Ricardo F. Morín

January 5, 2026

Oakland Park, Fl.

Wannabe Axiom V

Pragmatism is often introduced as realism.  It presents itself as sobriety, maturity, and an aversion to illusion.  It speaks in the language of what is workable rather than what is desirable.  In doing so, pragmatism claims distance from ideology while it reproduces those outcomes.  

Over time, pragmatism ceases to describe a method and begins to function as a posture.  It becomes a way of signaling seriousness.  Principles are reframed as luxuries, and conviction is recoded as rigidity.  Ethical limits are not rejected outright.  They are treated as impractical.  

Following resilience, pragmatism completes the turn from endurance to acceptance.  Where resilience asks subjects to adapt, pragmatism asks them to agree that adaptation is reasonable.  Acceptance is praised as intelligence rather than surrender.  To object is to misunderstand how the world works.  

As pragmatism takes hold, alternatives begin to narrow.  Choices are reduced to what can be implemented immediately.  The possible gives way to the manageable.  What cannot be implemented within existing constraints is dismissed as irrelevant.  

Pragmatism does not deny ethics.  It postpones them.  At the level of justification, it becomes a way of saying not now.  Delay substitutes for refusal.   Deferral replaces judgment.   Both shift limits from decision into timing.

The consequences of this posture are unevenly distributed.  Those insulated from outcomes are most often positioned to define what counts as pragmatic.  Those exposed to the effects are asked to live with the decision.  Pragmatism travels downward, while consequence does not travel upward.  

Pragmatism governs by tone rather than by argument.  It favors calm over urgency and composure over insistence.  Passion is treated as disqualifying, while restraint is taken as evidence of reason.  In this way, pragmatism closes debate without explicitly doing so.  

What pragmatism is, then, is a method for choosing among constrained options.  It is a response to limitation.  It is a tool.  

What pragmatism is not is an ethic.  It is not a justification for abandoning limits.  It is not evidence that what is available is sufficient.  

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