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This post addresses the topic of human perfection. It is a reflection of my latest book, Seeking Perfection: A Dialogue About the Mind, the Soul, and What It Means to Be Human. Here (as in the book), my intent is to assess the human condition from what I consider to be a neglected perspective: that of the loftiest of human possibilities.
What is possible for a human to achieve? How “perfect,” and how “human” can he or she be? What if we were to brashly set our sights deliberately beyond the merely acceptable, the adequate, the best-we-can-do-given-the- circumstances? What might we personally achieve if we reject tolerance for just muddling through, getting by, or coping with? That’s the perspective I want to take. That’s the view of humanity I want to espouse and explore.
Now, before this starts sounding too much like faddish pop-psych self-help nonsense, let me make clear that I want to examine human perfection as the ancient Greeks did (hence the austere statues of Plato and Socrates on my book’s cover). To do this, we must (of course) first define our terms.
What do I mean by “perfection?” I define perfection actively, not nominally. In other words, perfection is an action, an activity, a pursuit, not a thing or a static state. With practice, a swimmer perfects her stroke and a golfer perfects his swing. And to what end is this practice directed? I argue it is directed toward the attainment of some ideal. Both the swimmer and the golfer have in mind an image of an ideal stroke or swing which they strive to replicate or achieve with repetition and dedication.
Attaining this ideal is not easy. It requires diligence and discipline, leading to only rare moments when the ideal is truly met, or maybe more accurately—fleeting glimpsed. Instead, more realistically, what the golfer and swimmer achieve is a good habit. Their hard work and practice produce a highly effective consistency in performance, punctuated by rare moments of near perfection. But no matter how skillful one becomes, the ideal is always just beyond reach—beckoning ever forward. As any elite competitor will attest, even in a gold medal effort, there is always room for improvement.
Now comes a bold statement: As it is with swimming, golf, etc. so it is with life. Perfection is not limited to isolated physical skills. Mental skills, attitudes, emotions, dispositions, etc. all can be perfected in ways similar to honing one’s chip shot or breaststroke. Life is a skill. That skill can be practiced and improved, and that improvement can be aimed at an ideal. The skills of life can become habitually effective and can at times produce ephemeral encounters with true perfection—moments of transcendence when we experience the indescribable sense of having touched an ideal.
My assertions may raise skepticism in some, but I hope they raise curiosity as well. I doubt, however, that that curiosity is directed at the other term in my title. I have defined perfection, but what about "human"? Do we really need to define that? We all know what a human is. Actually, we really don’t know (exactly) what a human is, and the ancient Greeks were sticklers for exactitude. We can’t entirely understand human perfection until we get a good handle on who or what it is that is striving for the ideal. But that will have to wait for another post.
