Ideals are by their very nature unfulfillable as true perfection can never be achieved. That however, does not mean ideals are pointless as the journey towards the goal has a great value on its own, especially the closer you get to the goal.
The closer you get, however, the more difficult it gets holding on to them, since you easily loose sight of both the starting point and the distance travelled, focusing on the small distance ahead, and like the event horizon of a black hole, close to it the remaining distance seems to extend, stretching to appear longer than it actually is.
The distance travelled, the starting point and the reason for the journey musn’t be forgotten though. Anything else is a betrayal to ourselves and a great disrespect to our forefathers.
This is true for both individual perspective and for society.
