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 Interrogations
By
Kassandra
An
eclectic, literary challenge to everyday thinking.
Number
Two: Perfection Isn't
Imagine
a perfect world.
Now
consider the pall of boredom and unease the idea casts. What is
that about?
We
are imperfect creatures ourselves, of course. Small, weak, fragile,
temporary. No doubt such a poor, bare, fork'd animal simply could
never feel at home in a world so radically opposed to its own nature.
We are creatures of time: we begin, we go on for awhile, we stop.
Perfection simply is. It is cold, hard, silent, motionless. We find
in its embrace not peace, harmony, or joy but sterility, suffocation
and terror.
Humans
have nothing to do with perfection, nor it with us. We are animals
that evolved, we are contingent and adaptable, we have a history.
Change is of the essence of evolved creatures, so there is a radical
discontinuity between us and by-definition-unchanging perfection.
Something so implacably alien to our nature we can briefly admire,
but we soon grow uneasy and restless, then hostile; we draw moustaches
on the statues. Immobile unimprovable perfection ends by repelling
our squashy wet grubby smelly rotting selves.
Perfection
is complete, final, closed; it needs nothing from us. We cannot
add or subtract or improve; it gives us nothing to do. We like to
be doing. We need to feel we are accomplishing something, getting
somewhere, making an impact. This need is visible in that hardy
perennial, the myth of Progress, the Whig or Coué view of
history: every day in every way we are getting better and better.
In Greek literature and philosophy it warred with the myth of the
Golden Age--things used to be good and have been going downhill
ever since--but there were plenty of voices, fictional and real,
to speak for the progress view: Prometheus in 'Prometheus Bound',
Protagoras in Plato's eponymous dialogue, Pericles, the chorus in
'Antigone'. The dream of improvement has been with us ever since.
We are never good enough, we always need to be better. Satisfaction
with how we are spells death.
'It is better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a pig satisfied,'
said Mill. We need to remain dissatisfied; we need to be better
but not perfect. We want a project, however Sisyphean it may be.
As long as there is something incomplete, something that requires
our attention and effort, our presence on the planet is needed.
Being needed is more central to our happiness than a mere succession
of pig-pleasures, no matter how often repeated.
This
background sense of being needed, of having a project, even an absurd
one, is a cryptic but indispensable element in our commitment to
being in the world. It motivates us to get out of bed in the morning,
to stay awake and engaged, to show up. Anthony Storr in his essay
'Churchill's Black Dog' tells of the role Churchill's severe depression
played in his huge appetite for work. Churchill's energetic activity
kept the black dogs at bay, and the same is true of all of us, in
one degree or another. In a perfect world, paradoxically, the black
dogs would catch up and devour us.
Kassandra
is the pen name of Ophelia Benson.
.
Interrogations
will next be updated early July 2002
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Interrogations
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