Imperfection is Beautiful

FEE ^ | September 30, 2017 | Logan Albright

[TBP]

triving for perfection is something we all do. This applies not only to our personal goals, our work, our hobbies, but also to the wider world we inhabit. The idea of a perfect society, one in which every conceivable problem has been solved, has a sort of natural allure, and it’s no wonder that, again and again, well-meaning dreamers have attempted to perfect something that is fundamentally flawed: the human condition.

It is widely recognized that perfection is beyond unattainable in practice, but it’s still a worthy goal, right? You would think so, but on reflection, I’m not so sure. If you pay attention to how people actually behave, you’ll find that, however much we might think perfection is desirable, we don’t really like it when we get it.

We Never Achieve Perfection

I saw an ad for hand poured coffee the other day, although I have no idea why it matters how coffee is poured.

Think about the kinds of products consumers like best. We value “hand-crafted” items over those produced in a factory. We have the technology to make products exactly the same every time, but consumers scorn them in favor of the imperfections that result from human error. Hand blown glass, hand carved wood, hand turned pottery, all are preferable to their machine-produced alternatives. I even saw an ad for hand poured coffee the other day, although I have no idea why it matters how coffee is poured.

You can increase the value of a beautifully polished slab of wood by hitting it with chains and calling it “distressed.” I’m not sure if pre-ripped jeans are still a thing, but the fact that they were for at least a little while speaks volumes.

The sound of distortion in a guitar amplifier is an error of conveying signal properly, an error that engineers spent years trying to correct before we decided we like the way it sounds. Digital cameras allow us to capture more perfect representations of our environment than ever before, yet filmmakers add film grain, motion blur, and lens flares, all originally imperfections resulting from faulty equipment.

On its own, it’s interesting that perfection is not all it’s cracked up to be, but I also think this has a broader implication for how we think about politics. The progressive vision for society relies heavily on control, order, and scientific planning. Through the use of centralized knowledge, data, and technology, progressives believe they can achieve, if not perfection, then at least something that can be rationally planned as opposed to the randomness of nature. At its most severe, this mindset was manifested in the early 20th century American progressive movement, when eugenics was employed in an attempt to perfect the race or at least weed out undesirable elements.

Libertarians, on the other hand, believe that attempts to apply human reason and the scientific method to something as complex as society are doomed to failure. There are just too many variables, not to mention the fact that human will itself is ultimately unpredictable. Libertarians believe that societal structures spring up as a result of all of us working independently, pursuing our own goals, and cooperating when circumstances require it. It’s not perfect; it’s often not even pretty, but it works pretty well most of the time and lacks the unfortunate side effect that seems to befall so many scientifically planned societies: mass famine or outright slaughter.

F.A. Hayek referred to the unplanned society as operating through a “spontaneous order” that emerges without a central planner. More recently, Jeffrey Tucker and others have substituted the phrase “beautiful chaos” which I find more apposite.

We Prefer Flaws

Order, symmetry, and regularity are fine as far as they go, but there seems to be something in human nature that rejects the rigidity of perfect order and craves the poetry that comes when things are just a little out of balance. It’s somewhat of a cliché at this point, but accommodation for human nature is a necessary feature of any society, and a significant part of the reason why socialism in practice always fails. I’ve had people call my dreams of a voluntary society Utopian, but in fact they’re anything but.

I love freedom in part because of how messy it is because it’s unpredictable and imperfect. It may be frightening to some, but for me, these features are part of what makes liberty worth valuing in the first place. After all, a life reduced to perfectly regular order, with perfect predictability, would be no life at all.

[TBP]

My favorite yogi -- the late, great Yogi Berra -- once said that "if the world were perfect, it wouldn't be." I think he might have been thinking along these lines. It's the flaw -- the imperfection -- of a gem that makes it a thing of beauty, unique and valuable. This article provides numerous other examples.

Imperfection keeps us striving for more, greater, bigger, better, higher. And that requires us, as they say in sports, to bring our A game. And when we all bring our A game, the world works, for us and for those around us.

We used to have stickers at our church many years ago that said, "I am committed to excellence." Excellence, not perfection.

A minister my wife and I knew, the late Rev. Dr. Leo Fishbeck, used to talk about perfectionists. He said that the perfectionist would paint your hose, then when you complimented him (or her) on the great job, he (or she) would point out to you the one flawed brush stroke. The perfectionist cannot see the beauty in the imperfection. But isn't that what makes us unique, and isn't that uniqueness what makes each of us perfectly, wholly, completely us?

I think this is a terrific reminder. Embrace the imperfection; it is beautiful -- in its own, unique way.

[null and void]

Dunno.

You can see a lot just by looking.

[heterosupremacist]

TBP wrote ~~~ My favorite yogi -- the late, great Yogi Berra -- once said that "if the world were perfect, it wouldn't be." ~~~ Just for laughs, my favorite Yogi-ism."I'm not going to buy my kids an encyclopedia. Let them walk to school like I did." 8O)

[heterosupremacist]

One more Yogi quote ~~~

“I don’t know (if they were men or women fans running naked across the field). They had bags over their heads.”

[onedoug]

Broken symmetry: variety in physics and in women.

[SpaceBar]

Try selling this to a mathematician.

[reasonisfaith]

Reminds me of a quote from Edgar Allen Poe. Goes something like There is no exquisite beauty without some disproportion in the features.

The problem is, I really liked the meaning behind the Poe line when I was a clueless leftist. Since coming to my senses some decades ago, I’ve lost all appreciation for it, in fact it seems like a subtle, deceptive seduction from the dark and ugly unknown.

[MUDDOG]

Gödel would buy.

[BlueDragon]

triving for perfection is something we all do.

ext eek, lan o ork n y pelling, riting, nd diting kills.

ust hought omebody round ere ould ike o now...

[SpaceBar]

Doubtful. Godel’s incompleteness theorem is always true, not sometimes true, ergo, it’s perfect.

[MUDDOG]

Since coming to my senses

That's what a koan does.

[GOP Poet]

bookmark

[null and void]

America is very fortunate, per the Constitution, we come to our census every 20 years...

[MUDDOG]

Hillary says Trump’s win was noncensuscal.

[BlueDragon]

I saw an ad for hand poured coffee the other day, although I have no idea why it matters how coffee is poured.

He has "no idea" why? That's an imperfection the guy could work to overcome.

It's not about pouring coffee, as much as it's a coffee extraction method.

click it don't kick it

or

https://www.perfectdailygrind.com/2017/06/coffee-extraction-brewing-concepts/

The dude's google-fu seriesly lags. [see: 2b]

hugh and series

How that one thread entitled "Religion" got in there I do not know except to guess it must have been due to keyword abuse [lexicon] all of which reminds me of that elephant I once shot, that was trying to stop that moose from...

You get the picture.

I think of them often.

[reasonisfaith]

Don’t exclude non-koans.

[reasonisfaith]

Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.

And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.

1 John 2:15-17