What is perfection? A difficult question and one that is perhaps impossible to answer. Maybe that is why people like to attribute perfection to a deity thereby relinquishing their responsibility to be better. Perhaps that is the fundamental assumption behind perfection, that something can always be better. But when is it good enough?

Perfection is perhaps a distortion of the concept of good. It is linked to the concept of infinity and rockets passed awareness and observation. What I mean is that perfection like infinity is unfathomable. We make up the concept but have no capacity to truly understand it. When we seek perfection we are seeking impossibility. How would we know if we ever achieved perfection?

We use the term in all sorts of ways, attaching it to every other concept we have ever conjured up. When someone gets 100% on a test we call that perfect but is the test really perfect? Does the student have perfect knowledge? Does the teacher even have perfect knowledge? Well the answer is obviously not. Perhaps we can only be perfect if we set the bar for perfection at the imperfect. But to be truly perfect at something, anything, is simply an interpretation. Heisenberg has let us know that there is no such thing as a closed system or at least we cannot create one. Whatever limits we put on something to test it will never tell us the whole story. All tests as a result are imperfect. So how can you get perfect on imperfection? Are we imperfectly perfect or perfectly imperfect? What would that mean?

So we bandy about the words perfect and perfection willy nilly and forget its origins. And why do we all strive to be perfect at something. Or are we just setting a lower than perfect bar for ourselves and calling that perfect? Is perfection about the scale of judgement? It is certainly used primarily in the meter of judgement. Perhaps we created the concept of perfect so we could better judge ourselves and others. But to what end?

Biologically judging where we belong in the pecking order might help an individual survive in a group species. But why do we need extremes of concept? Is it a side effect of a judgement process to seek out extremes with which to measure yourself against? There is some evidence that measuring oneself against extremes is highly de-motivating, so on the surface at least is seems kind of pointless. But then again if the lower ranks in the group are not motivated to fight for the highest position all the time there is likely to be less wasted energy thereby keeping everyone alive. Is de-motivation a biological imperative?

Wouldn’t that be a lark? Perfection emerged as a concept to prevent us from killing one another so much.

Well then maybe it’s time to give up the concept of perfect and motivate ourselves to be good enough. And what is good enough? Like all meaning and judgement (discuss those further another time), it is whatever we decide that is...and hopefully it means we don’t hurt each other too much in the process.