes and not do what people want because I believe that it would be wrong for me to do that particular thing. They usually think that it would be right for me to do that particular thing and tell me that I need to be pragmatic and do it anyway.

So I’d come to think that I wasn’t pragmatic and that perhaps I was dogmatic.

Then I heard someone comment that pragmatism was just another name for hypocrisy! Which I took to mean that a pragmatist often did stuff that he didn’t believe he should.

Well…

Pragmatic – solving problems in a realistic way which suits the present conditions rather than obeying fixed theories, ideas or rules

Whereas dogmatic is about having a dogma or a set of rules.

I tend to think that what we do reflects what we really believe, so if I stick to a particular path then that is a result of what I believe. That belief isn’t necessarily a rules based belief – it isn’t necessarily being dogmatic or following a dogma. Belief can be anarchic and not rules based, it can come from a faith that is alive within you. It also doesn’t mean that I’m not pragmatic.

A pragmatist is really someone who recognises that rules aren’t good enough to determine what you should do (I would say that God is a pragmatist because he has given us the option to know in our hearts what to do, moment by moment, rather than relying on an Old Testament style set of rules).

So a pragmatist can still be someone who does what he believes, they don’t have to be a hypocrite.

So I reckon that, despite feeling strongly about specific things in my life and whether they are right or wrong, I’m actually a pragmatist because my belief doesn’t come from a fixed set of rules, but is a more anarchic belief that comes from faith which is something bigger than can be expressed in a set of rules.

So now I know how to answer people who accuse me of not being a pragmatist!Black Irish video