Would A Perfect World Be Worth Living In?

By: V. Medeiros

Suppose that tomorrow you wake up to find the world is perfect!
 
There is no poverty, no war, no disease. There is more than enough food for everyone, there is a good education for everyone, and each government is rational. Relationships are well balanced. You are doing a job that you're happy with. All the choices you make are correct. Nothing goes wrong.
 
In the beginning, it is like a dream come true.
 
There is then an interesting question to pose: would you want to live there?
 
The issue is that perfection is generally assumed to be a positive thing. We are educated to make amends for our errors, bolster our weak points, and aim to be the very best version of ourselves. In school we seek to get the highest grades, in sport to run the fastest times, in art to be technically precise. We don't usually think about whether or not a world without failure would be better.
 
Consider achievement. Does success feel like success if you KNOW you can't fail? One of the things that makes things good is that we may or may not accomplish them. The hard mathematical problem gives us satisfaction because it might have been a problem we simply couldn't have solved. Winning counts since it could have been lost. Without fear, there can be no courage.
 
Maybe, therefore, it's not just that imperfection is a barrier to achievement. It is the source of the value of achievement.
 
The same issue can be seen in our relationships. Now, visualize a friendship where there were no miscommunications, no disagreements, and no disappointments. Although it sounds good, what does forgiveness mean if people are never forgiven? If there were never any grounds to break the bond of loyalty, what would that entail? Many attributes that are thought to be typically human only exist because things can go wrong.
 
This concept is nothing new. Aristotle felt that human happiness is not a perfection that is attained, but the cultivation of virtues through practice. We learn to be brave when we face fear, generous when we give, and fair when we learn to act fairly. Character is not a given; it is something that we must cultivate by making imperfect choices.
 
It's also disturbing that in a world where all decisions are the best possible. If there is always one best solution, then what do we have to do? If there was always one clear-cut best way, then how free are we? A lot of what makes us humans different is the ability to make choices when it comes to reasoning and thinking. We make mistakes, change our minds, know what we think and don't agree with each other, and sometimes go down roads that no one thought we would go down.
 
A world in which there were no errors might thus be very dull.
 
Not that suffering is desirable, nor should failure be idealized. Poverty, war and disease aren't valuable just because they are imperfect. There are things that we need to make a heroic effort to get rid of. The challenge is not as direct as you think: If all things were perfect, human life wouldn't be as meaningful either.
 
Don't strive for perfection, but something more akin to improvement.
 
The two are different, and it's important. In perfection, nothing can be done because nothing needs to be done. Improvement is endless. It will let us fail, but not be labelled a failure; change, but not be embarrassed about changing; and it will help us realise that the best version of us today is not necessarily the best version of us tomorrow.
 
Perhaps that is why perfection has an empty feeling. A perfect life would leave no challenges that would need to be surmounted, no revelations to be uncovered, and maybe no transformations to be made.
 
But perhaps it isn't about learning to love all the flaws after all. It is an awareness that one can't make a life perfect.
 
We live in an unfinished world, and we are unfinished people. We say and do things wrong, we contradict ourselves, we change our opinions; and we sometimes get things very wrong. But out of these flaws is born curiosity, ambition, creativity, forgiveness, and growth.
 
Perhaps perfection isn't the opposite of failure.
 
Perhaps perfection is the opposite of becoming.