RoR: Forum

Rebirth of Reason

Forum : Article Discussions : Apotheosis: The Virtue of Perfectionism

Friday
August 18, 2006

Apotheosis: The Virtue of Perfectionism by Warren Chase Anspaugh

Perfectionism means living, and acting at 100% all the time – not merely here and there, wherever or whenever one feels like it. Perfectionism is not impractical – to the contrary. Striving towards perfection is the only practical guide to action – anything less is impractical and therefore, evil; read: anti-life. Let us see why, using a simple example, supposing you are about to take a test in any given class. (Read more...)
Discuss this Article (22 messages)

Sunday, August 20, 2006 - 2:43am

Hi Warren,

Thanks for the article. I take this part to be a central premise of it.

If you aim not for 100%, but rather 70% or 80%, you must make the difficult decision of evaluating how much studying is sufficient for you to achieve your goal. However, if you aim for perfectionism, for 100%, you know that your goal is to master all possible topics. Hence it becomes clear that it is easier to focus on the goal of obtaining 100% than it is to focus on achieving a lower average.

I can see the argument, and it makes some sense, but only under very specific conditions that are not really found in everyday life. If you have enough time to master every topic, and you have nothing else to do, it might be easier to just go for all of them. But there are a few factors that make this unrealistic.

1.) You have time constraints. Even if you want to go for 100%, you have to choose.
2.) There is not a set amount to learn in any field. Mastering a field is not something you ever finish. You can spend a lifetime continuing. You have to make trade-offs. It's not about being evil or sacrificing. It's about optimizing.
3.) In life, there are far more goals than just the couple of classes you might be taking and have to study for. As an adult, you have to choose between countless goals and values.

Instead of looking for 'perfection', you could rephrase it to seek out the 'optimal' life. The two might be thought of as synonyms, but the second one focuses you on the fact that you have to make trade-offs and choose between different goals. 'Perfectionism' leaves the impression that you have to try to master every action that you make individually, even if that doesn't provide an optimal life.

Sunday, August 20, 2006 - 4:21pm

Joe wrote:

Instead of looking for 'perfection', you could rephrase it to seek out the 'optimal' life. The two might be thought of as synonyms, but the second one focuses you on the fact that you have to make trade-offs and choose between different goals. 'Perfectionism' leaves the impression that you have to try to master every action that you make individually, even if that doesn't provide an optimal life.

I second that thought. I seek to optimize the unavoidable trade-offs I encounter all the time. Some of the values choices I have made have sometimes "disappointed" parents, teachers and peers. These "disappointments" arose because of their false expectations that I would accept their values without question. They also arose because the "rewards" system in place did nothing to encourage me to pursue those particular values they held so highly.

For instance, in seventh grade, our grading system relied strictly on "satisfactory" (S) or "unsatisfactory" (U). Unless I had a particular passion for a subject, I had no incentive whatsoever to do more than the bare minimum to achieve an S. My "Social Studies" teacher dogged me every quarter in front of the class about this, saying that he "felt disappointed" that I only scored the bare minimum required points in projects when he knew I participated in the "gifted students" program there.

Now let us discuss values here. Whether I slammed myself against the wall in pursuit of mastery of "Social Studies," i.e. the study of various primitive tribes around the world, or whether I scrambled at the last minute to scrape together enough project points to pass for the quarter, the end result on the report card remained the same: S. Meanwhile, some of my favorite television shows, like Space Giants, offered me much more enjoyment of life than "Social Studies" ever could. What possible incentive could I have to score more "Social Studies" points when the exciting adventures of Goldar, Silvar, Gam and Mikko awaited me every weekday afternoon?

Give me a break. My life revolves around my values, not those of condescending, paternalistic teachers who offer no greater value for greater effort. Knowledge has objective value, not intrinsic value, and I had no objective need to know about how some backwards tribalists in Africa washed their hands with the urine of cows! At least Space Giants, however fantastic and juvenile, offered a moving vision of the best, most forward-looking and most heroic in man. Destroy Rodak!

(Edited by Luke Setzer on 8/20, 4:22pm)

Sunday, August 20, 2006 - 7:00pm

Joe, for the sake of clarity, were I to rephrase my central premise, I'd say that perfectionism is asking yourself "What would I have to do to make this task-at-hand perfect?", and proceeding to actualize that potential.

Perfectionism is choosing an explicit set of standards & criteria to meet, and then carrying out those actions. This is opposed to simply doing things "as-they-come", with no explicit standards or criteria, and then evaluating the results after-the-fact.

Perfectionism is the art of performing at one's fullest, to put it most simply. It does not dictate [at least, contextually] what one should do, but rather, how one should do it.

So if an attempt to master a subject would hinder your ability to master other areas, then you may re-evaluate the situation and define what you would have to do, in order to make that situation perfect.
Admittedly, it can be difficult to ignore the heavy, glaring detail that there is a huge consensus of what would otherwise be considered "perfect" [regarding that individual subject, or test]. This is perhaps why I had selected such a case-scenario involving the test and 100% completion thereof.

Instead of looking for 'perfection', you could rephrase it to seek out the 'optimal' life. The two might be thought of as synonyms, but the second one focuses you on the fact that you have to make trade-offs and choose between different goals. 'Perfectionism' leaves the impression that you have to try to master every action that you make individually, even if that doesn't provide an optimal life.

Indeed, I can see that as well. Here's to expanding the much stigmatized word of "perfection" to more realistic definitions - and, to the optimal life.

Sunday, August 20, 2006 - 7:40pm

In other words, perfection is contextual......

Friday, March 14 - 12:02pm

A duty to flourish? I doubt it.

