From a
relativist's point of view, everyone lives in their own little world, and
external reality exists only so far as it is a
consensual shared hallucination among everyone's own little
microcosms. This thought leads to two conclusions. The first is that to change your world, all you have to change is yourself. The second is that in order to change external reality as applies to other people, you have to share your world with them.
My own little world is an especially lofty one, I think. Lots of people tell me that I live in
my own little world, especially that my beliefs in the potential realization of pure ideals don't
hold any water in the larger world. I know there are lots of ideals out there that are great in theory, but don't hold up so well in practice. (As we all know,
there is no difference between theory and practice, in theory.) Things like
world peace,
meritocracy, the idea of not judging things by appearence, or even
liberty. I honestly think all these can happen in practice, and not just in theory.
Maybe I am really
idealistic and would like to believe a lot of things that might not be true. That doesn't stop me from wanting them to be true. If everybody believed them, then perhaps my little ideal could spread and become our little ideal reality. That's why I
cultivate my ideals carefully in the safe garden of my own little world. Sure, you could answer, great...believe whatever you want, but it doesn't mean anything in the larger scheme of external reality, because it's not true. My argument is that regardless of whether it's possible for ideals to be realized in our external reality, not believing in them negates the possibility thereof. Maybe for other people it's
sufficient to live in a world where nothing is great, and nothing can ever live up to standards. For me that's not good enough.
But then again, maybe I just have my
head in the clouds, happy, in my own little world.