The paradox of perfection
The paradox of perfection is that imperfection is perfect.
The determination of what one feels is “better” is based on one defining a direction of ultimate completeness or “perfected” state of that in which one is trying to better. So betterment must recognize an idealized perfected state in order to determine one is in fact going in the direction of improvement.
But these improvements are just mans idea of how things “ought” to be. If you take man’s discrimination of things out of the picture, is everything not perfect? Everything is as it is, with or without man, despite man’s opinion(s) of it.
Let’s say a tornado rips through your city and destroys it, and so you’d rather it “ought” not of done so. It made a big mess, people died, etc… Your idea of the city being a “mess” is based on how you think the city “ought” to be and look. Because you think the city is no longer how you think it “ought” to be, then you conclude it is now a mess which is by your standards, imperfect. And the tornado caused this imperfection. But this is all based on your perspective of you think things “ought” to be.
When people think that things “ought” to be different then they are, they label the current state of these things as imperfect. When defining perfection, we have to leave man’s idea’s of how things “ought” to be out of the picture or else we run into relativeness and perspectives.
If we just look at how things are without our discrimination of these things, without our opinions of them, and cease to place value on them, then perhaps we can see that the snowflake falls perfectly in place. Or it just simply falls in place, neither perfectly nor imperfectly.
7. July 2008 um 12:34
And…..I always ask, “Who has done the defining, and what is that definition”? Nice post Travis.
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7. July 2008 um 13:17
Pentad! I haven’t seen you in a while! Thanks for reading!
8. July 2008 um 14:21
Nice post, Travis. I think, however, suggesting that something is a ‘mess’ does not by proxy mean that it is ‘imperfect.’ “Messy” and ‘perfection’ are subjective. What if one person feels comfortable in an area that I would consider to be messy? The mess is then perfect to them. What perfection means to me may not be the same to another.
Perfection is gauged by the jury of one in your mind, unless there are set parameters in which people can collectively agree on perfection. (I.E., a child that perfectly recites their ABC’s in sequential order.) You’d be looked upon as silly if after hearing a child recite their ABC’s (as the way it is customarily learned) you said they did an imperfect job, if in fact, they recited each of the twenty-six letters, from A-Z, sequentially.
I think it also depends on the context - to say that a child is ‘perfect’ is something that would be open to interpretation and tested against each person’s own individual parameters for such perfection; but however, if I had written a check for fifty dollars and were short fifty-cents, but later I found in my pocket the perfect amount of change (fifty-cents) - I don’t think you could say much about my proclamation that I deposited the perfect amount of money to cover the clearing of the check.
The bigger paradox here is that without a concept of imperfection you would not have been able to write this post to begin with. You saw something imperfect that needed to be addressed.
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8. July 2008 um 19:54
jadedconformist, what you have said, agrees with what I have written.
I, like you, am pointing out mans ideas of perfection are subjective. Based on how they think things “ought” to be. I go a step further and point out the very same paradox you have. I think we are in agreement.
20. July 2008 um 10:56
I wrote about perfection in two years ago, albeit in a different manner. But in general, I agree with the point you raise. Here is what I had to say in a blog I now forgot:
http://paragon.wordpress.com/2006/02/12/victims-of-perfection/
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23. July 2008 um 19:12
I REALLY enjoyed this. Very insightful!
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