Perfectionism

 

As a moral moderate, I am opposed to the human goal of perfectionism for several reasons.

 

 First, I am opposed to it not because perfectionism is a state of being allotted only to the good deity—which it is--who are absolutely perfect, or are near absolutely perfect, and that they would regard humans chasing after absolute perfection, as upstarts, as blasphemous usurpers, out to dethrone those they worship, replacing vanquished deities with themselves. That could never occur.

 

As an aside, I have long conceived of the Universe or Fate or the One as absolutely perfect and absolutely imperfect at the same time, forever, everywhere. The Mother and the Father are mostly perfect and a bit imperfect, and Satan and Lera are mostly imperfect, and a little bit perfect.

 

Here are the other reasons that I disapprove of and criticize human ambitions to be perfect.

 

Second, the good deities are not worried about us as competitors or overthrowers—should we too become perfect—because mortal, flawed, limited humans cannot become perfect, so we will not have the will, power, talent, brains, and skills ever to topple perfect or near-perfect good deities. They worry not about what is impossible.

 

Third, it is evil or fanatical to demand perfection from others or oneself. This is one of the main causes of human suffering and unhappiness. What ardent idealists have done, to poor humans for the sake of constructing a perfect utopia, has routinely failed, and turned countries into totalitarian hell-holes.

 

Fourth, as a fierce, longstanding proponent of self-actualization as the moral duty of each young person, I never conflate self-realizing as aiming for personal perfectionism. To aim for personal perfectionism is unattainable, and such bleak, predictable failure in chasing after that tempting dream will so demoralize the seeker, that she may end up ceasing to self-realize at all, and that is bad for her and for humanity.

 

It is enough for each self-realizer to settle for perpetual self-perfecting and perpetual self-improving. She will make impressive gains, and yet go only about as far as any human can go—we are not deities.