Living in such a way the one earns his keep is quite sufficient.

A man who earns his living and harms no one, is not a problem to the rest of us.

Bob Kolker

Friday, March 14 - 1:32pm

Perfectionism means living, and acting at 100% all the time – not merely here and there, wherever or whenever one feels like it. Perfectionism is not impractical – to the contrary. Striving towards perfection is the only practical guide to action – anything less is impractical and therefore, evil; read: anti-life. Let us see why, using a simple example, supposing you are about to take a test in any given class.

Hank Rearden in the lab working to create a new metal that was just good enough... Dagny keeping those trains more or less close to what most people accept for "on time" ... John Galt with a motor whose 10% improvement over conventional motors would probably give Old Starnes a fair share of the market assuming a level playing field... Howard Roark thinking about how much good he could do for the world if he just had the chance to simplify some of that over-done Victorian Eclectic, maybe bring more Doric cottages to the Hamptons...

Not only did I sanction the original, I have to say that I am a little surprised at the tepid responses. Personally, for me, the ethics of Objectivism are all about perfectionism, going 100% full tilt to best of my ability. Now, truly, there are only 24 hours in a day, and my resources are limited, but that is not the issue. I am not trying for 80% here, because if so, then the first barrier would drag that down to 75% ... and so on... down the slippery slope... You shoot for 100% and what's the worst? 90? even 85?

Look at it this way: Most MLB players who can hit between 250 and 333 are pretty good at the plate. You get a hit a game, every game, and you are steady, and at that, a champion... 350? That's great!! ... But no one steps up to the plate with a 35% attitude... not if you want to make a living at it.

I'll give you another from MLB. Do you know why Dominicans are such aggressive hitters? Because they learned as children that there is no way to walk off the island.

Friday, March 14 - 2:02pm

Poor Warren. The first time he falls short of his unrealistic aspirations he must flog himself bloody and curse himself as an utter failure.

Perfectionism is highly imperfect.

Bob Kolker

Friday, March 14 - 2:27pm

Bob,

Why do you so often seem to be an enemy of the good?

;-)

Ed

Friday, March 14 - 4:00pm

Wrong. I am an enemy of -the best-. The best is the enemy of the good.

What I am very much an enemy of is pissing up a rope. Futility bugs me.

Bob Kolker

Saturday, March 15 - 6:17am

By that logic, the better is not friendly with the good, either.

:-/

Ed
[I don't know why I bother to put up smiley face characters; being stricken with Asperger Syndrome, your face emotion-recognition skill is likely hampered tremendously]

Saturday, March 15 - 6:49am

In the Virtue of Selfishness (p. 29) Rand says moral perfection is achieved by never accepting any code of irrational virtues impossible to practice and by never failing to practice the virtues one knows to be rational.

That sounds to me like nothing more than a striving, not an attainment. It's an intention, not a result, and "perfection" generally means a result. What if one experiments or believes it's rational to do X but then discovers it wasn't? What if one does X instead of Y because one didn't think enough about Y (or think it important enough), which would have led to a better result? Is that not a failure at rationality?

It strikes me as an "only intentions count" element in a moral code which otherwise also has consequentialist elements -- sustaining one's life as the standard of value, or flourishing.

"If you haven't failed, you haven't tried hard enough." - Anonymous

(Edited by Merlin Jetton on 3/15, 7:33am)

Saturday, March 15 - 9:50am

Ed writes:

[I don't know why I bother to put up smiley face characters; being stricken with Asperger Syndrome, your face emotion-recognition skill is likely hampered tremendously]

I respond:

Not to worry. I have an algorithm for handling that.

Bob Kolker

Tuesday, March 18 - 12:12am

Algorith, schmalgorithm. You can't reduce human-ness to a quadratic function! Begads, you are acting like a senseless automaton.

Go eat some more dairy and wheat (for the autism-producing peptides rendered available from the human enzymatic digestion of their proteins).

Plug-n-chug THAT, why don't you.

Ed

Tuesday, March 18 - 3:42am

I am acting like an intelligent automaton. I don't know about you, but I am a finite state machine. Lots of states and complicated transition function and all that, but an organic machine down to the sub-atomic level. I am so smart, that I pass for human and have done so for over 70 years.

I have developed an algorithm to handle most of the situations in which I find myself.

Bob Kolker

Tuesday, March 18 - 11:49am

Bob,

Do you like cheese?

Ed

Friday, March 21 - 9:35am

Bob,

Do you understand why I asked if you like cheese?

Ed
[didn't have an algorithm for THAT kind of a Turing machine question, didya'?]

Friday, March 21 - 11:55am

Bleu, Liederkranz, and Gruyere.

What is the significance of cheese?

Bob Kolker

Friday, March 21 - 2:57pm

Cheese protein breaks down, upon interaction with human digestive enzymes, to bioactive peptide products linked to Autistic Spectrum Disorders.

There's an underlying reason that the real "Rain Man" loved Cheese Puffs ...

Ed

Friday, March 21 - 3:56pm

How about all of the non-Asperger, non-autistic cheese lovers? Do you have any explanation? Have you even bothered to look?

I have my doubts about the general validity of your observation.

Have you checked out all the Auties who don't eat cheese products? I bet you haven't.

Have you checked out all the non-Auties who DO eat cheese products? I bet you haven't.

You tend to be a dietary trendoid, I notice. You believe all this half-ass nutritional conclusion jumping. Why? Have you check out the converse cases? Have you carefully measured the boundary conditions?

Bob Kolker

Friday, March 21 - 6:40pm

Bob,

Yes.

Ed