On Pragmatism

I’ve always thought of pragmatism as the opposite of romanticism. Romantics look at the world in an idealized manner, seeing the world as they think it should be. Pragmatists, in this form, look at the world in a realistic manner, seeing the world without illusion. A romantic would say “why does congress lie? They should be above that, as elected officials!” while a pragmatist would more likely say “well, we survived worse than this group; we’ll survive them, too.” A romantic looks at clouds and finds shapes in them, while the pragmatist sees rain and puts on a jacket. I think I would be categorized as a pragmatist by the philosophical definition of the term, since I see scientific truth as a moving target and I am aware that even telling the truth can be a complicated task. With seven billion people generating truth faster than any man or man-made machine can keep tabs, the truth is miles ahead and gaining on us, and even the truths we supposedly do know might not be truths in a few years.