I’m an idealist. But idealism isn’t perfectionism. Idealism just means that I know how the world should be. It doesn’t mean I need it to be exactly like that for me to function or be happy in it. You can be happy in an imperfect world, and still be an idealist.
My idealism also doesn’t mean that I plan on never resting, until the world is exactly what I want it to be. In fact I have no ambition to change the world. I’d be perfectly satisfied to just change a small part of it, and protect that part from the rest.
I want the world to be a certain way.
As a programmer I like well organized code and by that I mean, code without side-effects everywhere, code without mutable state everywhere.
As a professional I like to be appreciated for my competence, and rewarded based on it.
As a man, I like women to love me for what I have to offer: my competence, productivity, security, stability, support etc. (I am aware women don’t want these, I will come to that later).
As a philosopher/political being, I like my ideas to be accepted based on its consistency and correspondence with reality.
Unfortunately, the world isn’t that way.
As a programmer, I have to put up with miles of spaghetti code, and be accused for what my predecessors did.
As a professional, I routinely meet people who do nothing productive, nor are they competent, yet they are given positions of power and influence over the competent people.
As a man, I routinely meet women who consider competent, productive, stable, supportive men as too boring, and not worth loving. They are after “alpha” men, men who are none of these.
As a philosopher/political being, my ideas are either ignored or stolen without acknowledgement. Inconsistent and plain wrong ideas prevail.
At what point should I start/stop trying to create the world I like, and start/stop accepting the way it is now?
How would you describe the world today?
What you wrote above isn’t a description of the world as a whole. One sentence (the one about Politics/Philosophy) is, but the rest is just a description of a segment of the world. You never said that most professionals and business leaders are incompetent, or most women don’t have rational values, or that there are no jobs where you can program the way you’d like to. You just said that your job sucks, there are some incompetent people in high places, and that you often meet women who don’t have the right values.
As a philosopher/political being, my ideas are either ignored or stolen without acknowledgement. Inconsistent and plain wrong ideas prevail.
I can’t speak to what you’re saying about yourself, but that’s not a description of the whole world anyway. Only the second sentence is.
And I disagree with it. That statement doesn’t accurately characterize the state of the world today. The world is a mix of good and bad political ideas. The good ideas often prevail, that is why there can be so much good in the world. If the wrong ideas always prevailed, the world would be a wasteland of misery.
As for philosophy, doesn’t this forum at least occasionally prove that sometimes rational ideas do prevail?
P.S. as far as programming, you should consider starting a side-project. A lot of people do it, and they work on it occasionally, while holding down a job at the same time. Just to prove to yourself that you can write code you like. And who knows, maybe some day it will evolve into something bigger (a business venture, that allows you to quit your job).