The Problem of Perfection
I don’t know when the idea of perfection arose in human thought. It certainly appears in the axial age when philosophy blossomed both in the East and the West. From that period the major religious systems arose and they were all world rejecting in some fashion. They all point to a perfection in the offing for reality and from that necessarily ensues theological and philosophical schemes of how that perfection can be reached. Those schemes might include a cycle of life and death until enlightenment is achieved or the advent of an eschatological event that brings things to a final solution. Of course because of the presence of evil in the world, it is understandable that such notions would arise. How can this world, as it is, be accepted as “the best of all possible worlds” as Leibnitz said when evil is confronted at every turn. The answer to this question can only come when the goal of perfection as normally defined is abandoned.
From the perfection paradigm sprang various ontologies. Plato’s allegory of the cave is a good example. In that picture, we live in a world that is an imperfect reflection of a perfect essential world. Thus the ontology of essence/existence arose and with it a whole set of theologies where there is a dichotomy between what we are in existence and what we really are essentially. This leads to the personal view that there is an existential me that is somehow corrupt but an essential me that is perfect. Under this scheme the goal is to reach that essential me whether it be by personal actions or through the grace of God. However, is the idea of perfection a coherent concept or even something someone would want?
Perfection is a comparative term. Perfect with respect to what? Supposedly there are things that are more or less perfect. At some point then there is a state where all other states are imperfect. But what would such a state be like? It would be a state beyond which there is no place to go. It would be a static position. No growth. No change. Is this something anyone, including God would want? I don’t think so. It would be sterile and lifeless.
The problem with the idea of perfection is based on an attempt by humans to probe the depth of reality. In doing so it necessarily uses the symbols and metaphors that are available to the human mind. This is obviously necessary, but if these symbols and metaphors are taken too literally there is a problem. Other examples are the terms applied to God of omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, etc. If one takes these terms literally some absurdities will necessarily arise. For instance, with respect to omnipotence one could ask if God could create a rock that God couldn’t lift? This shows the logical absurdity of these kinds of “omini’s”. Instead of taking these terms literally what should be recognized is that they point to what is ultimate. The ultimate by its nature is beyond our symbol and metaphor. The same is true for perfection. It points to ultimate reality, the idea of progress, the arrow of time, and cause and effect. If taken literally what we end up with in literalistic terms is a static, lifeless ultimate reality. But could there be such a thing as perfect beauty, perfect love, perfect meaning? These are meaningless extrapolations because all these terms are dynamic and contextual. Love, beauty, and meaning all have infinite possibilities. Otherwise they point to a homeostasis in finality. Who including God would want such a thing?
The problem with perfection is that this inevitably leads to an end to life with all its wonders of discovery, disappointment, defeat, and victory. In the end there is only silence and lifelessness. Instead, the idea of perfection should be transformed into a principal of constant and eternal struggle, change, progress, and growth. To be perfect is not to reach some final static state but to engage in the infinite struggles and possibilities of life.
If there is such a thing as our essential being it is not some state of perfection, but rather the very process that undergirds all life. Our essential being is to live. To engage life and to probe our depths in the Divine Life. The world and ourselves, as they are, are not to be rejected as imperfect. The world and ourselves are as they should be, a living dynamic process for the eternal creation of love, beauty, and meaning.
I am very interested in the question of our ultimate identities as beings in a universe that seems to be beyond total description, yet also seems to be very capable of revealing to us it’s power, beauty, terror,and also what i might term as moral import. Our present ecological crisis, if it can be agreed upon that there is in fact one present, is a prime example. The scientist Gregory Bateson
wrote a book entitled Mind and Nature : A Necessary Unity. He was an information theorist whose picture of the world strikes me as being both mature and insightful. What i get from his writings is a dynamic sense of interplay. One example of this is what is called a stochastic process, perhaps
best illustrated by an example: An archery student trying to hit a target.If the
archer is tuned in to conditions around him/her to the extent that the flow of
events is in a certain harmonious state, it may be very likely or even certain that the target will be ” bullseyed “. However,this state of being “on the mark” can be lost if the archer is not sufficiently conscious of surrounding conditions. so, there is always an element of uncertainty involved; the archer/target unified information system may or may not be manifested in it’s optimal form! I picture a sort of “muddling - through” type process happening perhaps in a more refined form than we all use when solving the every-day problems of our practical lives. This muddling- through is, to me,what characterizes the stochastic process. Sooner or later. we hit the target. It is very interesting to me that the word Sin has the contextual meaning derived from archery of “missing the mark “. If it could be argued that what we could call Gods Wisdom is expressed in the Universe , might it be the case that what is required of us as truly human beings is to have the “eyes to see and the ears to hear” how this wisdom is manifesting in our present situation, and so respond , after a period of muddling - through with a solution that is “on the mark” ?
Comment by Robert —
Hi Robert,
Welcome. Very insightful and challenging questions. In regards to your archer’s analogy, I think the question is whether there is a static mark or if the mark is, in fact, an eternally changing one. If it is static then eventually through a stochastic process or through some insight the target will be hit. But if the target is not static but one of an eternal process of discovering and striving for that which is loving, beautiful, and meaningful then the target may be hit in one moment of context but in the next the target has been refreshed beyond its prior limits based on what has happened. In this case there is no final state of love, beauty and meaning but one that is eternally emerging out of life. To me this is the essence of God’s creativity. A static point of perfection is, in my view, the antithesis of divine creativity. Divine and human creativity should not be limited to some point of perfection but rather they are an eternal process. Does love had an end in some form of perfection? Does beauty or meaning? I think not. Instead they are boundless with ever present and ever changing opportunities for even more abundance.
Comment by Steve Petermann —
To me, perfection is the reality that we are Consciousness itself, not any of the contents of consciousness.
Comment by MatthewCromer —