Is perfectionism really all that bad?

Post Reply New Topic

Our word perfection derives from the Latin per = through, and facere = do/make. So by etymology, perfection is something that you have worked through in every relevant detail, I might add. As such, perfectionism is a virtue, notably in the enterprise of programming.

By sliding meaning, perfection has come to represent something that, sort of, possesses every conceivable positive attribute, which is not so much a bad thing, as absolutely impossible, not even very interesting.

Perfectionism can stand for excessive ambition, nothing to excess and all that. But at the end of the day we may come back to the 'original' sense of something that has been worked through. I like that sense.


J

In my opinion perfection is a little like eternity or infinity - It's an idea, an extreme, that one can strive towards with unmatched tenacity but in the end each consciousness's idea of perfection will, almost certainly, differ substantially and thus can you really still call it "perfection"? When striving for such an "ultimate" goal would the backing of essentially everyone not be paramount to making it simply perfect ? Is it really perfection when rogue elements still exist?

In a practical sense take for example Joseph Stalin, I'm sure that he believed his policies were golden, were perfect. The only problem being that said policies lead to the destruction of literally millions of lives in the few decades he was in power. Bearing this in mind can you really say that such perfection is a good thing?

Sorry if the above was practically unreadable, I know what I want to say but putting it down is difficult sometimes .

The Best is the enemy of the Good.

ruveyn